Daughters and Displacement: Migration Dynamics in an Indonesian Transmigration Area

This study considers the ways 'indigenous' people have responded to the constraints and opportunities posed by the Indonesian government's transmigration programme in North Lampung, Sumatra. Migration is of increasing importance to the livelihoods of this group; particularly that involving the employment-related movement of young, unmarried women to the export-oriented factory zones of West Java. Female migration is notable in the context of customs confining unmarried women to the house, and negating their working in agriculture. The paper explores how factory migration has developed, drawing on field work conducted in 1994 and during the economic crisis in 1998, and focusing on the shifting terrain of intrahousehold power relations and decision-making in the community. Key to understanding migration dynamics in this area is the emergence of a culturally-conditioned social network linking village and city. This network has altered the terms upon which migration decisions and remittance practices are made, and may have cushioned.