Voices of Indonesian Migrant Workers at Home and Abroad

In this paper I discuss interviews conducted with Indonesian village women, concerning their decisions to sojourn abroad for work. The women detail three factors that they believe compel them to seek work abroad: lack of job opportunities, lack of educational and training opportunities and personal desire to experience life outside the confines of family and village life. They also raise the issue of government biases in educational and vocational planning that negatively affects villagers’ abilities to find employment within Indonesia, and particularly within rural environments.

I also interviewed community support workers who mention political patronage as a factor in allocating funds for educational and training projects. Recent studies indicate that the Indonesian government has, for many years, prioritized formal education at the public-school level in urban centers and larger provincial towns, but that poorer rural villages lack access to similar opportunities. Many Indonesian women working in laboring positions abroad emanate from these poorer villages.

Participant recommendations include delinking village educational funding from political patronage, and allocating more funds to remote villages, not only in terms of building more primary and secondary schools but also in terms of providing long-term vocational training, particularly for young adults, which, in combination with increased employment opportunities, may decrease the necessity to migrate.

Data was collected through interviews and written journals in Indonesia and Hong Kong between 2005 and 2017.