Contracts via comics: Migrant workers and Thai fishing vessel employment contract

This chapter examines a particular type of comics that use a practice designed to overcome language barriers, namely comic contracts that have been created for Myanmar and Cambodian migrants who work in the Thai fishing industry. The term “comic contract” refers to legally binding contracts where the parties in the contract are represented as characters and where the contract terms are communicated mainly visually (Haapio et al. 2016, 376–377). Comic contracts represent the contents of the contract with illustrations and other visual means and employ plain language in combination with the illustrations so that the document can be understood by people with low literacy or foreign-language skills. In other words, comic contracts aim to improve vulnerable people’s access to information, or, in legal terms, one’s access to justice. Furthermore, the visuality of a comic contract invites people to engage with the information and helps readers understand and remember its contents (Kalliomaa-Puha et al. 2023).