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Short abstract:

In this paper I examine an online platform for scheduling the work of ship pilots in the Port of Rotterdam. I analyze how algorithms are being enfolded into existing systems of labor in ways that streamline racial capitalism.

Long abstract:

In this paper I examine an online platform for scheduling the work of ship pilots in the Port of Rotterdam. I analyze how algorithms are being enfolded into existing systems of labor in ways that streamline racial capitalism. Industry professionals often claim that digital infrastructures will make maritime shipping more sustainable and efficient. But digitalization also builds on the kinds of apps made infamous in firms like Amazon and Uber, as well as on related forms of unjust circulation and extraction. In Rotterdam highly trained ship pilots, mostly comprised of local white workers, are a key component in the new platform. However the platform is designed for the corporations who are shipping the goods, and so far the algorithm is less useful for the pilots themselves.

Even more notably, the algorithm doesn't mention the seafarers aboard the incoming ships, many of whom are Asian workers from countries such as the Philippines and Indonesia. In contrast to the pilots, seafarers are subsumed under the ship for the purposes of the algorithm, not even appearing visibly as human or living labor. Seafarers only show up briefly elsewhere in the port’s digital systems, and only then as potential security threats in relation to migration controls. Examining how algorithms are being enfolded into port regions makes it possible to attend to the differential effects these transformations have on workers. This is especially apparent in relation to how digitalization reiterates racialized definitions of the human in ways that exacerbate injustice within and beyond ports.