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Contribution short abstract

Fisheries crisis in El Ñuro, Peru impacts not only fishers’ labour but also household livelihoods. As access to marine resources declines, reproductive work is reorganised, transforming gender roles, mobility patterns and food practices in fishing families.

Contribution long abstract

In recent decades, overexploitation of marine resources, climate change and inefficient fishing policy regulations have affected artisanal fishing. In El Ñuro (Talara, Piura), these changes in access to marine resources have made fishing labour increasingly precarious while generating profound reorganisations in the domestic lives of fishing families.

Drawing on political ecology and social reproduction theory, I understand labour as practices through which humans relate with each other and their environment. Focusing on reproductive labour, this approach reveals how fishing households interact with different timeframes and scales of market dynamics, marine seasons, and daily routines. Based on this, my doctoral research asks: how do changes in access to marine resources impact the organisation of reproductive labour in fishing households? I argue that fishing labour precarity cannot be understood by examining conditions at sea alone, but must be analysed related to reproductive labour.

Using ethnographic methods with fishers’ families, I examine how reproductive labour is changing with a focus on food provisioning, shifting gender roles as women become breadwinners while managing care, and fishers migrate seasonally due to mobility patterns. For example, fish scarcity and reduced income from fishing work push women to seek alternative protein sources and raise animals for self-consumption. These strategies reveal how ecological crises reshape labour conditions, household sustainability, and livelihoods.

By examining tensions between productive and reproductive labour, this research contributes to understanding how fishing crises affect not only labour at sea, but also the organisation of care, gender relations, and intergenerational dynamics within fishing households.