Womens Mobility,

Changing Gender Relations and

Development in East Nusa
Tenggara, Indonesia
*
Catharina Williams
The University of New South Wales
at the Australian Defence Force Academy
This paper investigates the relationships between mobility and the constitu-
tion of gender relations and subjectivities of rural-urban female migrants in
Indonesia. Employing an ethnographic approach, my research explores
meanings of space and changing relationships for migrant subjects. A
specific group of migrants teachers and nurses from the outer islands of
Eastern Indonesia working in urban centers elaborate on their stories of
migration. The reasons and consequences of their migration reflect intricate
and shifting gender relations, as boundaries of propriety are redefined
through spatial movement. This kind of mobility suggests that women
migrate for multiple reasons requiring various scales of analysis. Migrants
reveal shifting subjectivity and changing relations with family and local
communities whilst participating in political and economic spaces.
Introduction
Patterns of mobility in contemporary Indonesia and social shifts associated
with it are highly gendered, and have led to new meanings of place and
identity among women. It grows increasingly apparent that in order to
better understand the motivations and experiences of female migrants, the
*The support of the organizers and participants of the International Conference on Popula-
tion and Development in Asia: Critical Issues for a Sustainable Future (2006) is gratefully
acknowledged. Special thanks go to Sara Curan and Kim Korinek who organized our panel and
commented on the paper. The helpful comments of anonymous referees are acknowledged
and appreciated.
Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, Vol. 16, No. 4, 2007 533
534 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL
analytical lens must widen. While many of the moves women make can be
understood in relation to economic necessity, to view them only in that
context would relegate crucial insights to the margins. Women are moving
for much more complex reasons reasons that necessitate a different
theoretical framework in order to be properly detected and explored. In
borrowing from a rich library of feminist literature on migration and
development, I hope to contribute to the ongoing dialogue around these
issues, specifically as it relates to subjectivity and movement.
Feminist analysis requires attention to place-based identities and rela-
tionships within their respective spatial and historical contexts (Domosh
and Morin, 2003). The relational nature and material cultures of the womens
everyday lives reveal gender as embodied and discursive (Jacobs and Nash,
2003). Here, I focus on gendered boundaries of propriety under the domi-
nant femininity that structures the local relations in Eastern Indonesia.
Boundaries in this sense are markers containing spatial borders and social
norms, separating oneself from others, belonging and exclusion, propriety
and transgression. Maintenance, creation, and transgression of boundaries
all occur in the space of migration. At one level, boundaries are often seen
as the propriety frames that were historically used to discipline women
(Jacobs and Nash, 2003). I conceptualize womens migration as the negotia-
tion of a range of boundaries, and their travels as strategically positioning
themselves in established social processes.
At the macro level, my informants stories of migration describe the
negotiation of a regional boundary, depicting Eastern Indonesian identities
from the periphery as they transfer into the center of power in Java. The
significance of economic context becomes apparent in the movement of
labor from poorer regions to better-off ones. The migrants narratives reveal
the states discourses of social and economic development, which associ-
ated Eastern Indonesia with disadvantage. At the community, household,
and bodily levels, a single womans travel also represents a negotiation of
kin and the gendered boundary of propriety reflected in decision-making,
mobility patterns, behavior and deportment. Once a female migrant de-
parts, she, rather than her male kin, makes decisions, including those related
to mobility. A womans sexual identity is also negotiated when she travels.
At home, a daughters purity is protected by male kin. These same family
members also control her mobility. These negotiations of boundary of
propriety in womens migration are expanded in their stories, which show
women from the predominantly Christian community referring to their
religious faith in affirming or shifting their subjectivities. The intersections
of gender, migration and religion are demonstrated through the ways they
view their migration as vocation, which can be more effectively
contextualized after a more thorough discussion of the region.
535 WOMEN'S MOBILITY AND DEVELOPMENT IN INDONESIA
Development and Impacts on Womens Mobility
After three decades of strong economic growth from the mid-1970s to the
1990s, Indonesia unexpectedly experienced a severe economic crisis in
1997-1998. By 2005, the new government of President Susilo Bambang
Yudoyono (SBY) has to some extent restored confidence in the business
community (Grenville, 2004; McLeod, 2005). The return of the economic
stability experienced under the previous administration, together with
some positive economic growth, seemed to be gaining momentum (Boediono,
2005). By the end of 2006, Indonesia was showing recovery despite experi-
encing devastating natural disasters (World Bank, 2006). Economic growth
has spurred the proliferation of population movement.
