Work and Cosmopolitanism at the Border: Indonesian Women Labour Migrants

Abstract

Crossing borders for work is commonly recognised as an important opportunity to enhance cross-cultural skills. Implicit here is the assumption that labour migration entails a level of cross-cultural receptivity as the basis for learning new skills etc.; a trait that in its expanded sense is also central to the discussion of cosmopolitanism. This paper explores the relationship between work and cosmopolitanism, enquiring into the influence of the concrete conditions of cross-border work on the potential for cosmopolitan engagement. The analysis focuses on four categories of cross-border work undertaken by Indonesian women from Sambas in West Kalimantan. The findings illuminate three work-related factors that shaped these women's engagement with cross-border cultural and social differences that are arguably relevant to other cross-border workers: the type of work, the nature of workplace relations and women's access to independent social spaces outside of work. These findings support the argument that our understanding of cosmopolitanism could be enriched by further study into the conditioning of cultural openness and critical reflexivity at work.

Keywords:

• Cosmopolitanism
• Cross-border Work
• Women
• Indonesia
• Migration

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges with gratitude Dr Anne Loveband's comments on an earlier draft of this paper and thanks to two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The attitude of locals towards migrants is clearly an important area of further research (see for example, Loveband 2004), but one that goes beyond the scope of this paper. In relation to Indonesian migrants to Malaysia specifically, there is evidence of a decline in Malaysians’ openness towards Indonesian labour migrants over time (Spaan, van Naerssen, and Kohl 2002; Crinis 2005), as well as an increasing willingness to use harsh and punitive measures against undocumented, including caning by Malaysian authorities and civilian members of Malaysia's People's Volunteer Corps (RELA; Devadson and Chan 2014).

Additional information

Funding

The research that this paper draws on was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant, ‘Translocal Identities in the Malay world’ [grant number DP0771272].