In the wake of the wave: globalization,networks, and the experiences of transmigrant seafarers in northern Germany

Abstract In this article we highlight the plight of workers trapped at the interface between the national and the global: able to participate in global labour markets but marginalized within nation‐states and excluded from local communities. We employ ethnographic field work to explore the experiences of transmigrant seafarers who travelled to northern Germany between the 1960s and 1980s in search of work aboard German flagged vessels. We describe how the economic benefits associated with an international labour market for seafarers initially attracted and benefited them but then left them stranded as the labour market changed and became globalized. In the article we draw on Massey's concept of power‐geometry to interpret the dual processes of globalization and exclusion.