In Indonesia, increasing female migration reflects the general rise in
population mobility, which is linked to rising incomes, education, and
improved communication and transport services. Womens mobility also
positively correlates with their participation in the labor market, particu-
larly in the fast-growing sectors of education and health services, two
sources of mass employment (Oey-Gardiner, 1997:135; Manning, 1998:100,
264). For instance, teaching jobs in cities have grown rapidly with the on-
going expansion of national education. Recently more than 42 million
students were enrolled in more than 227,000 institutions employing more
than two million teachers nationally (Purwadi and Muljoatmojo, 2000:92).
At the macro scale, the importance of development levels or modernity
in relation to population mobility is emphasized. Nevertheless, a criticism
of development as an economic growth strategy has consistently surfaced
since the 1960s, influencing a departure from theories of development as a
materialist process of change (Potter, 1999:4). My study accentuates a
micro scale approach and less materialist process. It views migrants as
diverse, active and dynamic individuals with strong agency and it considers
various possibilities for women from the rural areas of the outer islands of
Eastern Indonesia.
This paper discusses rural-urban migration of contemporary women
from East Nusa Tenggara in Eastern Indonesia traveling by sea to be
teachers and nurses in urban centers. Firstly, I situate womens mobility in
the context of both socio-economic conditions and the literature of migra-
tion that applies to the spatial and historical reality of Eastern Indonesia.
Discussions of my approach to migration and field research are followed by
a conceptualization of womens migration in terms of its meanings for
women. Discussions of East Nusa Tenggara, the province of origin of my
informants, uncover several scales of asymmetrical social relations. These
include the power relations at the national and regional scales that migrants
experience, particularly between the center of power in Java and eastern
536 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL
parts of Indonesia, as well as those at the community, household, and
individual levels. I then turn to the stories of migrants with different
intensities of experience. The selected stories highlight how womens
mobile subjectivity emerges and is constituted through migration. In Indo-
nesia, womens economic opportunity as migrants in cities comes into
conflict with an image of a fulfilled woman, or that of a supportive wife
and a good mother as the dominant femininity (Wolf, 1992:8; Suryakusuma,
1996). My informants stories of migration contain these conflicts.
Feminist geography approaches include variables such as gender, class
and race as determinants of womens mobility, and these are shown by an
expanding set of theoretical and empirical works on gender and mobility
(see, for example, Bondi and Domosh, 1998; Duncan and Gregory, 1999;
Laws, 1997; Lawson, 1998; McDowell and Sharp, 1997; McDowell, 1999;
Pratt, 1992; Yeoh and Huang, 1999a). Womens mobility in these ap-
proaches is connected with a gendered space of home within the private/
public sphere divide, and it also represents a space at the margin of womens
daily routines (Yeoh and Huang, 1999b). These approaches offer greater
insight into East Nusa Tenggaran womens migration to urban centers.
There is little information about contemporary Indonesian womens mobil-
ity within these approaches, with the exception of some case studies in
migration (see, for example, Elmhirst, 2002, Heyzer and Wee, 1994; Hugo,
2000; Robinson, K., 2000; Silvey, 2000, 2001; Wolf, 1990, 1992).
Despite the increasing literature and perspectives on gender and migra-
tion (Curran, Shafer et al., 2006; Silvey, 2006) most research employs broad
political and economic frames to explain peoples mobility. Most of this
work implies unproblematic notions of place (Lawson, 1998: 41). As Silvey
and Lawson (1999) argue, from this migration is primarily linked to eco-
nomic necessity, reflecting a Western modernization trajectory. Womens
migration from rural to urban areas is presumed to be related to surplus
labor in the rural agricultural sector and the growing demand for labor in
industrial sectors in urban areas. Otherwise, women relocate as part of a
broader family movement in search of better economic and social opportu-
nities. The narrow developmentalist focus and increasingly untenable
assumption that origins, destinations, and migrants themselves including
their gender, race and class are unproblematic parts of migration leaves
the other reasons for migration unquestioned (Silvey and Lawson, 1999:
122-123).
In the context of Indonesia, female migration and womens agency, as
they relate to mobility, are under-theorized. They are often thought to be
a product of structural class position and the forces of globalization, thus the
womens voice, identity and meanings of mobility are commonly missing
in migration research (Silvey and Lawson, 1999:126). My ethnography of
537 WOMEN'S MOBILITY AND DEVELOPMENT IN INDONESIA
womens travel contributes to a growing body of literature which calls for
a wider analysis of female migrant subjects one that extends beyond the
political economics of migration to illuminate the shifting subjectivities of
migrants (Silvey and Lawson, 1999; Silvey, 2001). In geography, Silvey
(2000) was among the first to include womens agency in the research
agenda on gender and mobility in Indonesia, incorporating not only deter-
minants of structure in the historiography of locality but also individual
action and agency in a theorization of gender and mobility.
