The Impact of the Economic Crisis on International Migration: The Case of Indonesia

Abstract

The severe and long crisis that hit Indonesia has affected many facets of the country's life, including migration into and from Indonesia. The paper describes the worsening of economic conditions in Indonesia, which may last until at least the end of 1998. Emigration pressures on both the skilled and unskilled labor force will keep rising. The paper argues that leaving out market forces in the government policies of Indonesia as well as those of the host countries are only likely to lead to illegal migration. The main recommendation of the paper is to have a comprehensive liberalization policy which considers market forces in the larger context of international relations. The issue of out-migration from Indonesia should be seen simultaneously with the entry of international labor, trade and capital to Indonesia.

Migration decision-making and migration industry in the Indonesia–Malaysia corridor

“…2. For more details on past and present formal requirements and procedures, see Ananta et al (1998), Hugo (1995), Spaan (1999) andBNP2TKI (2013). 3.…”

Factors Influencing Indonesian Women Becomes Migrant Workers

“…In some woman, their roles as mothers and wives devoted to the maintenance of a stable, nurturing, domestic environment were central to the state's vision of an orderly and morally controlled nation. Yet the state's production of idealized bourgeois femininity as naturally linked to the home and hearth (Robinson, 1991;Shiraishi, 1997;Sen, 1998) was complicated in the state's own promotion of class specific gender ideologies that encouraged lowincome women's separation from kin in certain situations (Stivens, 1990;Sunindyo, 1996;Ananta et al, 1998). In order to work as a domestic in Saudi Arabia, most migrants leave their families, including their children in many cases, behind in Indonesia.…”

Mobilizing Piety: Gendered Morality and Indonesian–Saudi Transnational Migration

“…In research on Indonesian people's migration to Saudi Arabia in particular, religious identity is often mentioned as an aside rather than analyzed as an explicit central feature of migration (e.g. Spaan, 1999;Hugo, 1992;Ananta et al, 1998;Cremer, 1988;Robinson, 1991; although for an important exception see Robinson, 2000). Yet for Indonesian women migrants to Saudi Arabia, religious discourses shape every aspect of the mobility experience, and inflections of religion are particularly salient in the emotional dimensions of migration narratives.…”

“…Between 1983 and 1987 the government recorded 223,579 migrants to Saudi Arabia, and between 1989 and 1994 the total rose to 384,822 (Amjad, 1996, p.345), and then to 780,033 for the years 2001(Depnakertrans, 2006. Saudi Arabia thus receives more legal immigrant workers than any other country (Amjad, 1996), although since 1998 Indonesian labor has also Gendered Morality and Indonesian-Saudi Migration 223 increasingly been directed to other countries in Asia as well as destinations in the Middle East (Ananta et al, 1998;Hugo, 2002). Beyond these formal numbers, many people travel from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia without completing the required documentation.…”