Crew at all costs. Consent and resistance to social assignment on merchant ships

Aboard merchant ships, sailors are a typical example of a fragmented collective marked by multiple inequalities. Yet protests against this racial and gendered social order are extremely rare: being a “crew” seems to legitimize it. This article explores the way in which racial and gendered assignments simultaneously divide the collective and hold it together. In this dangerous environment, the imperative of social peace produces consent to a strict division of roles and tasks. However, this configuration of social relations is uncertain. It depends on the presence of indispensable compensations, and insofar as injustices remain acceptable. Otherwise, conflict arises, often outside the ship, because it is the only way to get around these social assignments.