The feminist geography literature offers some insights into the com-
plexities of womens migration in the form of womens ambivalent subject
positions in relation to spatial movements (Blunt, 1994a and b). Feminist
and post-colonial theorists problematize migrant identities and their ways
of negotiating and inhabiting multiple subject positions. Within this wide
range of approaches, recent works ascertain the importance of power
relations in the constructed differences of gender, ethnicity and class in
shaping the experiences of women migrants (Gibson, 2001; Kofman and
England, 1997; McDowell, 1999). Following this more nuanced
conceptualization of power, my research explores the specific practices of
power through the spatial entangling of migration and its consequential
release of power for migrants (Sharp et al., 2000). Female migrants every-
day relations at a range of spatial scales were analyzed to provide insights
into their mobility. Research employing critical ethnography on womens
mobility reveals theoretical potential to address the complex questions
about womens identity and subjectivity in relation to multiple sites (Mahler
and Pessar, 2006; Lawson, 2000; Stacey, 1997). It also acknowledges that
places are interpreted differently between genders, so decisions on mobility
are also gendered (Lawson, 2000; Silvey and Lawson, 1999). I apply this
critical ethnography approach to my analysis of contemporary Eastern
Indonesian womens migration in an attempt to highlight the interplay of
space, subject and the subjectivity of migrants.
The Study Design
This research is part of a larger study on contemporary Eastern Indonesian
womens travels. The six-month field research was conducted in 1998-2000
in the following locations: (1) popular migration destinations established by
census data, including Makassar (Sulawesi) and Surabaya (Java); (2) mi-
grant origin communities in parts of East Nusa Tenggara; and (3) on boats
traveling between origin and destination sites. The timing of the research
coincided with the monetary crisis in 1998, which introduced uncertainties
among respondent-travelers I encountered on the boat. The crisis seemed to
have less impact on already settled migrants. The reconnaissance trip
538 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL
ascertained the sheer number of women travelers. For this study, I focused
on women in the caring professions who migrated from rural or semi-rural
areas in East Nusa Tenggara. This particular group of migrants is situated
in specific class locations. They are of middle class background whose
families can afford education and have the resources to travel. I conducted
in-depth interviews with fifteen informants, seven teachers and eight
nurses, and some of their stories are presented here. Initial connection with
a few informants generated a network with the rest of them.
Womens migration stories present issues that highlight the mutual
constitution of changing spaces and subjectivity, enabling me to tease out
the emergence of both a new subjectivity and a different femininity among
migrants (Williams, 2004). I present the contexts of migration from their
home villages and highlight womens experiences that reflect ways in which
subjects understand their migration to work in the feminized caring profes-
sions. I argue that women take advantage of patriarchal bargains, sub-
verting from within, rather than challenging social structures as active
agents moving out of home to achieve personal goals (Kandiyoti, 1998;
Sharp et al., 2003). Individuals often simultaneously support some aspects
of social order such as patriarchy whilst opposing others. Migrants spatial
entanglements conjure up the knotting and weaving of power (Sharp et
al., 2000: 24) to convey the complexities of adopting a feminine employment
to break free of the confines of gendered expectation at home. I conceptual-
ize these experiences as a repositioning of self (Pile and Thrift, 1995:201).
Rural women who migrate to urban centers embody both physical and
metaphorical movement. Their access to and power over mobility reflect
their overcoming the previous social location (Mahler and Pessar, 2006;
Massey, 1994).
The women move across different spaces to experiment and negotiate
a range of boundaries. Rather than objectify women, viewing them as
migrants from peripheral areas and in terms of their particular economic
position, I explore the ways women construct and re-construct their iden-
tities through the process of mobility (Silvey and Lawson, 1999) and
changing network relations. I have followed the shifting focus of recent
research on womens travel to consider how subjectivity changes through
time and space to capture the fluidity, the ambivalence and depth of the
subject (Pile and Thrift, 1995). My research of female migration from Eastern
Indonesia highlights the changing gender relations in the context of mobil-
ity that are inscribed at their bodily, household and community levels.
Eastern Indonesia: Place and Social Relations
Eastern Indonesia is a diverse region in terms of its physical geography and
people. The scattered islands of the region, hilly and mountainous, and the
539 WOMEN'S MOBILITY AND DEVELOPMENT IN INDONESIA
dispersed small population occupying diminutive pockets of fertile land
influence both the traditional settlement patterns and the peoples contem-
porary subsistence lifestyles. Difficulties in transport and communication
create a sense of isolation (Jones, 1995). East Nusa Tenggara province
consists of 4.7 million hectares of land supporting 3.9 million inhabitants
(Badan Pusat Statistik Propinsi, NTT 2001). It is one of the least urbanized
provinces in Indonesia with less than 20 percent of the population living in
urban areas. Some of the economically active women choose to work
outside the region.
