For each of the three hypotheses around labor mobility through fishing investigated in this Chapter, the quantitative results for both the 2009-11 period and longer career histories proved more weakly compelling than the qualitative results, from which a much deeper and richer story of change over time could be surmised. Taken together I argue that they show “meta- inferences” (Creswell and Plano Clark 2011: 213) about why people leave fishing and
differential abilities to do so. I found overall evidence for (a) the influence of differential asset bases in the form of social connections, wealth and education, (b) the existence of a mild “poverty trap” in exiting fishing, and (c) no effect of job satisfaction on keeping individuals in fishing.
What can be said about the “approximate truth” of these inferences, or in other words, the internal validity of gathered data (Angelsen et al. 2011, Creswell and Plano Clark 2011)?
Various means of validation are often used for mixed methods data (Creswell and Plano Clark 2011) and here include triangulation of conclusions with broader scholarship on Galápagos society, member checking of certain conclusions with fishermen around town in casual conversation, and a lack of divergence between quantitative and qualitative analytic results. Consistency in interviewing and analytical personnel (as the main author was present at 100% of interviews and surveys) also helps contribute to internal validity by eliminating interviewer bias possible across more than one person (Fowler 2002).
In terms of causality, although I found that asset bases (including metrics of relative poverty) did differ among San Cristobal fishers fishing at different levels over time, no causal inferences can be made with quantitative data alone since survey data does not reveal whether
measured asset bases were the cause or the consequence of labor movement decisions around fishing over the years.
Broadly, the richer implications given by qualitative and contextual data than statistical analyses of asset bases aligns with livelihoods work that has long noted that access to resources and options can be the most critical “asset” in shaping livelihood strategies (Bebbington 1999). The influence of various factors on access to livelihood pathways is discussed in further detail below in Discussion Section B.
More specifically, qualitative narratives based on project interviews as well as broader scholarship on Galápagos society give meaning to weak quantitative results in terms of both the insignificance of certain factors named as important by those recently moving out of fishing, and the weak significance of others. For instance social relations were not found to be statistically significant, even though they were named as significant for those who happened to move out of fishing recently. However, social relations permeate all dimensions of life in the Galápagos and Ecuador in complex ways (Ospina 2006), helping to explain how the metric assessed (whether an individual had friends or family working in politics or government institutions) turned out to be consistent across interviewees whether they switched jobs or not. It is far more difficult to measure who among those working in institutions actually exerts influence over hiring decisions in any given year, and in the end was beyond the ability of interviews to ascertain. The construct validity, or appropriateness of the chosen metric, was thus weak (Angelesen et al. 2011).
However past work on the political nature of the Galápagos labor market (e.g., Ospina 2006) and labor markets in general (e.g., Breman 1978a & b) substantiate the importance of social
connections in obtaining jobs that some interviewees noted.
ownership and education which were only weakly significant in bivariate statistical comparisons, but also appear critical over time. It was generally agreed by managers, scientists, and fishers interviewed that boat owners on the whole earned more profits from fishing than fishers who did not own boats, helping make sense of why part-time fishers were majority boat owners, if in fact the higher profits likely help many leave fishing by investing in other opportunities as surmised here. However the wildly variable substitutability of fishing vessels over time may help explain why boat ownership was not sufficient for leaving fishing for all who desired to do so (see discussion in Section B1 below). Education was also agreed by all as key to helping find jobs more quickly, by fishers both with and without tertiary degrees.
My arguments that relative inequality, if not poverty, is a large part of the answer to why some individuals have been better able to maintain their standards of living through alternate job opportunities are also in agreement with past scholarship on inequalities in Galápagos society. Although tourism revenues make the Galápagos one of the wealthiest provinces in Ecuador, the rising tide of prosperity has not lifted all boats but rather engendered a “bitter social mobility” among fishers and other residents (Ospina 2006).
Finally, the quantitative results around disproving the job satisfaction hypothesis are more robust than those around differential asset bases and relative poverty because they test and refute a major element of this theory, namely that individuals who have left fishing did not have lower job satisfaction than those who remain. Pollnac and Poggie (1988: 897) hypothesized, “…those who are highly dissatisfied probably leave the occupation as soon as an alternative is available, leaving behind those who are less dissatisfied.” The ability to survey over active and former fishers represents a significant improvement over past studies where only active fishers were included and given hypothetical questions about what would make them leave. Here
inactive fishers can be described as synonymous with former fishers given a lack of preference and plans to return to fishing for all except for 2 individuals (Table 2.4, Chapter 2).