Prison ships converted to guestworker housing

As unemployment in Britain spikes, anti-foreign labor sentiment is running high, and multinationals stand accused of violating their labor agreements by shipping in cheap workers from abroad. One employer is housing its guestworkers on a former prison ship that serves as both cheap housing and protection from angry mobs.

They're floating labor camps, seabound slums, theoretically tolerable migrant housing “converted” out of old prison barges.
But, one can only wonder, what “converted” actually means here, and what defines "tolerable." By the sounds of it, perhaps a few locks have been taken off the doors, a few bars removed from the cabin (cell) windows, but essentially, from what I can tell, the rest is what you might still imagine.
All of which naturally conjures wretched images of slave ships from the colonial era swarming the coasts of the frontier, and begs some very basic questions here: what are the regulations around reusing or “converting” prison barges into suitable housing? What are the health standards that apply to such floating migrant camps? What constitutes appropriate compensation for their work? Are they protected by any certain safety guarantees? Is there any political agency to act on their behalf? How are these labor barges governed internationally if they operate as a sea-based entity, perhaps domiciled outside the boundaries of formal juridical sovereignty? I mean, I don't know. What is the oversight for this type of practice, if any?

Subtopia: The Floating Labor Camps of the Now (via Futurismic)

(Image: A Getty image of a former prison ship now used to barrack foreign workers employed at Lindsey Refinery, at Grimsby docks)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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JG

Nothing good ever comes from creating ghettos.
FoetusNail

11K died on British prison ships during and after the Revolutionary War.

http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-history-hs425a,0,6698945.story
Brainspore

@ MikeFinch #8:

Its a prison Hulk, not a prison ship…

No prison hold Hulk! Hulk SMASH PRISON!
Takuan

Cloud Atlas (again)
Anonymous

I live in Grimsby where that boat is (it looks even uglier when you see it in person).

@V Impressed: I’d heard from a mate who works on the docks that it’s all Italian workers who are staying on the prison boat, maybe the Portuguese in the county are with a different company or something?

I have heard quite a lot of anti-foreign-workers sentiment. Although most of the people I’ve talked to have mostly complained that as they aren’t staying at local guesthouses/hotels they aren’t contributing to the local economy.

That might be because I always point out that we’re free to go work elsewhere Europe if we want to.
bcsizemo

@JG…

You know I’m pretty sure the entire US Rap industry was created on the idea of being from the ghetto…

Not saying it’s good, right, or contributing to society, but it’s making someone a damn lot of money.

Cause if you haven’t seen the T-Pain\Lonely Island Saturday Night Live video on YouTube….oh my…:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7yfISlGLNU&feature=channel

(Don’t know if you get it outside the US?)
edealeasy

It can’t stop Michael and …….T-bag!!!!
Takuan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFU6EF8vJAc
Timothy Hutton

From the article:

All of which naturally conjures wretched images of slave ships from the colonial era swarming the coasts of the frontier, and begs some very basic questions here: what are the regulations around reusing or â€œconvertingâ€ prison barges into suitable housing?

I think the author vastly underestimates just how bad colonial-era slave ships were…

For reference, from the New York Public Library, I present this link to various photos and drawings.

The images depicted in the above link are several orders of magnitude worse than a ship full of what are, essentially, private rooms with a bath. Undertand, the private room with bath is likely smaller than a typical parking garage spot, but it belittles the plight of the colonial-era slaves transported in such horrorific conditions to compare it with a modern-day prison ship.

If it wasn’t cruel and unusual punishment to lock people in these rooms, how can it be cruel and unusual to let them stay in the room and hold the key?

What seems to be under-emphasised here is the personal security aspect of this – the excerpt from the article mentions that this community housing affords the foreign workers a bit of personal security – I think that is the real story. Why do the corporations feel the need to bring in these workers when others are unemployed, and why do the unemployed (apparently) feel the need to attack the foreign workers?

Why won’t the unemployed locals work for the assumed reduced wages? How do the foreign workers wages compare to government unemployment benefits?
neward

“It’s just a rumour that was spread around town
Somebody said that someone got filled in
For saying that people get killed in
The result of this shipbuilding”

…but seriously, besides the symbolism, which is obviously important to a number of people (but perhaps not the residents), how is this different from housing people in other converted facilities like former barracks, old hotels, divided-up mansions, abandoned monasteries, Napoleonic-era watchtowers, warehouse loft apartments, airplanes-turned hostels, et cetera?
Graham Anderson

“multinationals stand accused of violating their labor agreements by shipping in cheap workers from abroad” – an accusation which the company involved in the dispute being cited flatly deny. They state that all of the Italian and Portugese workers brought in to the UK to work on the refinery project are earning the same pay as UK workers would have, all in accordance with local pay agreements negotiated with local trade unions.

