This article is about the tragic journeys and livelihood insecurities of coastal fi sherfolk of India and Sri Lanka, who are arrested and jailed by these countries for having entered each other's arenas. These fi sherfolk are victims of defi ned and undefi ned boundaries in the seas, and increasing confl icts over renewable resources. The article questions the cartographic and border anxieties of these countries, which come into fundamental contradiction with the lives, livelihoods and desires of the majority of coastal fi sherfolk, who are short-term migratory subjects on an everyday basis. They are constantly subjected to categories such as insider and outsider, safety and danger, domestic and foreign, self and other. At the same time, the article reveals how these fi shing communities themselves mark an ambiguous space, located as they are on the margins of the two countries, thereby providing emancipatory possibilities that can emerge from the spatial freedoms which they have practised. However, there are also some contradictory voices. Some of these fi sherfolk are articulating the very same language which is used to suppress them. In attempting to highlight these complexities, the article widens our defi nitions of migrations, diasporas, and transnational subjects.