Willingness for mobility amongst European fishermen

Cristina Pita*, Heather Suzanne Dickey, Eleni Mente, Graham John Pierce, Ioannis Theodossiou

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

30 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The global trend of fisheries overexploitation and collapse has resulted in the need to reduce fishing effort, and providing alternative employment for fishermen is a frequently mentioned policy option in order to achieve this goal. Reducing fishing effort is central to the European Commission Common Fisheries Policy and over the years, the Commission has developed a number of socio-economic measures to encourage labour mobility among fishermen, and as such mitigate the impact caused by the structural adjustment. Considering this aim, this paper seeks to identify European fishermen's willingness for occupational and geographical mobility and the characteristics that influence this willingness. A survey was conducted with the participants in the inshore commercial fisheries of the Highlands of Scotland (UK), the Algarve (Portugal) and the South Evoikos Gulf (Greece), and logit models fitted to identify the characteristics that influence willingness for labour mobility. The paper argues that there are differences in attitudes towards labour mobility among fishermen from the different countries and that personal preferences, demographic characteristics, job-related and financial reasons influence the willingness for both occupational and geographical mobility. The paper concludes by pointing out the importance of taking local conditions and the heterogeneity that characterizes fishermen's behaviour into account, in order to achieve successful policy measures aimed at providing alternative occupations for fishermen. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)308-319
Number of pages12
JournalJournal of Rural Studies
Volume26
Issue number3
Early online date17 Mar 2010
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2010

Keywords

  • Labour mobility
  • Fisheries
  • Scotland
  • Portugal
  • Greece
  • Europe
  • Small-scale fisheries
  • Northeast Atlantic
  • Job-satisfaction
  • Fishing industry
  • Management
  • Policy
  • Entry
  • Exit
  • Decisions
  • Dynamics

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