The corridor linking Indonesia with Malaysia is particularly rife with transborder mobility, including large-scale labour migration. While irregularity has long been a major feature of these flows, much of the movement now falls under the migration regimes adopted by Malaysia and Indonesia. Long-established casual migration flows collide with recently codified norms and, as a result, oscillate between regularity and irregularity. This paper explores the following questions: How does the regulatory state view and handle undocumented migrants? How does it interact with established social networks that have facilitated irregular labour migration? Particular attention is given to the distinction between the categories of deportable criminals and victims deserving protection, as ascribed by state actors to certain groups of migrants. Based on interviews with twelve deported Florenese migrant workers, the paper discusses how the Indonesian-Malaysian migration regime seeks to shape mobility. It argues that shifting categorisations reflect political imperatives more than the migrants’ needs that prompt them to migrate in the first place.
Amartya Sen introduces the concept of capabilities, i.e. what people are able to do and to be, as a non-economic measure in the development evaluation. This essay seeks to explore how this concept deals with the issues of values and politics, which in many cases determines people’s identity. The main argument is that the concept of capabilities is built around a certain individualistic view of human beings, whereas identity suggests a more complex picture. As such, Sen’s capability approach cannot properly address the issue of identity and risks losing important insights which may contribute to people’s well being.
Keywords: Amartya Sen, capability approach, identity, development, justice.
Abstrak: Amartya Sen memperkenalkan konsep kapabilitas, yakni apa yang dapat dilakukan oleh seseorang dan bagaimana ia dapat menjadi dirinya, sebagai tolok ukur non-ekonomik dalam evaluasi pembangunan. Artikel ini berupaya mengkaji bagaimana konsep ini dapat diselaraskan dengan nilai-nilai identitas dan politik, yang dalam banyak hal menentukan apa yang dianggap oleh banyak orang sebagai nilai. Argumen yang dikemukakan dalam artikel ini adalah bahwa konsep mengenai kapabilitas dibangun atas sebuah pandangan individualistik mengenai manusia, sementara identitas menyiratkan sebuah gambaran yang lebih kompleks. Dipahami secara demikian, pendekatan kapabilitas Sen tidak dapat menanggapi permasalahan identitas secara memadai dan beresiko kehilangan insight penting yang justru dapat memberi sumbangan bagi kesejahteraan manusia.
Kata-kata kunci: Amartya Sen, pendekatan kapabilitas, identitas, perkembangan, keadilan.
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