By migrating within a feminized occupation, women are able to uphold
notions of femininity which are socially, historically and geographically
constituted (Laurie et al., 1999: 4). During my field research, I noticed how
women chose to discuss their migrations to the city with reasons surround-
ing their function as professionals. The teaching and nursing professions fit
very nicely into a dominant picture of femininity, which is synonymous to
nurturing. The respectability of teaching and nursing professions in the
local context as a divine calling produces a unique mission that necessi-
tates travel for women as part of their vocation. Their Catholic beliefs
allow them to frame their migration as following a righteous path, in the
same ways priests and nuns follow their calls. In some cases, their previous
vocational training in Catholic schools also provide women with a unique
opportunity for careers in health and education.
Only certain mobility is acceptable for women. Female migrants trav-
eling to urban areas to become teachers and nurses uphold acceptable
gender roles. This connection between womens migration to the city and
their practice of caring relies on the common theme of the dominant
femininity which recognizes female subjectivity only in relation to family
and motherhood. Education and nursing professions allow women to
function in a caretaker capacity, while simultaneously providing an escape
from the traditional roles of wife and mother. In addition, there are intrigu-
ing historical associations that resonate within the cultural imagination. The
history of romantic travels within the West originating in the late eigh-
teenth century and lasting throughout to the nineteenth century is echoed
in journeys of contemporary Eastern Indonesian women traveling for
panggilan or vocation. One of the central goals of romantic travel is to be
immersed in cultural difference (Duncan and Gregory, 1999). This goal
resonates with the Eastern Indonesian womens wish to travel to urban
centers. They too seek an experience of difference, and this curiosity is
framed through a romanticizing of their motives as being professional
caregivers.
The economic context is still significant in the form of availability of
teaching and nursing jobs in the cities, which facilitates this flow. However,
a womans agency is as important as the economic structure in directing her
540 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL
towards feminized occupations (Bozzoli, 1991). The credibility of these
caring professions at the local level is amplified by the states ideology,
which upholds traditional notions of femininity. Constraining to their
mobility on the one hand, the dominant femininity has been subverted by
the women as a justification for their migration. My analysis of female
migration to urban centers attempts to tease out the emerging and changing
constitution of migrant subjects. To do so, I trace the ways they imagine and
take up different identities in the space of their migration.
Caring Professions
A professional path as a teacher or a health worker in the context of East
Nusa Tenggara commands the communitys high respect. Both professions
contain a sacred connotation, pekerjaan mulia, meaning honorable job.
Womens choice of the socially acceptable occupation becomes a perfect
launching pad for their migration. They can still maintain the accepted
gender role of caregiver and extend it to the public sphere, in schools or
hospitals. My field research reveals that in their hamlets, not only do people
respect women in these sacred professions; most perceive them as virtuous,
despite their migration. Some women felt strongly that they were being
called, terpanggil the way the Catholic religious (priests or nuns) were
called to serve God to take on the responsibilities of caring. In the para-
graphs that follow, I present the stories of teachers and nurses because they
not only provide the observable material condition of the womens move to
the city, but also contain imaginative journeys of identity through practices
of femininities and the resulting mobile subjectivity. Through their stories,
I explore how in the space of migration, women attempt to balance social
expectations with their own strategies to reposition themselves to gain
autonomy/power and independence.
Nursing and Gaining Autonomy
Detti was a single, soft-spoken nurse in her early thirties, who I met through
a friend in a hospital in Surabaya (Java). As the youngest in a family of seven
children, six of whom had married and left home, Detti was the last in the
familys hierarchy. As an unmarried daughter and a younger sister, she was
under the protection and authority of her family. This relationship was
reflective of the hierarchical gender and kinship structure of the local com-
munity in the district of Timor Barat. Detti turned her life around starting
with her migration to the city. Her justification for leaving the village was
that she was called to care for others. This line of reasoning was too noble
541 WOMEN'S MOBILITY AND DEVELOPMENT IN INDONESIA
for the family to dismiss. Her decision to independently pursue this profes-
sion evidently subverted her typically subordinate relationship within her
family.
Detti migrated to Surabaya to study nursing. One weekend, I unexpect-
edly stayed with Detti overnight in her tiny one-bedroom rented house in
a small alley in Surabaya. It was six oclock in the evening and beginning to
get dark and torrential rain poured down. The area was severely flooded,
so I was stranded there. Kindly, Detti later invited me to share her single bed
in a cramped two-by-two meter room, which I gratefully accepted. As we
emptied the constantly filling buckets of water whooshing from the roof
cracks, Detti shared some thoughts about her lifestyle as an independent
professional. She expressed a strong intention to break with her mothers
life path as a local housewife, as she imagined and preferred to be a
professional woman.
Detti attracted the affection of her community for a variety of reasons.
