More than Just Fishing: The Formation of Livelihood Strategies in an Urban Fishing Community in Mangaluru, India

Abstract

This article examines livelihood strategies of fishers and youth in an urban fishing community in India. Situated next to the busiest fishing harbour in Karnataka, I show how proximity to the city provides fishers and youth broader occupational choices to diversify their livelihoods by intensifying or taking on several fisheries-based activities, moving into the service sector, or getting urban jobs. Urban conditions have largely influenced how fishers and youth decide their livelihood strategy. The article shows how the fishers and youth have employed livelihood diversification via both accumulation and risk management strategies. Due to the lack of analysis drawing on urban fisheries case studies, the narratives of small-scale fisheries have largely been based on rural contexts, which often portrait small-scale fishers as either inefficient or vulnerable. This study, however, allows us to open up existing small-scale fisheries narratives to view fishers as active agents. Therefore, this study calls for more systematic emphasis on studying urban implications in small-scale fishing communities with important repercussions for urban fishers and their livelihood strategies.

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