Parental migration and the educational enrolment of left-behind children: evidence from rural Ponorogo, Indonesia

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the effects of parental migration on children’s educational enrolment following the recent reforms in Indonesian educational policy. We find that, in general, parental migration has a positive impact on school enrolment, although this varies by the child’s age and the gender of the migrant parent. Parental migration has an adverse impact on the school enrolment of younger children who are eligible for free education, but a positive impact on older children who are no longer able to access state educational support. The gender of the migrant parent matters, as paternal migration appears to have a more positive impact on children’s educational enrolment than maternal migration. Maternal migration is associated with a reduction of younger children’s likelihood of a being in school, while paternal migration makes no difference to their school enrolment. For older children, maternal migration has a lower positive impact compared to paternal migration. Our qualitative interviews also show mixed findings: some children appreciate their migrant mothers’ migration efforts and are motivated to persevere in continuing education, while others are weighed down by their migrant mothers’ sacrifice and develop a sense of obligation to reduce their financial burdens by leaving education early to enter paid employment.

KEYWORDS:

• Parental migration
• left-behind children
• education enrolment
• public education support
• gender roles
• Indonesia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Silvia Mila Arlini http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8381-3773

Brenda S. A. Yeoh http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0240-3175

Khoo Choon Yen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9538-7118

Elspeth Graham http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3968-8423

Notes

1 Both studies on Indonesia (Lu, 2014; Nguyen & Purnamasari, 2011) focused on children age 6–18 years and did not distinguish their age-cohort, making it difficult to know which group of children potentially received relevant public education benefits. They also used data collected before the nine-year compulsory education policy was implemented.

2 Only Myanmar has a free education policy for five years.

3 However, scholarships may be awarded in exceptional circumstances.

4 The measurement of income includes remittances that are not limited to those sent by migrant parents but include any sent by other household members or even other people/relatives outside the household. The multicollinearity test indicates that there is no correlation between household income inclusive of remittances and parental migration status in our empirical data. In fact, accounting for remittances within household income allows us to argue that any residual parental migration effect works through an alternative non-financial pathway, such as socio-emotional support or motivating the child.

Additional information

Funding

This work has been funded by UK Aid from the UK government through the Migrating out of Poverty (MOOP) Research Programme Consortium; however the views expressed do not necessarily reflect the UK government’s official policies.