She was able to draw on her wide social network. While with her, I observed
her reaction to an incident that unfolded before our eyes as she helped an
elderly couple from her home village. They were on a mission from Timor
to find their daughters boyfriend in Surabaya. The young couple were
students there, but the boy had disappeared after the girl confided that she
was carrying his baby. Competently, Detti made arrangements to assist the
confused family. As the youngest child, she would not usually command
such authority in her own family. She took the elderly couple to her rented
house, providing them with a place to stay, however crowded, and served
them food. The couple were in obvious distress over the state of their
daughters affairs. Their daughter was perceived as living in a state of sin
according to their Catholic faith. By extension the parents were impure
and were denied Holy Communion by their local parish priest. Calmly,
Detti negotiated some difficult decisions on behalf of the couple. She
arranged a party to search for the frightened boy. He was given a lesson
and thus suffered bruises, but he agreed to marry the girl.
By contacting the right people, Detti helped to arrange for a private
church marriage for the young couple. According to their local tradition,
there would be adat (customary law) to settle. The young mans family
would have to pay a fine in addition to the girls bridewealth. The spatiality
of Dettis intervention in the negotiation of marriage raises an interesting
issue regarding power that cannot be imagined as unidirectional
(Robinson, J., 2000:203). She was caught up between following the social
order of local tradition and exercising her judgment at a time of crisis. The
practice of her subtle leadership role in the place of migration highlights
Dettis agency and the multidimensional aspects of power. As a conse-
quence of the spatial entangling of her migration, new relations of power are
542 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL
established which to some extent enables and permits her power (Sharp et
al., 2000). The previous incident also displays the mutual constitution and
performativity of both spaces and identities (Blunt, 1999; Women and
Geography Study Group of the IBG, 1997). In the space that she created
through her migration, Detti emerged not only as an autonomous capable
woman but also as an authoritative figure with the right connections in the
community and the local church. Her relocation enabled mobile subjectivity
as she moved between various identities. The multiple identities Detti
occupies within the main discourse of femininity situate her on a firm
footing as an autonomous subject within her circle of the city. She used a
simplistic altruistic line to explain her move:
It was my duty to help others. I traveled all the way here; there must
be a purpose for this. There is some thing that I have to do, which
is actually my calling.
Dettis feminine caring identity, both in the informal social group and
in a nursing capacity, enabled her to move through wider social networks.
The simultaneous reproduction and subversion of the dominant femininity
(McDowell, 1999) evident in Dettis story serves as an example of the
entanglements of power (Sharp et al., 2000). Another example of multidi-
mensional power in rural-urban female migration follows.
Mobility and Purity
Evita, an outgoing, twenty-nine year old married nurse, gained a reputation
among her peers in Surabaya as a smart nurse. Originally from Flores, she
was the first child of seven children of a tightly knit family. Evitas migration
started when she was 18 years old, as she voyaged to enter the nursing
school in Surabaya. However, her imaginary mobility started with a fantasy
when she was barely seven years old and had wanted to go and study in
Java:
I had wanted to be a nurse since I was a little girl. My mother was
hospitalized once when I was about seven years old and I had a
direct experience of knowing the nurses who looked after her. They
were lovely persons in white uniforms so I was very impressed.,
although I didnt know much about a nurses duties at the time. This
left a lasting impression deep in my mind, that I would like to be like
those nurses when I grew up. Ever since I could remember I had
always wanted to be like them in white uniform and helping sick
people.
543 WOMEN'S MOBILITY AND DEVELOPMENT IN INDONESIA
Later, after completing her education, she secured a permanent job as
a nurse in a reputable hospital in Surabaya. Ever since, she has traveled
regularly between Surabaya and Flores. Evitas present residence was in a
two-floor brick house on the side of a busy road in a central area in Surabaya.
Her husband works for a private company, earning a very good income. The
couple lives comfortably, as shown by their house and the modern appli-
ances they own, including a big television and stereo sets. The lounge room
was spacious, painted in off-white color, three-by-four meters in size. On
the wall there were two of her 1998 enlarged wedding photos in fancy
frames. The lounge chairs were comfortable, made of carved mahogany
wood with crimson velvet upholstery, an interior style commonly found in
middle class Javanese houses in urban areas.
As we sat comfortably sipping a glass of iced tea, which a maid had
served us, she told me her story. Her life, in her own words, was full of
storm and had its share of torments and troubles. Being away from home
had consequences for her reputation. She was aware that her migration to
the city defied certain local norms of gendered propriety. Her frequent
travels aroused gossip about the possibility of improper relations with men
in other places. Evitas solo travels both to and within urban areas created
a perception at home that she was loose. To migrate for work in the city
is to be potentially impure, despite her caring profession.
