The majority of labourers decided to migrate to the study villages after hearing from friends or relatives that the area was booming with anchovy purse seine fishing and would provide a high cash income. The first ones who came to the area tried to find an employer (boat owner) by contacting persons who used to work there. In this sense, even though the places of origin were widespread, the labourers were part of a chain migration. The majority of labourers came to the villages to engage in purse seine fishing only for a year as trial. Some came alone and some came with other members of their household (such as brothers). In certain cases, the entire family came along (see Table 4). Then, about 60% of the crewmen returned to their original home after the season (Table 2). Among those who were not obligated to return to their home, some were fortunate enough to find local work for the rainy season. The main opportunities during the rainy season were shrimp fishing and repairing fishing nets. For Village J, hotel construction was also on this list. Shrimp fishing operations did not provide an opportunity for all crewmen of purse seine fishing since only 3 or 4 men were required for each shrimp boat. On the other hand, some crewmen who wanted to go home were forced to remain in the area because they did not have enough money for the trip or for repaying their debt to the boat owner (the reason is explained later). Hence, they engaged in casual labour to make ends meet.
We observed two prominent characteristics of the labourers from other areas. average age was rather young (27.6 years old for Village J and 27.3 for Village S) and they were fairly new entrants into the labour market. Second, they had a relatively high level of education (see Fig. 3). The dropout rate from middle school (in other words, they have completed primary education at least) was 45%. In a previous survey conducted in various parts of Myanmar, the share of dropouts from middle school was 30% on average, and 15% in the case of non- farmowners (agricultural labourers), which suggests that they stopped going to primary school at some stage (Fujita 2009, 295-300). Compared to these figures, the educational level of the labourers in our study is rather high. For an occupation such as fishing crewman, which is generally categorized as simple but demanding and laborious work, the migrating labourers have an unexpectedly high level of education.