scholarly journals Gender Discourses in Positioning Indonesian Female Migrant Workers

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 237
Author(s):  
Wening Udasmoro ◽  
Setiadi Setiadi

Indonesian female migrant workers are a group that has over time experienced physical, psychological, and verbal violence in their jobs in foreign countries. The story presented of the struggles of this subordinated group of women remains one-sided and incomplete. The untold part of the story are the experiences they have encountered domestically from within their own country, Indonesia. This article argues that the subordinated position of Indonesian female migrant workers is initially created and strongly reinforced through the discrimination they face within specific social settings in the Indonesian context. One such social setting is at Indonesian international airports. Indonesian international airports are where the female migrant workers are positioned as “others”; rules put in place and their enforcement by airport officials and other passengers show the exclusion of female migrant workers from Indonesian society. Such positioning is an act of discrimination, exploitation, and exercise of power. This study examines what discourses are used in positioning these Indonesian female migrant workers in Soekarno Hatta International Airport, Jakarta. The authors argue, using research data and gender theories, that the positioning of Indonesian female migrant workers is a discursive act. It is committed by various individuals, particularly those (in the power system) that have the position of “we” and “us”, to preserve the social classes, which have become normalized throughout Indonesian history. The research found that the discrimination against female migrant workers is strongly connected to their social class. Although they have financial capital, their position is considered lower than other people in the airport, which creates multiple forms of discrimination, from material to symbolic discrimination and stereotypes.

Author(s):  
Tyas Retno Wulan ◽  
Lala M. Kolopaking ◽  
Ekawati Sri Wahyuni ◽  
Irwan Abdullah

Social remittances (ideas, system practice, and social capital flow from the receiving country to the home country) of Indonesian female migrant workers (BMP) in Hong Kong appeared better and more complete than other BMP in other countries like Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, or Singapore.  Based on that research, we are encouraged to do extensive research in order to identify factors  that push  BMP’s social remittances development  in Hong Kong, to identify kinds of social remmitances they receive  and to understand on how far their social remittances become a medium to empower them and their society.  This study is done in qualitative method that uses an in-depth interview technique and FGD.  Subjects of study are BMP, the government (Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration and BNP2TKI), NGOs, migrant workers’ organization and researchers of BMP. The study done in Cianjur (West Java), Wonosobo and Banyumas (Central Java) and Hong Kong indicates that during their migration process, female migrant workers not only have economical remittance that can be used for productive activities, but also social remittances.  The social remittances are in the form practical knowledge such as language skill and nursery; knowledge on health, financial management; ethical work; the mindset changing and networking. The study  indicate that female migrant workers are extraordinary women more than just an ex-helper.  Their migration has put them into a position as an agent of development in society.Key words: Indonesians  female migrant workers, social remmitances, empowerment


1997 ◽  
Vol 6 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 295-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet W. Salaff

Borrowing concepts from the study of work and occupations as well as gender studies, this paper considers the social organization of migration as gendered work. It explores women's and men's contribution to two aspects of family resources needed to migrate: (a) jobs and the non-market exchanges involved in obtaining work, and (b) the support of kin. The data come from a study of 30 emigrant and non-emigrant families representing three social classes in Hong Kong. We find their “migration work” varies by social class and gender. Since the working class families depend on kin to get resources to emigrate, their “migration work” involves maintaining these kin ties, mainly in the job area. The lower middle class proffer advice to kin, and they view kin as an information source on topics including migration. For the affluent, middle-class who negotiate independently to emigrate, their “migration work” involves linking colleagues to the family.


2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 780-808 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amrita Pande

This article examines new nodes of migrants' desire to disrupt the heteronormative focus on married mothers in the literature on migration and gender and the reification of normative notions of both gender and sexuality. It demonstrates that in the presence of intense raced and gendered surveillance of both private and public spaces in Lebanon, migrant domestic workers (MDWs) use public “counter‐spaces” to forge intimate and sexual ties. It offers the frame of intimate counter‐spaces to understand the wider politics of resistance mobilized by MDWs in their everyday lives. Intimate counter‐spaces complicate debates around public/private, sacred/sexual, and confront state restrictions on migrant workers' sexuality. Despite their subversive power, such spaces can also reinforce the hypersexualization of the female migrant and highlight the paradoxical effects of everyday subversive practices used by migrant workers, not just in Middle East and Asia, but also across the world.


The purpose of this study was to sociologically analyze the use of social media in female migrant workers in the development of social entrepreneurship. The study used a qualitative approach with a mixed method. Data was taken using in-depth interviews, observations, FGDs, and full survey enumerators. This study shows that the more frequent the intensity of migrating abroad, the higher the income (economic remittances) and social remittances (knowledge and experience) will be. Van Dijk (2006) stated that digital social media is able to penetrate the social structures that exist in society. The results of this study reveal the same phenomenon as Van Dijk's theory, female migrant workers who were previously considered a marginal group was able to create social networks through social media for the development of social entrepreneurship. The results of this study revealed a different phenomenon from the theory from Massey (1990) which stated that international migration will take place continuously (cumulative causation). This was because there have been developments of social entrepreneurship supported by social media, providing alternative jobs in the workers' hometowns.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-91
Author(s):  
Hiqma Nur Agustina

The story of Indonesian Migrant Workers or Tenaga Kerja Indonesia (TKI) is a blurred portrait of Indonesian citizens' absence in their own country, presented in Burung-burung Migran by Miranda Harlan. This study aims to expose gender inequality, the dominance of structural oppression systems, and poor treatment of woman migrant workers. They struggle to get out of poverty, unemployed, unskilled, and uneducated. The determination and willingness to change destiny is not in line with the reality that often does not side with them. This study uses a qualitative method, narrative strategies about narrator, and focalizations, and gender concepts. The results showed that the focalization and narrator type in the text are internal focalisator and homodiegetic narrator. The focalisator also shows unequal gender relations, physical and verbal violence, which tends to repress Indonesian woman migrant workers. The writer's narrative strategy is in the form of using words, phrases, and sentences that appropriately reflect the repression of female migrant workers.