Consequently, this had negatively affected her relationship with a
potential spouse. The time of her courtship with her now husband was
plagued with arguments and jealousy. He accused her of playing around,
on the basis of her autonomy. In this sense, her mobility was equated with
freedom of the road, including sexual freedom. The polarity of purity/
impurity of the body in connection with her migration appeared several
times throughout her stories. Evita shared with me her internal tensions of
dealing with the external perception of her femininity. Her subject position
as a daughter and a member of the clan created a dilemma between on the
one hand, her obedience to stay within established boundaries and purity
of her body, and on the other hand, her choice of an identity as an
autonomous woman.
From her comments about her community, I found that Evita was
aware of societys double standard applied to womens purity in relation to
her migration, which is not an issue for men. Her resistance to the double
standard manifested itself in a stance against the fianc, which resulted in
a tense relationship with him. At the time, he accused her of having an affair.
There have recently been repeated cases of single Florenese girls who fell
pregnant, known as losing their virtues after intimate relationships in the
city. Evita was particularly hurt at being accused of losing her virginity/
virtue:
544 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL
I did not defend myself or any effort to that effect, just challenged
him [the fiance] to find another girl whom he was certain that she
was a virgin... However he did not want to end the relationship and
eventually we got married. At our wedding night he sobbed and
asked for forgiveness for once doubting my virginity, as he then
knew the truth.
Evita skillfully negotiated among multiple femininities, the dominant
and the newly learned ones.
Other informants chose to represent their migration in terms of the
dominant femininity. When asked to tell their stories, they echoed similar
concerns and mostly chose a virtuous representation of rescuing the young,
sick or poor. This representation fits with Wilkes description of the roman-
tic construction of a caring career:
The world was a place in which wrongs could be righted, tears
mended, and the proper order restored. These were the points in
the narratives when speakers accounts became quite vivid, and the
women spoke with forthright passion and conviction (Wilkes, 1995:
242).
As women restoring order, how could they be out of order them-
selves? The nurses and teachers whom I interviewed were similarly pas-
sionate in describing their vocation rather than referring to it merely as a
profession. The caring work justified their migration to urban centers. The
romantic tone of my informants description of their migration was, how-
ever, contingent upon the context and sequence of the stories. Behind their
migration stories there is a shared theme of how the individual is strategi-
cally distancing herself from home and the family to create a space for
repositioning self. Most of my informants cited an altruistic motive of
being able to help people as they moved to take up teaching and nursing.
They presented themselves relying on the qualities associated with the
dominant femininity, which also bears the footprints of the state gender
ideology. This view drew heavily on the expected behavior of tahu
menempatkan diri, or knowing ones place a womans place is to nurture.
Even though this place has been unstable and contested space in national
debates.
Womens politics of location, in this way, overcome the social con-
straints of moving away from home through the patriarchal bargain. Travel
opens up wider social networks in which women expand their subject
positions, further enabling them to draw power from within the relations.
Women who were teachers or nurses could remain within the boundaries
of the gendered propriety and be free to travel and explore other identities.
545 WOMEN'S MOBILITY AND DEVELOPMENT IN INDONESIA
As Evitas travel shows, women are able to perform multiple femininities
and diverse identities which are mutually constituted through and with
spaces. Evitas story shows spatial entanglements in which a migrant
subject simultaneously conforms to and subverts the dominant femininity,
enabling power in changing contexts.
Teaching and Exerting Agency
Many contemporary Eastern Indonesian women choose to work as teachers
one among a range of social roles in urban centers in which women
perform their feminine identity. Teaching jobs with security of tenure not
only bring a reliable source of income but also local prestige. As the
following story indicates, women of the region have taken the opportunity
of getting a teaching job in the city as a way to access knowledge and
multidimensional power. Ima was a single, friendly teacher in her mid-
thirties. She traveled to take up her teaching appointment in Makassar in
1991 and has since voyaged between the two places. Her autonomous,
independent life style, as a single professional was the one aspect of her life
she valued most. This dimension of power was possible from a distance
in a space she created between herself and the family. She was very
passionate about her teaching role and viewed it as her lifes mission. Ima
enjoyed teaching in a Catholic high school in Makassar. She displayed a
personal autonomy in making the decision about her future and remaining
single.