(See para 12 of http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/feb/05/lindsey-strikes-foreign-workers)

The Italian company that won the contract to do the work brought in their own workers because they had their own team.

“Social dumping” is a problem for the EU, but this was more to do with fearful xenophobia than that, IMHO
Moriarty

I don’t know about UK law, but in the US, safety standards for ships are actually quite a bit stricter than for land structures. So yes, while quarters are undoubtably tight and sparse (like, as someone pointed out, a college dorm or a military barracks), and I can’t speak to whether or not they’re being taken advantage of in other ways, there’s at least no reason to expect they’re not perfectly safe. Which, in fact, appears to be the point, since they apparently feel the need to be *literally* fortified against xenophobic sentiment.

And as has also been pointed out, the comparison to slave ships is rather ridiculous and quite insulting to the memories of those who endured *real* slave ships.
cortana

When I was in the US Navy, back in 1990 or so, I helped refit and lived in one of these (exactly like this one, if not the same one) for two years or so. It wasn’t bad at all. Sure, it wasn’t luxurious, but I had a decent sized room and amount of space, we had a TV and game lounge on the 2nd floor and a cafeteria on the first.

I was attached to an aircraft carrier in the shipyards for overhaul, and this is what we used to house the crew while we couldn’t actually live on the ship. The one we used had been in the Falklands for the war down there, and we bought it from the British and had it towed up to Philadelphia.
Florn

I wouldn’t get too worked up over this until there is more information. The author says:

“Now, admittedly I know nothing about this situation.”

-and-

“I havenâ€™t been able to dig up any interesting info on this thing, I’m still searching though. If anyone out there has some scoop on this particular vessel, or any similar such scenarios, please contact me. I would appreciate it greatly!”

Maybe someone who lives there (the author is in SF) could just go look at the ship and write a proper article?
mattypop17

There’s interesting critical work to be done in tracing the longevity and transformation of material (and ideological too) structures like this: colonial slave fortresses in Ghana, for example, that became prisons for criminals in the 19th century and are now being converted into municipal buildings like courts. What is it, you want to ask, about high walls, thick doors, small windows, easy surveillance, subterranean dungeons, etc that work for both slave fortresses and municipal courts. Or really— what is it about fortresses and prisons and courts that they all take advantage of the same set of structures.

Similarly, what similarities and constants link immigrant housing and criminal housing such that these prison ships/hulks ‘just work’ for both? What does the reuse of these structures say about the different practices. I can imagine lots of carryovers– small, easily isolated rooms, good surveillance, internal and external protection, etc. But even more than that, these ships are so easily… peripheral. And displacable. And ignorable. And transportable.

Criminals and migrants play interesting roles in our societies– those who we aren’t convinced are ‘fit’ for society. It’s easy to think about them in terms of dichotomies like insider/outsider, citizen/foreigner, holder of rights/forfeiter of rights. But events like these ships offer a glimpse of something more complicated– that in both cases, the dichotomies break down, and regulating a national/civic/whatever space is less a matter of keeping some people IN (‘us’) and others (‘them’, the unwanted, the unfit for society) OUT. It may be more a matter of peripheralizing, and displacing–keeping in motion/circulation, so they can’t get a foothold– certain unwanted (but easily exploitable) persons or forms of life. Think of, for example, the US’s informal-formal economy of smuggling people across the US-Mexico border, exploiting them, jailing (‘processing’) them through increasingly corporatized and private structures, then deporting them… repeat. These prison ships bring to mind something similar, with striking imagery.

Sorry for the long (first time) post. This is what I get for reading BB during my morning dissertation freewrite.
Anonymous

@12+@19
A very good picture of how modern state systems came into being in the first place.
Anonymous

applauds @25;
striking imagery, indeed.
especially when you consider how some peripheral states started out as migrant labor recruitment agencies.
bjacques

This particular issue isn’t about illegal labor, though the original article addresses it further down. Regarding that, though, the UK government is obligingly doing away with the us/them dichotomy, by bringing in the national ID card. Until they show ID, everyone’s illegal. If that’s not unity, I don’t know what is.
CapnSoggy

Most of us mariners have spent some time living in small, spartan accommodations while working, it goes with the industry.
I also stayed in some pretty hideous land accommodations when I worked ashore. (A Motel 5 [like a Motel 6, but they'll let anyone stay there] in El Cajon comes to mind.)
The hyperbole in this story detracts from the legitimate issues surrounding imported work forces.
Anonymous

The great thing about hulks, from the point of view of Edwardian gaolers at least, was that you could burn or sink them without much effort. In those days the hulks were often chained together, and barely afloat.

