About the heroes of remittances and their agency Divsion of Advocation of Migrant Workers’ visit to Tulung Agung, East Java

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Migrant Workers, domestic work and global markets

Leaving Jakarta to Tulung Agung in East Java, where JRK’s Division of Advocation of Migrant Workers is going to implement a program on education and self-organization of migrant workers, I had many buzz words in my mind that try to describe the social reality Indonesian Migrant Workers have to face and which role they play within global markets and national politics; that they are part of ‘global reproduction chains’ and play a role as ‘heroes of remittances’. Coming from a country where more and more households receive (illegalized) migrant workers I now had the chance to learn about 'the other side of the coin', visiting one of the regions in East Java, from which the third biggest number of workers – most of them female - leave the country to work abroad in households, restaurants, in fabrics, markets and on plantations. A great part of the migrant workers leaving East Java works as domestic workers.

In Germany, the country I come from, many middle class families' lifestyle is now made possible by women from other countries who now do part of 'care work' – domestic work, the bringing up of children and caring for the elderly of our society. (Middle class) German men as well as women are freed from this work in order to fully enter the labour market and get an employment of what many of them define as 'real' work. This new lifestyle of middle class families is on one hand due to the struggle of many feminists for emancipation in society whose role used to be clearly defined as housewifes. On the other hand this lifestyle expresses the re-organisation of neoliberal societies in which state subsidies in the social sector are decreasing and in which care work is increasingly organized along a market scheme. Supposing that in the countries which receive Indonesian workers this context of demand of 'care workers' is similar, I got interested in learning why Indonesian Migrant Workers leave their countries to find work, what they experience while being abroad, what their families expect and which ways they find to struggle against the manifold forms of exploitation they have to face. My knowledge about the institutionalised structure of exploitation that Indonesian Migrant Workers experience - 1) before they leave to work in Malaysia, Hongkong, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and the Middle East, 2) while they are working abroad and 3)when they come back to Indonesia - is feeded by stories that reach the media, mailing lists and NGOs in Jakarta. Experiencing everyday life in Indonesia gives these stories another face. The wish to live and work in countries that are considered as prosperous or rich seems to be quite present. Often I am asked: ‘Can I join you to your country and become your maid?’ or ‘What do I have to do to work abroad?’ The visit to Tulung Agung and the chance to talk to former migrant workers and peasants broadened my view in a special way, that is in terms of Indonesian migrant workers’ agency. This is in fact striking because most of the news about migrant workes published in the media shows victims of violence. Moreover, the perception of migrant workers as mainly victims and not political subjects or activists is also reflected within the movement that advocates migrant workers’ rights. In the political architecture – in the nower days called ‘global governance’ - in fact NGOs are set in place to represent migrant workers’ interests. Is this even part of a system of controlling global migration flows not to have migrant workers being agents of their interests?


Gender roles and agency
In Tulung Agung we had the chance to meet Siti who is the coordinator of a group of former migrant workers. Siti already left three times to work in Taiwanese households. The experiences she gained abroad were mixed ones. In the eyes of her family and neighbours in her home village her first experiences make her a ‘successful’ migrant worker. During her first stay of three years in Taiwan she would eventually send money back home after the Indonesian private agent - a so called ‘migrant worker supplier’ - that claims to take care of papers, places employers and provide trainings, cut six months of Siti’s salary. Another time she felt insecure living alone with her male employer and chose to leave. During her last stay her employer died - according to her contract she couldn’t be with another employer and had to go back. These experiences would make Siti’s stay abroad be seen as a ‘failure’ because she would not be able to fulfil her family’s expectations of sending home money in order to to be able to live a descent life – by building up a house, buying a motorcycle and so on.
Talking about migrant workers’ problems we usually consider the countries they are going to, the agencies that are sending them and the bureaucratic apparatus they have to deal with. But there’s one more dimension. As Siti tells us many of the problems she and her friends deal with are rooted at home. While being abroad their husbands marry another wife, and this can mean social exclusion, personal sorrow and the suffering of children. In fact, as we are told, the divorce rate in Tulung Agung is tremendously high with 500 couples divorcing in a month.

Why do so many people in Tulung Agung over and over decide to leave to work abroad? In recent years, more than 4.000 people have been documented to leave the district counting around one million inhabitants to work abroad. “Life here is difficult whereas abroad we get a full salary. The first thing they spent their salary on is building a house”. As she reports, many Migrant Workers stay dependent on the migration process since life abroad offers something which in Tulung Agung is rare or - as in of the big cities - precarious: a work place.
Siti and her friends who all have worked abroad gathered and built up a small scale production business. They share their experiences with other young women who are trained in language and ‘domestic work’ by the agencies they have chosen to broker a job for them while waiting for the day they will take an airplane and begin their temporary life abroad. They exchange experiences about restricted life abroad with limited time and space to meet and talk to other migrant workers. Abroad, the moment to bring the garbage away could be one of these valuable moments to share common feelings and experiences with other Indonesian domestic workers who work in the neighbours’ house.

We‘re learning that men and women in Tulung Agung know the gender roles that are formed within society quite well: Who sits in the cafés drinking coffee and smoking clove cigarettes and who does not, who washes the laundry and who doesn’t. The societies in the demanding countries profit of these well known gender roles including the performance of gender based labour division. As Siti affirms, domestic work is not work, and while not being seen as work it also doesn’t have to be paid equal as ‘real work’ although domestic work just might be as hard. We’re also learning that gender roles can be newly defined. It’s Siti and her friends who reject these fixed roles while establishing new rules of the labour division at home or being present in the public demanding for the inclusion of migrant workers needs in the local budget planning. There has not been one program financed that supports Migrant Workers’ needs in Tulung Agung although the district profits of the remittances that are sent which are one of the main sources of devices excelling most of Tulung Agung’s export products’ value.

Alternatives
Tulung Agung is a town in the countryside and most of the migrant workers’ families are peasants. They have to deal with the dependency on the market and many of them live in poverty. We learn that not all of them are that much dependant as we have the chance to visit Winong, a village in the mountains working on dry land. We get to know the members of ‘Sumber Rezeki’, a group of peasants who have built up a cooperative which carries out research on their consumption needs. Furthermore the cooperative produces for their daily needs collectively, therewith subtending an alternative to the consumerism which in Tulung Agung is as present as in other Eastern Javanese villages. At first glance this initiative might not have a direct relation with the urgent problems Indonesian migrant workers’ are facing and that the media reports about. But in fact this example of self-organization and independence should make us think about the structural reality that marks the everyday life of going-to be and ex-migrant workers and their families. Thus, the initiative of the peasants in Winong could be the start of an alternative making the decision of going to work abroad not so much dependent on the requirement to fulfil one’s family’s needs.

What exactly is the ‘new face’ of the migrant workers issue that I have got to known? It is their struggle, the fact that they are not only the victims as they are presented in the media discourse. That they define their roles anew and that they create alternatives. There is need of a broader space in which migrant workers can organize and articulate their demands and alternatives so their voices are heard.

Jakarta, Mai/Juni 2009

Samia Dinkelaker