The National Board for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Overseas Workers and the Bank Indonesia recorded the number of Indonesian workers as migrant workers in 2019, as being as many as 3,701 people. Data collected by the 2015 Intercensal Population Survey (SUPAS) showed that the number of people from the Indonesian population migrating abroad was 2,767,316. Economic pressure makes many people want a job, even though it may be far from their place of origin. One of the efforts is by migrating as international migrant workers, including female migrant workers (TKW). Ariani’s study (2013) showed that many women choose to be migrant workers because of limited employment in the area of origin, and there is a desire to improve the family economy. Previous studies have shown the cause of women becoming migrant workers being because of a husband’s insufficient income, in order to meet daily needs, thus they are forced to allow their wife to become a migrant worker.
Those women are willing to live far from their families and children in order to obtain an income to meet family needs. In addition to the feeling of loneliness when being separated from parents and children, this separation causes anxiety disorders. External factors, such as the success of their neighbors or relatives from migrating as workers, become a benchmark so that they are interested in working as a migrant worker. The candidate migrant workers do not have the same fate, as some are successful and earn a lot, but there are also those who are victims of violence by their employers.
In East Java, international migration of workers is popular among rural housewives, after seeing the success other migrants (economically) in the destination country. But behind the economic success in migrant workers’ families, there are some impacts arising in the family due to power shift from husband to wife within the scope of patriarchal culture. The case of divorce using a lawyer (lawyer) has begun to reach families living from the agricultural sector. This research was conducted using a qualitative approach. Informants were selected purposively by name by address through divorce records in the Office of Religious Affairs in three regencies of East Java, from the last 5 years.
The stories of divorce among migrant workers are similar to stories in soap opera and they are interesting to reveal, because they have far deeper implications than just an ordinary divorce case. Using a lawyer’s services in the case of family divorce in rural areas also seems unusual, especially when viewed from the constellation of life with agrarian characteristics, and is associated with the effects of temporary separation (celibacy) of husband and wife after the wife works abroad. There have been shifts in the value of women’s nature towards the emancipation of women in gender relations (in the context of cultural values, read: male authority) among migrant workers’ families – in particular, in making important decisions of farmer families in rural areas today. Moreover, there are differences in rationality underlying the decision to migrate temporarily abroad, (becoming a migrant worker) before leaving and after returning from abroad. In short, this study found that the position and roles of women in agricultural families are shifting.
For decades, the role of rural women was very insignificant, especially in relation to making important family decisions including their own decision to work abroad. Initiatives and decisions to divorce in paternalistic agrarian families are no longer dominated by the husband. The control of economic resources by women migrants has become a strong basis in increasing their bargaining position, thus causing the husband’s authority bought by his wife. The economic resource base of women migrants and the separation of husband and wife in a relatively long time have triggered divorce in migrant families.
Author: Ida Bagus Wirawan & Siti Mas’udah
Link related to the article above: https://www.ijicc.net/images/vol_13/13197_Wirawan_2020_E_R.pdf
