How does place make a difference to the actual work of global circulation, and how does that work, entailing coordination, skill, and complex mutual actions, enrol hitherto overlooked modes of power and agency? Geographers have sought to recentre labour in analyses of global production and circulation. However, labour processes and questions of worker agency are often approached through a dynamic of employer control vs. employee resistance. This risks rigidifying a dualism that limits empirical and political prospects. Instead, we draw to the surface relations between groups of workers that unfurl on the job—in transverse exercises of agency emanating from lived experiences of labouring in place to ensure circulation occurs through place. To illustrate, we take to the water with maritime workers (marine pilots, tug operators and liners) and explain how the circulation of ships is coordinated.
Seaports are not abstract nodes in global value chains but idiosyncratic places experiencing oceanic extremes and disruption risks requiring intra-workforce interaction and collaboration across roles, occupational categories, and chains of command. Coordination problems are inherent to ports as gateway places and chokepoints for global circulation. To show how the lateral forces of the sea make a difference to physical circulation, we emphasise three spatio-temporal features of an on-water, place-based labour process: 1) choreographic coordination, 2) situational awareness, and 3) combined multi-dimensional skills. Navigating a labour process conditioned by the sea and refining skills that iterate with environmental conditions, port workers collaborate to manage risks and maintain circulation. In so doing, they preside over risk and circulation. We argue for transverse expressions of agency to feature more prominently across the diverse, place-based, and interconnected labour required to achieve safe and reliable circulation.