2003 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 99-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pei-Chia Lan

This paper looks at the incorporation and marginalization of female migrant domestic workers in Taiwan. The first part sketches the political geography of foreign workers by examining how the government regulates, marginalizes, and disciplines foreign contract workers. The second part portrays the social geography of migrant domestic workers in Taiwan by discussing how they establish multiple forms of communities and networks. I also compare Filipina and Indonesian migrant domestic workers in terms of how they are discursively constructed by employment agencies and how they gather in different spatial patterns on Sundays.


Author(s):  
Arif Rofiuddin ◽  
Ida Ruwaida

Abstract: This study aims to determine the empowerment carried out by the community in increasing the economic and social capacity of former female migrant workers. The research design used was descriptive qualitative. The research instruments included interview guides, observation guidelines and documentation. The results showed that the empowerment carried out by the community in increasing economic capacity had progressed and increased compared to before. The community here has social capital in the form of a social network in the social sphere to increase economic assets for former female migrant workers. Social capital itself has the power to capitalize social relations, including values, social networks and trust to obtain economic and social benefits.Abstrak:Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui  pemberdayaan yang dilakukan komunitas dalam meningkatkan kemampuan ekonomi dan social para mantan buruh migran perempuan. Desain penelitian yang digunakan adalah deskriptif kualitatif.Instrumen penelitian meliputi pedoman wawancara, pedoman observasi dan dokumentasi.Hasil penelitian menunjukan pemberdayaan yang dilakukan oleh komunitas dalam meningkatkan kemampuan ekonomi mengalami kemajuan dan peningkatan dibandingkan sebelumnya. Komunitas disini  memiliki modal sosial yang  berupa jaringan  social dalam lingkup social untuk  menaikan asset ekonomi bagi para mantan buruh migran perempuan. Modal social sendiri memiliki kekuatan dalam mengkapitalisasiakn relasi-relasi social, mencakup nilai-norma, jaringan social dan kepercayaan untuk memperoleh keuntungan ekonomi dan social.


Populasi ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
Ridwan Wahyudi

The objective of this study is threefold. First, it uses fieldwork to explore the illegal journey of the Indonesian undocumented migrant workers, including all processes and interactions. Secondly, it identifies the substantive factors behind illegal influx into Malaysia. Thirdly, it draws out the implications from the illegal journey undertaken by them to Malaysia. This qualitative study applies the grounded theory approach. The result of this study shows that social capital within their network expands through various channels, particularly friendship, brotherhood, neighborhood, community and ethnic grouping. It also permeates strongly beyond government authority and regulation. They have constructed social classes among themselves. However, they have also been less able to get the social access because the absence of official documents deprives their human rights, and they are also blamed for social ills. Therefore, the regulation for both countries must recognize the rights, improvement governance, strengthen the integrity and curb corruption.


Author(s):  
Joshua H. Howard

The ability of foreign enterprises to establish factories in China after the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 accelerated industrialization and as a consequence proletarianization, by which numerous workers without resources entered a class relationship by selling their labor power to survive. It was, however, during the economic boom years of World War I and its aftermath and during the New Culture Movement with the introduction of socialism that new urban social forces—the bourgeoisie and working class—emerged and radical intellectuals applied the concept of social class to their analysis of society and revolution. The increasingly politicized and often-militant quality of the labor movement between 1919 and 1927 led Jean Chesneaux (Chesneaux 1968, cited under Class Formation and the Labor Movement) to argue, in Marxist terms, that a class-conscious proletariat under the ideological guidance of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had arisen in reaction to the forces of imperialist oppression and exploitation. Although most social historians of the republican era concur that social classes in their objective form had emerged by the 1920s, they disagree on whether workers constituted a subjective “class for itself.” Scholars influenced by the new labor history school, with its emphasis on community and culture, find the complexity of the social composition and social dynamics of the working class to have obstructed the process of class formation. Despite positing workers’ own historical agency, these scholars underscore how segmented labor markets, workers’ particularistic ties and strong sense of regional identity, and gender divisions impeded class consciousness. Consequently, questions over workers’ politics and the nature of the labor movement have become controversial. Elizabeth J. Perry (Perry 1993, cited under Class Formation and the Labor Movement) interprets labor divisions based on skill, provenance, and gender as encouraging rather than debilitating labor activism. Other studies emphasize how anti-imperialism fueled the 1920s labor movement, with class taking a subservient role to nationalism. In a related issue, the relationship between workers and the CCP has sparked debate. Whereas Chesneaux emphasized that a class-conscious proletariat served as the social basis for the Communist revolution, others have challenged the CCP’s ideological supremacy and leadership over the labor movement and have focused on contradictions between Communists (largely drawn from the intelligentsia) and workers. Although these studies focus on Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Canton from 1919 to 1927, scholarship on Chongqing’s class formation during the 1940s analyzes both objective and subjective features of social class and contributes to an ongoing debate about the origins of the post-1949 work unit (danwei单位) system.


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