No abstract

This paper examines the return journeys of Indonesian migrant domestic workers to their home towns. When migrant workers return home, the Indonesian government sets them apart from other travellers in order to protect the migrants from extortion in the airport environment, and assist them during their return to their home villages. We investigate how this separate passage results in a mobility regime that produces differences between regular travellers and migrant worker travellers, and between male and female migrant workers. We also examine how the mobility regime results in particular forms of control over and safety of migrant workers' mobility. In doing so, we argue that the politics of mobility not only can be studied at the scale of global circuits, or at nodes such as the workplace, but also in relation to the actual journeys that migrant workers make.

This article contributes to the 'mobilities turn' in social science by proposing new concepts and methods for analysing the ways in which people draw upon a range of resources to manage everyday mobility. We distinguish between the 'projects' people want to achieve and the 'passages' they need to go through in order to do so. We also distinguish between 'pretravelling' and 're-ordering'. The analysis builds on insights from time-geography, mobility studies and actor-network-theory to develop a conceptual vocabulary for understanding the dynamic and situated nature of travel in everyday life. The study combines qualitative and quantitative data from a study of hypermobile people in the Netherlands.

No abstract

No abstract