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Volume 83 – No. 1

Labour Recruitment, Circuits of Capital and Gendered Mobility: Reconceptualizing the Indonesian Migration Industry

Johan Lindquist

DOI: 10.5509/2010831115

  • English Abstract
  • French Abstract

 

During the last decade there has been a marked shift in the structure of migration from Indonesia with the deregulation of the transnational labour recruitment market after the fall of Suharto and a broader attempt across the region to regulate migrant flows to and from receiving countries in the wake of the Asian economic crisis. In this process, hundreds of Indonesian labour recruitment agencies have come to function as brokers in an increasingly government-regulated economy that sends documented migrants to countries such as Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. Based primarily on fieldwork on the island of Lombok, one of the major migrant-sending areas in Indonesia, the article considers the gendered aspects of this state-market relationship by focusing ethnographic attention on the initial stages of recruitment, as informal labour brokers deliver migrants to formal agencies. Critically, the article describes how capital increasingly flows “down” towards female migrants and “up” from male migrants-i.e., men must go into debt while women do not pay (or are even offered money) to travel abroad-thus highlighting the gendered dimensions of the current economy of transnational migration. More generally, the article argues for a renewed focus on the migration industry as a way of reconceptualizing Indonesian transnational migration in the context of contemporary forms of globalization.

Recrutement de la main-d’oeuvre, circulation de capitaux et mobilité basée sur l’identité sexuelle: repenser l’industrie de la migration indonésienne

Au cours de la dernière décennie, il y a eu un changement notable dans la structure de la migration en provenance d’Indonésie, dû à la dérégulation du marché de recrutement de la main-d’oeuvre transnationale à la chute de Suharto, et une tentative plus marquante à travers la région à réglementer l’afflux migratoire de part et d’autre des pays d’accueil à la veille de la crise économique asiatique. En conséquence, des centaines d’agences de recrutement de la main-d’oeuvre se sont transformées en agents de change au sein d’une économie de plus en plus contrôlée par l’état qui envoyait des travailleurs avec papiers en règle dans des pays, tels que la Malaisie et l’Arabie Saoudite. Basé principalement sur la recherche de terrain sur l’ile de Lombok, l’un des endroits le plus important de migrants expédiés vers ces pays, cet article examine l’importance de l’identité sexuelle et de sa correlation entre l’état et le marché. Celui-ci porte donc un regard ethnographique sur les étapes initiales de recruitement, alors que les agents de change de main-d’oeuvre informels fournissent des travailleurs migrants aux agences officielles. Il décrit essentiellement comment les capitaux s’écoulent de plus en plus ‘vers le bas’, au bénéfice des femmes migrantes et ‘vers le haut’, au détriment des hommes migrants; à savoir que les hommes se voient forcés à s’endetter alors que les femmes ne paient rien, et ces dernières reçoivent parfois même une somme d’argent pour se rendre à l’étranger. Une telle pratique fait ressortir l’étendue du problème basé sur la différence des sexes et ce que celui-ci représente dans l’économie actuelle de la migration transnationale. Dans l’ensemble, l’argument de cet article plaide pour un centre d’intérêt renoué envers l’industrie de la migration comme instrument pour repenser la migration transnationale indonésienne dans le contexte des structures actuelles de la mondialisation.

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An International Review of Asia and the Pacific

School of Public Policy and Global Affairs

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