The Story of
Eva, An Indonesian Migrant Worker
“One of the most
courageous things you can do is identify yourself, know who you are, what you
believe in and where you want to go.” (Sheila Murray Bethel)
Background
Today Indonesia is known as the second largest sending country of
migrant workers to overseas (Bonasahat, 2013). Every year about 700 thousands of Indonesians travel abroad in at
least a minimum of two-year working contract. More than half are women age from
18-50 years, and about 80 percent of them work as domestic workers. The Middle
East countries are the primary destination; follow by countries in East and
Southeast Asia such as Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. Despite many
remaining unknown and lacking recognition to the contribution of those emigrants
to the nation, they are the “foreign-exchange heroes” in Indonesia (Farbenblum, Taylor-Nicholson,
& Paoletti, 2013). Their remittances contribute to the national economy is about USD
7 billions per year.
Poverty,
lacking job opportunities or low-income jobs, and wanting to improve individual
and family’s welfare are the documented major reasons of the migrant workers in
taking the overseas work, leaving their home and families (Farbenblum et al., 2013). Barry R. Chiswick (2008) defines immigrant’s motivation as economic and non-economic
factors. This paper uses the concept from both which combined the two factors
as the motivation and background of Eva, a-36 years old female Indonesian in
choosing her life-path as a migrant worker, first in Saudi Arabia for two
years, then Hong Kong for two years, and Singapore for almost four years. Eight
years working in three different countries makes Eva’s story different from her
peers, which mostly covered in the national media with sad and tragic stories
of violence and abuse. Before leaving Indonesia for the first time, Eva’s family
and friends seeing her as a young broken-hearted and submissive wife. Along the
journey she has transformed into an independent woman, knew what she wanted in life,
assertive and articulative, and currently known as a single mother, female
activist and holds a position at one political party in Indonesia where she
continues voicing the rights of women and particularly female migrant workers.
This paper
aims to understand why Eva moved, what motivated her? Is Eva a type of
favorable self-selected immigrant as describes by Chiswick, or is she forced to
do so? Did she make the decision or is
it forced by her external surroundings? What are the challenges and impact
along her trajectory as migrant worker? Lastly, this paper tries to examine
what could be learnt from her stories, especially in shaping a better understanding
about migration and development in Indonesia.
Eva The Migrant Worker
“I just want to be
happy, have certainty about the future. I dream a house of my own.”
Eva was born as the eldest of five.
Her father could no longer support the family since a motorcycle accident made
him paralyzed. Eva was just about seventeen then and on her second year of high
school at her hometown, a small village in southern part of Sumatera Island. Not
long after the accident, the family’s livelihood deteriorated. When savings and
assets depleted, they had to borrow money for caring Eva’s father and to
support their daily lives. Eva then quit the school to help her mother who became
a housemaid in several houses, providing support in house cleaning, cooking,
and baby-sitting. A year into this routine, Eva’s family accepted a middle-aged
man proposal to marry her, and made her the second wife, for a promise to
support her family.
Few
years later, being a second wife with a two-years old son, still living in her
parent’s house and only seeing her husband few times in a month made her
unhappy. As she confirmed over the phone in an interview for this paper, she
admitted that she felt depressed, lonely and betrayed. When she was pregnant,
her husband promised her to leave his first-wife and build a house where they could
start living as a family. It never came true. Even a year after the baby was born,
despite still sending enough money to support her and her family, her husband rarely
visited her and their only son. As she was no longer work following the request
of the husband, she felt that she became excluded from her social surrounding.
She stated that she felt much happier when she worked as a housemaid, from
house-to-house, compared to her new lives as a housewife, without a real
husband and a real house.
During
those downturn periods, she met an old friend whom returned to their village
for a holiday visit. Her friend told her about the experiences being a migrant
worker in Arabia, and showed Eva a newly built house from the money she earned.
This is the moment where Eva started seeing her neighborhood, a lot more new
“bricks” and “colorful” houses built, and she learnt to know that it all built
from the money sent by the neighbors working overseas. She felt that she
finally found a way-out from her dependence to her husband, economically and
psychologically, and a way back to her social life. As she said, she wanted more
in life, than just waiting for her husband to come. She wanted to be happy and have
certainty about her future and her son. On her mind at that time, it meant
having her own house and economically dependent. In addition, just like her
friends and other neighbors, she wanted to look successful, and this symbolized
by owning a house.
Jill
Stearns (2002) argues that globalization is not all bad for women, instead it
can offers new opportunities such as employment and opportunity to be an agent of
development and can actively contribute in shaping globalization and
development. In Eva’s case the effect of globalization that has flourished in
her hometown encourages emigration and transnational transaction in money and
people, especially to women. The combination of pull factors in international migration,
such as global demand on the need of domestic workers in other countries and a
promising income, and the push factor such as economic and non-economic
conditions have attracted people to migrate (Haas, 2010; Institute, 2013). For Eva, her motives were not just simply about economy (to have
security and certainty about the future), but also the need to express her
independence and freedom (from her husband and her family whom made her feel
like “the source of income”), and to improve her social status within her
community (liberalizing her image as a dependent second-wife and to prove that she
can be as successful as her friends). As in accordance with the Law of
Migration by Ravenstein (1885), females are more migratory than males, and this is also still the
migration phenomenon in Indonesia. Likewise in Eva’s village, many employment
and recruitment agencies expand their networks to seek women like Eva, make
thing promising and easier for them to travel abroad as domestic migrant
worker. For Eva, moving away from her village and working overseas were the
only option to improve her life chances. She made a decision to make changes
towards her life, even though she had no support from her husband and family. The
UNDP Report (2009) highlights this as a key value of human freedom, that we are being
able to decide where to live and what we want to do in life. This paper argues
that Eva’s migration is also as part of a household livelihood strategy, as it
motivated by a deliberate decision to improve livelihood and investment for the
future. Both Bebbington (1999) and De Haan (2000) seen this concept as a new economics of labor migration that also
mean to minimize future shocks and stresses over insecurity within household,
which particularly applied for rural-urban internal and international migration
in developing countries.