Angstrom, I advise a high “A”, with feeling.
Takuan

think of it as a “labor tanker”.
bascule

I wonder if this was happening in Japan if we’d all be talking about how cool it would be to stay in a high-tech hotel based on a ship.
Anonymous

Wow, so much ignorance, when the whole issue was covered in depth by all the UK media, all of whom have an extensive WWW presence.

This is accommodation, it houses SKILLED WORKERS WHO ARE E.U. CITIZENS, FREELY ENJOYING THEIR RIGHT TO WORK WHEREVER THEY CAN WITHIN THE E.U.

Sorry to shout, but that’s it, end of. The rest is Trades Unions who’ve forgotten what international solidarity or social change actually look like, in favour of protectionism and bleating for nicer capitalists, please. [With a nasty undertone of 'I'm not racist, but...']
Anonymous

It’s a berthing barge…I lived on one for 14 months…They’re not that bad…every cubicle has a window and things are more spacious than on a ship…
Ugly Canuck

Like the Queen Mary, only without the nostalgia.
I’ve always loved living on boats, myself. I spend as much time on them as I can.
Timothy Hutton

#47 – I don’t know why it stopped working, here it is:

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchresult.cfm?word=Slave%20ships&s=3Â¬word=&f=2

Or, you can go to:

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/

and search for “slave ships” (no quotes).
thehoundoflove

Grimsby sounds like a pretty happy place to me.
SednaBoo

So, why do they have prison ships in the first place?
dainel

I thought Britain has had such a shortage of prison spaces that they’d had to resort to early releases in order to ease the over crowding. Why then are they not using those barges for their original purpose, to house prisoners?
mikefinch

@38 FINALLY!

Thank you sir! I have been waiting for that…
Anonymous

@ #19

Link’s not working for me; can you repost?
Ugly Canuck

Yahr,. this be no true Hell ship: for one thing, you can just walk away…
Takuan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukishima_Maru
Ugly Canuck

Sendabo: Less chance of escape if anchored out far enough.
Guards can also rattle prisoners’ nerves by mockingly threatening to sink the boat without unlocking them.
And as these ships were often retired/obsolete Gov. naval vessels, it saves money on prison construction, as well as squeezing value from otherwise useless assets.
If prisoners are temporary, ie POWs, again saves money on not having to build permanent facilities on perhaps precious land for a temporary increase in prisoner #s.
Can in some places they could be used to quickly increase the number of prison spaces: eg. park a fleet in NYC harbor, in event of large scale urban unrest.
They are mobile: this can be useful in many ways.
Of late, used for their secrecy/security and apparently, as a way to get people onto US national territory without actually getting them anywhere near US land.
Moriarty

“So, why do they have prison ships in the first place?”

As ostensibly temporary fixes for prison overcrowding. Or, in the case of Riker’s Island in New York, just because the water is the only place left to expand to.
Anonymous

So what. Ships are inherently secure structures built with solid bulkheads for fire protection and watertight integrity. There are actually rules that mandate the number and type of openings and the materials that are used in bulkheads. Based on the bare information available (and appearance of the image) this appears to be a semi-standard quarters barge. these workers are probably as well housed as any college student or military enlisted man.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/berthing-barge.htm

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/h96000/h96852.jpg
Manooshi

With the horror of Gaza, and now this… slavery and colonialism are alive and well. Capitalism and greed suck nasty ones.

Where’s Chairman Meow when you need him?
zuzu

Needs more Kentucky Fried Movie:

Dr. Klahn: Refuse, found in waterfront bars.
Loo: Shanghaied?
Dr. Klahn: Just lost drunken men who don’t know where they are and no longer care.
Prisoner #1: Where are we?
Prisoner #2: I don’t care!
Loo: And these?
Dr. Klahn: These are lost drunken men who don’t know where they are, but do care! And these are men who know where they are and care, but don’t drink.
Prisoner #3: I don’t know who I am?
Prisoner #4: And I don’t drink!
Dr. Klahn: Guards! Do you care?
Prisoner #5: No.
Dr. Klahn: Put this man in cell #1, and give him a drink.
Guard: What do you drink?
Prisoner #5: I don’t care.
agnot

That was somewhat strained. “Slave ships from the colonial era” did not offer living quarters to the slaves.

Some of the questions in the author’s list could have been answered with maybe a little bother. Some are shrill in tone. One is an obvious and stupid stretch: ” . . . labor barges governed internationally if they operate as a sea-based entity, perhaps domiciled outside the boundaries of formal juridical sovereignty?”

“I mean, I don’t know,” about covers it.

That said, doesn’t sound very nice. Then again, angry mobs sound worse.

When I have traveled for work, not as immigrant labor and not internationally, I wanted my quarters as sparse as possible. I wanted focus. I didn’t want two homes just to have one job.

A good book, a newspaper, a beer, a bed, a radio, some quiet about covered it after a shower.

