Cruise Ships: Continuity and Change in the World System

Authors

  • Francisca Oyogoa Bard College at Simon's Rock

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2016.613

Abstract

Cruise ships present a useful context to study contemporary developments in globalization.  U.S.-owned cruise companies have managed to create the “ideal” context for contemporary corporations: very little government oversight of labor relations, an available pool of very cheap labor dispersed across the globe, lax environmental regulations, high profit margins, and corporate tax rates around 1%. 

A typical cruise ship leaving the U.S. contains workers from 75 to 90 nationalities.  Crewmembers performing menial service work are recruited exclusively from “poor countries” in Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Crewmembers typically sign 10-month contracts stipulating 10-14 hour workdays/7 days a week without vacation or sick days. There is a striking correlation between workers’ pay/status and their countries’ position within the world system.  Staff members are usually white Westerners, while crewmembers are exclusively from the global south. On cruises the legacies of imperialism and colonialism are often the basis of workers’ racialization as appropriate servants. 

References

Chapman, Paul. 1992. Trouble on Board: The Plight of International Seafarers. ILR Press: New York.

Chin, Cristine. 2008. Cruising the Global Economy: Profits, Pleasure, and Work at Sea. Ashgate: Hampshire, England.

Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA). 2015. 2015 Cruise Industry Outlook. CLIA: New York.

Dickinson, B. and Vladimir, A. 2008. Selling the Seas: An Inside Look at the Cruise Industry. John Wiley and Sons: Hoboken, New Jersey.

Garin, Kristoffer. 2006. Devils on the Deep Blue Sea: The Dreams, Schemes, and Showdowns that Built America’s Cruise-Ship Empires. Plume: New York.

International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITWF). 2002. Sweatships: What it is Really Like to Work On Board Cruise Ships.

Klein, Ross. 2002. Cruise Ship Blues: The Underside of the Cruise Industry. New Society Publishers: BC, Canada.

Terry, William. 2013. The Perfect Worker: Discursive Makings of Filipinos in the Workplace Hierarchy of the Globalized Cruise Industry, Social and Cultural Geography, 15:1, 73-93.

Zhao, Minghua. 2002. Emotional Labor in a Globalised Labor Market: Seafarers on Cruise Ships. Seafarer’s International Research Centre: Cardiff, Wales.

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Published

2016-03-22

How to Cite

Oyogoa, F. (2016). Cruise Ships: Continuity and Change in the World System. Journal of World-Systems Research, 22(1), 31–37. https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2016.613

Issue

Vol. 22 No. 1 (2016): Special Issue: Ireland in the World-System

Section

Symposium: Race in the Capitalist World-System

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