Distance from family, she commented, was essential to being indepen-
dent. There was less family interference with her private life. Being in this
space of migration provided a necessary environment to move between a
range of identities and roles. She was able to make a unilateral decision of
refusing an arranged marriage and stick by it. Gentle as Ima might have
appeared, she had defied her extended familys wish to get a husband of
some social status. In the local context, single status for a woman was
thought of as tidak laku or nobody wants you making a womans life
incomplete thus showing her to be of a lower status. This state ideology
of the dominant femininity idealizes the roles of a supportive wife and a
good mother which produces and reproduces a stigmatized identity for a
single mature woman which is known as an old maid, as observed in many
parts of Indonesia. In Java, Berninghausen and Kerstan (1992) note a social
pressure for single eligible woman to marry:
Once a woman has been accepted into the adult community, her
sphere of activities broadens considerably, even if the marriage
does not last. Compared with the societal devaluation of women
546 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL
who remain single, divorced or widowed women are stigmatized
to a much lesser degree. However, women who live alone for
whatever reason are especially subject to suspicion and destructive
gossip on the part of others (Berninghausen and Kerstan, 1992: 116).
Consequently, Ima attracted a fair portion of the villages gossip. In the
local context she had transgressed the gender lines by remaining single well
into her thirties. Daughters are valued among others for their potential of
bringing a bridewealth to increase the familys social status. As far as Imas
family was concerned, her case was a lost opportunity for an alliance with
a higher status family. The extended family was upset, and for a period of
time they refused to talk to her. Nevertheless, Imas decision regarding her
single status prevailed. For Ima, her teaching was, on the one hand conform-
ing to the dominant femininity in caring for the young, but on the other
hand, being single went against that established norm. The question re-
mains, how does teaching in the city provide her with power to decide her
life path? Throughout her adult life, Ima upheld the dominant femininity.
However, the physical and emotional distance gained through migration
allowed her to resist traditional gender roles as a wife and mother. By
becoming a single professional, she defied her family authority. Being
separated from the family provided her with a space to constitute a shifting
subjectivity. Her personal desires were important to her. Here, her travel
allows a process of becoming. Migration provides a space to maneuver and
negotiate trajectories of her everyday life.
These stories highlight womens agency in creating opportunities for
themselves to access a wider range of identities and shifting roles. By
establishing the physical and emotional distance, women are able to make
their own decisions, instead of relying on kin, parents or a husband.
Migration opens up a new space of possibilities and uncertainties, enabling
womens shifting subjectivity. The micro politics of womens migration to
the city, as described in the above stories, reveals the limitations of a purely
economic analysis of such moves.
Contesting Relations Away From Home
For female migrants, the physical process of travel itself occurs in a transi-
tory space with blurred norms, opening to contestation of relations between
space and identities. The womens middle class background with estab-
lished professions afford them power in shifting subjectivities and contest-
ing relations. The physical travel on a ship is a dynamic, transitory space,
mutually reconstituting changing identities. Bibiana, or Bibi for short, was
a single 27-year old primary school teacher who migrated to East Java. I met
547 WOMEN'S MOBILITY AND DEVELOPMENT IN INDONESIA
her on the boat on her way visiting the home village. The three-day journey
offered many opportunities for interactions and making new acquaintan-
ces. As the voyage progressed, Bibi and her companions were quite jolly,
treating the ship as a meeting place.
On the ship we occupied the economy class which was the cheapest on
the boat. We shared benches on the lower deck and became acquainted with
each other. We ate our rationed dinners, shared food, and did a few other
things together, such as working on crossword puzzles and telling jokes.
Bibi won the admiration of a good looking, tall young man in the group,
whom she met on the ship. When Bibi complained of a headache, he
instantly fussed over her. Getting intimate on a ship seemed to be natural.
Being confined in the same space for a lengthy period encouraged people to
pass the time by communicating with each other. Depending on the time of
the day, our group would disperse and then came back together, such as at
meal times and entertainment/video movie time.
On the first night, I noticed that Bibi and the man walked hand-in-hand
on the outside deck where the light was dim and there were fewer people.
In the confines of the crowded ship, their physical closeness in this space was
almost unavoidable. In this transient and fleeting space of her travel, Bibi
initiated moves to closeness and the man responded positively. In the next
afternoon, as we sat around in the lower deck getting rather bored, Bibi
cheerfully announced that she needed a hair trim. In no time, she produced
a pair of scissors from her luggage, and asked the man whom she had been
with, to trim her hair. Rather hesitantly he obliged and trimmed her hair.
Stroking Bibis black hair with a comb he took his time brushing and tidying
up her hair while we were watching them amusedly. The physical contact
of the hair cut gave a further excuse for intimacy and seemed to legitimate
the couple to get physically closer in front of other passengers, which was
an impropriety had it been at home. It seems that the voyage offered the
couple a space with blurred norms and thus, the inward delight of being
admired and pursued. The ship becomes a contested space of relations,
reflecting the mutual performativity of the space and our range of identities.
Away from the social pressure as a teacher, Bibi did not have to carry out her
externally ascribed role of the dominant femininity. Bibi seemed to be free
in exploring her multiple identities, here, as a single woman traveling alone.
