The Fishing Lifecourse: Exploring the Importance of Social Contexts, Capitals and (More Than) Fishing Identities

Abstract

There is an emerging call for social scientists to pay greater attention to the social and cultural contexts of fishing and fishers. A resulting literature is evolving which focuses on individual life experiences, particularly relating to entering the fishing occupation, and what these might mean for the future sustainability of the fishing industry. However, the ways in which these lives are linked and intergenerationally connected remains somewhat of a blindspot. This article considers the potential of a lifecourse approach to help us better understand how fishers accumulate, utilise and share capital(s) in getting onto and moving along the ‘fishing ladder’. Drawing on in‐depth qualitative research with fishing families on the Llŷn peninsula small‐scale fishery in north Wales (UK) the article explores how there are multiple social contexts from which ‘prospective fishers’ can begin their fishing career and which differentially (re)shape how they can accumulate capital over time. Later on in the lifecourse, fishers (re)negotiate their fishing identities in relation to the lives of others, within transitions such as parenthood as well as with older age. The article's findings offer a much‐needed temporal dimension to our understanding of fishing lives and what it means to be a ‘good fisher’.