The one thing I would have liked but never got was private quarters. However, I was making good wages and I wouldn’t have spent any of that myself to upgrade had I the option. Again the idea was to get home with the money, not to feather my temporary nest.

Anyway, hasn’t this very blog espoused the brilliant virtues of shipping containers converted into homes?
Anonymous

A small step up from shipping containers?
imthefuture

@ #2
I agree 100%

as well I would like to say in response to the question in the article that the oversight for the housing probably is very similar to the housing code in the area for land based structures.
CANTFIGHTTHEDITE

I’m not going to say the obvious pun in reference to the potential upsetting of particular views on this issue.

However, is it fair to assume that these immigrant workers have been duped into thinking that they can’t live and/or work elsewhere? True, it seems quite common that an employer takes advantage of potentially naive immigrants (at least with respect to knowing what their rights are), but it isn’t necessarily the case. Although I am unfamiliar with the terms of their employment, whether it be something like a green card or working visa, are there not other options for these people?

I think these types of setups should be investigated thoroughly by the right people so as to ensure that the workers are aware of the choices available to them, and to ensure that fraud has not been committed against them either. The article indicates that there are some obvious violations of safety regulations, and that’s definitely unacceptable. It must be possible for proper regulation by the gov’t with the assistance of NGOs to prevent those kinds of things from overshadowing the potential advantages.

Does anyone know of any long term studies or surveys that have attempted to track immigrant workers in order to determine their success/failure rates? (success = improving their own living conditions; failure = no appreciable change).

I seem to remember Now, or some other show, on PBS following Mexican illegal immigrant workers in an attempt to determine whether any net benefit was produced for the workers. When they asked the workers about this, they seemed to think that it was allowing them to provide better lives for their families back in Mexico, but there was never any attempt to actually measure that (assuming it’s possible in a meaningful way). Perhaps they were having a positive impact, and perhaps the same is possible for these people on the prison barges as well.
Angstrom

My friend has his artist studio in an old converted prison cell.

I’m uncertain what note of shrill panic I should strike over this. Please advise.
agnot

BTW, I remember reading something on Alan Greenspan when he first went to D.C. as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. There was buzz that he rented a only single room. Probably nicer than a converted prison ship, but scarcity was the idea here too.

Something about a book, a favorite snack, focusing on work and not maintaining two homes.

How novel.
mikefinch

Uhhh their called “Hulks” not ships -

Its a prison Hulk, not a prison ship…

Just sayin….
Hirsty

Not to make light of this, but, well, the Brits have a history of converting former prison hulks into livable environments. For example look at us here in Australia. I’m sure they could have done the same for America if they hadn’t been kicked out.
GatoRanch

That boat reminded me of this abandoned derelict house boat I found floating on the Suwannee River, in FL:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gato-ranch/sets/72157608135132353/

Too band someone let it just rot there instead of making something more useful out of it.
v_impressed

There aren’t any angry mobs any more, and they were, actually, “protesters” rather than mobs.

The Portuguese chaps who were staying on the ship are not entirely housed there – some of them disliked it so much that they are staying in local hotels; there’s just under a dozen of them staying in my local boozer, The County Hotel in Brighowgate, Grimsby, and they seem quite happy with that.

There was a proposed second ship due to arrive, but rumour has it that this has been cancelled.

And as for being slums, the UK news reports have stated that there’s a bar, gym, and cinema within the constraints of the ship, so not really a slum, but definitely more like a UK prison then.
techydude

FWIW, the UK’s “anti-foreign labor sentiment is running high” for school teachers too. mate of mine immigrated to London a few years ago, and he along with several of his other fellow ‘foreign’ teachers (who would have been allowed into the country in the first place to fill shortages) have been, one way or another, run out of the school. he’s now working in Dubai…
AirPillo

The nice thing about immigrant labor is that they can’t vote.

Or, at least, that’s a thought that’s not uncommonly on the mind of those who deliberately exploit that labor.
error404

The spin on this seems to imply that “forriners” are being housed in sea going Gulags.

These people are European nationals and have the right to go any where in the EU and work in any position, from Prime Minister to Beggar.

The ANTI foreign labour protests was a bunch of peole who were rightly scared for their jobs but were pandering to that staple of the far right Xenophobia.

Everything would be fine if there weren’t the Portugese/Germans/Jews/Blacks/Catholics/Cromagnons etc etc.

So could I suggest that the use of the phrase “GUESTWORKER” be discontinued, as it sets a premise in some peoples heads that guests have overstayed their welcome.

They are not guests, they are free European citizens.

As for the Prison hulk? Well it would be very very cheap to run and probably those who stay their are trying to save every single penny so don’t care that their digs are so contentious.
Onecos

Looks just like the berthing barges U.S. Navy sailors live on while their ship is being repaired in the shipyard.