Migration and Individual Becoming
The ways these teachers and nurses described their reasons for choosing the
caring occupations are not groundbreaking. Contingent, micro, everyday
interactions strongly shape a womans choice of sets of social roles. At the
individual level of choosing a caring occupation, a woman is, to some
548 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL
extent, constrained by the dominant femininity. Their agency is crucial in
the decision to pursue caring jobs in the cities, providing a justification for
travel. Some informants were acutely aware of the reality of meager salaries
as nurses and teachers, whether working in the government or in private
institutions. My informants migration to urban areas seemingly conforms
to the dominant discourse of gender roles, particularly in choosing their
feminine jobs as a nurse or a teacher. However, further analysis of their
travels shows that the conforming process was a subversion that actually
generates power from within.
Once gaining mobility, the women are on the path toward new possi-
bilities. The women also travel in order to explore a sense of self. This
interpretation resonates with the experiences of other women travelers in
different spaces and time. Biographies and interpretation of works of
individual women travelers of the West in the nineteenth century confirm
that. Despite being confined to a womans place, which was first and
foremost at home, when a woman voyaged, her construction of femininity
in its relation to the domestic sphere was altered (Lawrence, 1994: x).
Throughout the narratives, there emerged a theme of womens shifting
subjectivity in their localized relations. Through the ethnography of travel
for migration, I have shown tensions resulting from their being away, the
conflicting perceptions, thoughts and feelings, so as to draw connections
between the space of migration, the migrant subject, and her varied identi-
ties. In spite of the significance of the context of family and home relations,
my informants stories reflect deeper experiences of strategically locating
themselves in-between polarized opposites of conforming and transgress-
ing the dominant femininity. In the local context, similar to the early
twentieth century cities in Europe, womens presence in urban areas might
be seen as a problem because it symbolizes the promise of sexual adventure
(Wilson, 1991).
In Indonesia, sexual adventure, excessive ambition and assertiveness
are seen as a deviation for women (Hatley, 1997). Cities represent disorder
and ambiguity as far as womens sexuality is concerned, but at the same time
they also offer wealth and opportunity, promising liberation (Wilson, 1991).
In the contexts of my informants migration, their travels from rural Eastern
Indonesia to urban areas contested their specific gender roles, class, ethnicities
and identities. Detti was viewed as an informal local leader in her commu-
nity, a position of power impossible in her own clan. Similarly, Evita, Ima
and Bibi were able to exert multidimensional power in their relationship
with others. Evita challenged her fianc to find another girlfriend, Ima
resolved her intention to pursue her career rather than an arranged mar-
riage, and Bibi related to the man she liked on the boat as an equal. I map
women who migrate as subjects taking a path along which they can move
549 WOMEN'S MOBILITY AND DEVELOPMENT IN INDONESIA
in the trajectories of power, along the lines of class, gender and race
(Ferguson, 1999). I conceptualize their migrations as a political economic
space allowing wider scales of relations and new encounters, thus instru-
mental in the contestation and creation of identities.
By taking new and wider subject positions while traveling, womens
subjectivity is likely to shift along with experiences of multiple spaces, as
they partially maintain the status quo in an attempt to move beyond local
restraints. This shift of relations leads me to think of their migration as
fitting the notion of an in-between space a transitory and ambiguous space
which is full of uncertainties. I argue that women exploited the fluidity
and multiplicity of roles and identities in their migration, enabling their
mobile subjectivity. Mobile subjectivity, as with mobility, is associated with
movement along trajectories of power and resistance, emerging from either
proximity or distance and the associated connectedness (Ferguson, 1999).
To conceptualize subjectivity as mobile is to find a way of imagining a self-
awareness of identities grounded in bodily lived experiences in the context
of events constantly in motion (Jackson and Palmer-Jones, 1999; Ferguson,
1999). Through their migration, women negotiate a space to maneuver
within and around local gender relations and the dominant femininity. This
journey of shifting subjectivity is contingent to localized relations and by no
means certain or easy as the above stories show.
My research contributes to the critical body of work on migration by
further elaborating our understanding of womens mobility in both the local
context and as part of the larger dynamic processes to establish meaning and
identity through place. Migration allows changes from the status quo of
local relations and widens connections. This is reflected in the womens
desire to gain more power through personal autonomy and independence.
Gaining control of their lives may have been the womens primary goal, thus
exposing the limitation of the economic approach to migration. Separating
the layers of reasons for migration, and examining mobility as spatial
entangling beyond the romance of their professions demonstrates that their
migration was a significant step in creating a space to enact identities and
fulfill personal goals. My study of female migrants mobility from rural
Eastern Indonesia to urban centers suggests a changing relationship bet-
ween genders based on new meanings of place and identity among women
that result from migration.
550 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL
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