Along the Journey: Risks, Benefits and Its
Impact
No journey is without risks, benefits and impacts. In Eva’s case,
this meant she had to leave her comfort zone and people that she knew and cared,
including her marriage and husband as one of her family “source of income”. Prior
to her departure, her husband divorced her as a consequence of leaving him to
overseas and argued it against his belief and religion, that woman should stay
at home. In this context, Eva (as with other female migrants in her village)
reversed the traditional assumption towards migration, which assumed men
migrated while women stayed behind and viewed women as secondary migrants (Donato, Gabaccia, Holdaway,
Martin Manalansan, & Pessar, 2006). Not
only she lost her marriage and not being able to see her son for a few years,
Eva must also accepted that she would be left in debt for a period of time.
First was to the work agency for paying her logistical requirements, including
travel documents and work permit. Second was to some relatives and neighbors
for giving loan to her family before she could send them money. Still according
to Eva, almost all the money she earned from her first employment was used to
pay off her debt. Only a small amount she could save, but still was not enough
to buy a land and build a house. She stated that only after the third term of
her employment, she could finally have enough money to buy a land. Whereas to
build a house she used the money earned from her fourth employment. In related
to immigrant’s remittance, this is in line as what argues by Lipton (1980), that migrants tend to use their first remittances to pay off
debts, financing their children and daily consumption, but not for productive
investment.
Despite
the financial difficulties at the beginning of the employment and uncertainty
feeling that she could cope with all the changes and new things at the new
place, along the journey it gave opportunities for Eva to develop her individual
capacity and network. She learned new skills and knowledge, including
communication and entrepreneurial attitudes. While she learned some violence
and abuse suffered by her peers, she shaped her thinking and social-empathy about
workers and human rights. She also gained benefits from the networks she
established, especially with the recruitment agency, where later gave her a
more simplified process when she re-applied the employment. She established and
maintained a relationship with her past employers, which physiologically made
her feel part of a big international family. She admitted that there was
conflict and misunderstanding during her first employment with her employer,
but those were not serious and no physical violence involved. Most of her
employers taught her lots of new things and placed her in safe and friendly-family
workplaces. Vice verse, as according to Eva, they learned about Indonesian
cultures from her, such as Indonesian cuisines and traditional Sumatran songs
and dances she taught to the children of her past employers and group of youth
Singaporeans. After all, despite there
may be situation where hiring female domestic worker means the invasion of the
private space of the employer (Gill, 1994), however both parties could benefited from the process (Devasahayam, 2010). As states at the UN Report (2008), migration enables people in both sending and receiving countries
to improve their living standards, support their families and contribute
significantly to the productivity of their economy. In addition to cases like
Eva, it also enables transfers of cultures and diversity across international
migration.
Particularly
during Eva’s employment in Hong Kong, she built contact with some civil society
organizations that work on migrant workers issues. This network have contributed
in building her understanding about the importance to protect migrant workers,
and taught her to be an effective resource and spoke person on her later life
as advocate for worker’s rights. When she returned to Indonesia, the issues of
migrant workers have just started as political debates and discourses in the
country. She came and talked as the contributor from the field, giving insights
and shares her experiences to her community, politicians and policy-makers. As
a result from the long debates towards migrants workers, in late 2012,
Indonesia signed the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights
of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (ICMW), and currently in
the progress on revising the aforementioned 2004 law on migrant workers to
enhance the protection of Indonesian domestic workers in overseas. This
reflected the development theory’s view in seeing return migrants as “agent of
development” bring home not only money, but also innovation in ideas, skills
and knowledge (Haas, 2010).
Conclusion & Lesson Learned
Over half a million workers officially leave Indonesia every year
to work as migrant workers, with the vast majority of them are women work in
the domestic sector. Economic factors
such as lack of employment opportunities, low wages and land shortage in the
rural areas have been identified as some of the reasons why people in Indonesia
move to work abroad. Whereas the non-economic factor such as to maintain social
class and status, independence and the right to have happiness in life have
also triggered people, especially women in the rural to move and migrate.
Adding to this, the pull factor in destination countries that provide job opportunities
for migrants. Some emigrants move because of economic factor, while others,
like Eva, because the combination of the two factors. Some forced to migrate
because of situation or trapped into human trafficking, whereas the others made
their own decision to move. In Eva case, she made the decision by herself, as
she wanted to make changes in her life and build better future.
Despite many
of them experience problem while working abroad and the national media
frequently reported cases of severe abuse and violence towards migrant workers,
this has not reduced the number of women to work abroad. Today, feminization of
migration has become a phenomenon in people movement across the world, as more
women today migrate to show their economic independence and mobility. Therefore
to ensure the wellbeing and protection of Indonesians migrant workers, close collaboration
need to be taken by the Government, Civil Society Organizations and labor
association. It also important to facilitate the departure training which not
only cover the skills in relation to their domestic work, but also knowledge
about their rights and basic understanding of legal regimes in the destination
countries, and a mechanism on how to access support to justice whenever problem
occurred. Those would not just be useful whenever they arrive in the
destination, but also as part of capacity building to the Indonesian migrant
workers. By doing this, we can expect to see more migrant return home like Eva
and can positively participate in the development in Indonesia.
Melbourne, Autumn 2014
Lia Marpaung-Abidin
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