Gender and kinship relations of Indonesian domestic workers

Gender and kinship relations of Indonesian domestic workers

By Karen Lee

Over the summer, I conducted fieldwork in a village in rural East Java, Indonesia, as part of the Summer Ethnography Project. My initial aim was to study the gender and kinship relations of domestic workers who have returned home. Irene, my previous domestic worker, stayed with my family for over 10 years, and has returned to this village not too long ago. We shall refer to it as Desa; I mainly interacted with around 30 people, of its approximately 200 residents; my same-street neighbours. Irene’s family welcomed me into their household.

Desa follows no specific marriage patterns: both patrilocal and matrilocal arrangements are in use. If the wife’s family has available land or can accommodate the couple into the family house, the couple may live matrilocally. Conversely, if the husband’s family is relatively more well- off, the couple may decide to live patrilocally. Most of the elders are rice farmers, the regional specialty crop. Many younger women spend several years of their life abroad, as domestic workers, before returning and retiring into domestic life. Some men work abroad as construction workers, while others take jobs locally such as security guards in factories and motorcycle taxi drivers. Those who have gone to university have the option to open their own shop or work in a bank, but salary is minimal. As Irene has often mentioned to me, the money they earn in East Java is enough to sustain their daily living, and if nothing else they will always have rice to eat, but ambitions such as having a grand wedding ceremony, building a new house, or buying a new vehicle would require the wife to work abroad. If she goes to Hong Kong, she can save up enough to build a house in 2 years (monthly salary for domestic workers in Hong Kong now is around 500GBP). On the other hand, even if men do work abroad, they earn far less than their women counterparts, have to pay in advance and have to be checked more rigorously to get a visa. Therefore, many women work abroad while men remain at home. As Hoang et al. (2012: 737) mentioned in their findings, the nucleation of family has made parental figures the predominant child-carers. During my stay in Indonesia, I have often observed fathers taking care of their children without relying too much on their extended family in the absence of the mother.

My research question stems from the assumption that East Java, with its strong Islamic presence, is bound to speak out against women’s rising economic status. Not to mention that the Indonesian state emphasizes the ideal of men as ‘breadwinners’ and women as ‘homemakers’ (Silvey, 2006). As Elmhirst (2007: 231) succinctly summarized, women are valued as “being able to stay at home, avoid work in the fields and keep their skins pale, whilst men enter the world of work, embrace expansive spatial horizons”. How are these domestic workers going to reintegrate back into their community after spending a long time away from their families? Constable’s (1999: 224) analysis may still ring true after nearly two decades: “migration has provided (domestic workers) with new experiences, desires, options, and visions but with no ready formulas for successfully transplanting them”.

After a month in East Java, I may have found some preliminary answers. Firstly, my original use of the word ‘reintegration’ is problematic, as migration is not a one-off event to these Indonesian women; they may leave home as early as they finish high school, and work to support their maternal family. Once they have found a marriage prospect they may return to marry. By the end of the couple’s marriage ceremony they may have already spent all their money. Only the skeleton of their new house has been built; the walls have not been painted, the tiles not laid out. The wife may stay at home to try and conceive, but by the time the baby comes, new expenses are due. They have to start saving for their child’s education, not to mention they have to buy him or her a motorcycle so that the child can travel through rugged roads. The wife would then go abroad again to earn more money. Other arrangements aside, migration is often continuous. Women go abroad, they save, they spend, and they go abroad again. “Reintegration” is therefore a problematic concept. Their time at home is more a vacation from work. After working consecutively to look after someone else’s family for 6 days, or even 7 days straight a week, they return home to take care of their own families; and if their family is grateful, they will be taken care of.

In effect, these domestic workers’ family may not always be grateful for their sacrifices. For Irene, workers resemble “farm animals” at the mercy of their masters. For instance, Adiratna’s husband, who lives across the street, cheated on her while she was away in Hong Kong. His justification being that he was using his own money, not the funds his wife remitted to him. Considering that his income was derivant from the motorcycle his wife bought, his defence did not resonate well with me. Another girl, Citra, lived abroad for years, saving enough for a house, a motorcycle, and a marriage; she even gave birth to two boys. Yet her mother wished and managed to push her back to work, forcing a divorce between Citra and her husband. Such strained Citra’s mental health, according to Irene.

