In Sickness and in Wealth: Migration, Gendered Morality, and Central Java, by Carol Chan

Bijdragen tot de taal- land- en volkenkunde / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia, vol. 176, pp. 578–580

Abstract

The recent decision of the Indonesian government to lift a covid-19 ban on the recruitment and placement of Indonesian migrant workers was received with strong opposition from labor rights groups.They envisaged a haphazard process, which cannot guarantee migrants' health and safety in their destination country.The new decree aimed at supporting the recovery of the domestic economy during the transition to the so-called "covid-19 new normal" (The Jakarta Post, August 4, 2020).Wahyu Susilo, director of the ngo Migrant Care, reminds us that placement of migrants is used again and again as a solution of the state's economic crises.The government is always actively involved in those situations.However, when there is a problem with oversees migrant workers, the issue is personalized and seen as an individual responsibility (Kompas, August 13, 2020).This debate highlights exactly the assumptions which Carol Chan tackles in her excellent book In Sickness and in Wealth.Transnational labor migration is first of all considered an economic advantage for the state (foreign exchange), simultaneously luring migrant workers with the opportunity of a successful job to support their family at home.Chan's research offers us a refreshing new perspective, presenting a different reality that does not just focus on remittances and success, but includes sickness and failure, analyzing a transnational circulation not only of finance, but also of bodies and labor.Her rich and comprehensive ethnography is based on participant observation and interviews between 2012-2016 in three Central Java villages, including visits to relevant stakeholders higher up in the migration infrastructure.It unfolds Indonesian migrant women's lives, the largest group of migrant domestic workers globally, and gives us a new understanding of their village communities.Chan adds gendered morality to the transnationalmigration discourse and explains why Indonesian migrant workers, despite the potential risks of migration (debts, sickness, and worse), still continue to try to get a job far away.She shows "how precarious labor migration is practically and financially sustained, tolerated, or encouraged, to various degrees, in migrant-origin villages through gendered and moral discourses of shame and faith, despite the high risks and costs to villagers in terms of finance, health, and mortality" (p.5).The book starts with contextualizing the historical, political, and religious forces that shaped present transnational Indonesian migration.It is estimated that at the time of the research some six million Indonesians, both documented and undocumented, worked overseas, with the majority being domestic work-

Authors 1

1. Mies Grijns corresponding Aachen

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   1 Leiden University The Netherlands Leiden