This may seem as a tragic description of the life of the domestic workers. However, we should also account Javanese relative individualism: Irene’s sister-in-law, Eka, decided to stay in Indonesia even though her family would have welcomed extra income. She was afraid of being alone. Such behavior is also evident in their child rearing practice: Dewi, a neighbour of ours, did not attempt to persuade her son when he decided at the last minute that he would not go onstage to perform during Scout’s Day, ruining his classmates’ chance to perform too. Moreover there are also multiple stories of them wasting their income away, when they are abroad, or disobeying the Quran through same-sex relationships. As Dolan (2002) has emphasized, people’s lived expectations may not necessarily coincide with their lived experiences. In truth, I would like to suggest that Javanese are a much freer people than I have originally presumed. Whether or not they follow the Islamic tenants is entirely up to them.

Irene’s sister-in-law, Eka, decided to stay in Indonesia even though her family would have welcomed extra income. She was afraid of being alone. This Javanese relative individualism is also evident in their child rearing practice: Dewi, a neighbour of ours, did not attempt to persuade her son when he decided at the last minute that he would not go onstage to perform during Scout’s Day, ruining his classmates’ chance to perform too.

My hypothesis is that there is no effective sanctioning mechanism even if people do not conform to expectations of good human beings. Since Desa is located 5 hours away from Surybaya, the administrative capital, state presence is minimal. The most people can do is gossip. Routine television shows broadcast the horrors that would be bestowed upon them should they act inappropriately; how their corpse will smell, ooze terrible fluids, and not be able to be laid down to rest in the grave. Religion acts as one of the more effective sanctioning mechanisms. Since children go to the mosque at a very young age and attend religious gatherings regularly, the Islamic idea has been instilled in all villagers’ mind. Even if they sway a little, religion can appeal to their good graces again. Through religious chanting, Adiratna’s husband ceased his adultery. Therefore, I may have been mistaken in assuming religion as a starting point of my research. It is more of a solution than the premise of the situation.

I am aware that my analysis is preliminary. After all, I have only spent a month in the field and I am confident there is much more to unveil. Since I could not speak fluent Indonesian, my main interlocutors were the domestic workers who have worked abroad and thus could speak English, Cantonese, or Mandarin. An analysis from the men’s perspective would have been beneficial.

I have thus proposed that domestic workers do not “reintegrate” back into their home community. The Javanese that I observed seemed to be free-spirited, as Desa lacks an effective sanctioning mechanism against deviance. Religion is one of the more effective mechanisms and encourages people to act properly according to Javanese imagination, but not an absolute guiding principle of the people. After all, as Hoang and Yeoh (2011: 114) have said “in the era of migration and family survival, ‘doing family’ may thus become more important than ‘doing gender’”. Conducting fieldwork presents an excellent opportunity for me to take note of the subtleties of a seemingly homogenous culture.

References

Constable, N. (1999). “At home but not at home: Filipina narratives of ambivalent returns”, Cultural Anthropology, 14 (2): 203-228.
Dolan, C. (2002). “Collapsing Masculinities and Weak States - A Case Study of Northern Uganda”, Masculinities matter!: Men, Gender, and Development, Cleaver F. eds. New York: Zed Books.

Elmhirst, R. (2007). “Tigers and gangsters: masculinities and feminised migration in Indonesia”, Population, Space and Time, 13 (3): 225-238.
Hoang, L. & Yeoh, B. (2011). “Breadwinning wives and ‘left-behind’ husbands: men and masculinities in the Vietnamese transnational family”, Gender and Society, 25 (6): 717- 739.

Hoang, L., Yeoh, B., & Wattie, A. (2012). “Transnational labour migration and the politics of care in the Southeast Asian family”, Geoforum, 43 (4): 733-740.
Silvey, R. (2006). “Consuming the transnational family: Indonesian migrant domestic workers to Saudi Arabia”, Global Networks, 6(1): 23-40.