Love in the melting pot: ethnic intermarriage in Jakarta

ABSTRACT

Jakarta has long been a prime destination for migrants across the ethnically diverse Indonesian archipelago. Using qualitative insights from fieldwork and data from the 2010 Census, this paper examines patterns and drivers of ethnic intermarriage in Jakarta. Jakarta has the highest rate of interethnic marriage in Indonesia (33%). Among married adults aged 20–39, recent migrants have a notably lower likelihood of intermarriage than non-migrants and non-recent migrants. Fieldwork findings suggest that despite the decline in the practice of arranged marriage, third party influence and broader social structures continue to influence individuals’ preferences on who they should and should not marry. The popular notion that marriage signifies the union of two families reflects the unrelenting influence of parents and kinship networks in family formation decisions, and in contributing to a norm of ethnic assortative mating. Studying ethnic intermarriage in one of the world’s largest metropolises contributes to two growing strands of scholarship in social demography: the literature on assortative mating in multi-ethnic developing societies, and the literature on marriage transitions in Asia.

KEYWORDS:

• Marriage
• migration
• Indonesia
• Jakarta
• ethnicity
• intermarriage

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 See https://www.bps.go.id/KegiatanLain/view/id/127.

2 Data for the province of Jakarta based on Intercensal Survey 2015. Data for the population of districts in Greater Jakarta based on 2010 Population Census.https://www.bps.go.id/website/pdf_publikasi/Penduduk-Indonesia-hasil-SUPAS-2015_rev.pdf.

3 A recent migrant here refers to an individual whose place of residence 5 years prior to census date was different to his/her current province of residence. About 7.3 per cent of Jakarta’s population were recent migrants.

4 This is in contrast to Jakarta’s colonial past. Jakarta evolved from the port city of Batavia – the trading capital of the Dutch East Indies Company. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century, ethnic Balinese, Bugis, Ambonese, Bandanese and the Moors were concentrated in their ethnic kampungs (urban settlements) outside the city centre. Central Batavia was occupied by the Dutch, the Chinese, and the Mardjikers (Asian Christians). This residential segregation along ethnic lines was commonly found across other colonial cities in Southeast Asia (Evers, 1975).

5 I have effectively excluded other married couples in the household whose household relationship status falls beyond these two categories (for example daughter to the head of household or child-in-law). As the census data is originally stored for each individual embedded within a household, it was hard to match the correct husband-wife pairs, such as in the case where there are multiple married couples living in the same household, and when they are not enumerated as the head or the spouse to head of the household. Co-resident polygamous individuals were also excluded from the analysis.

6 For example: the novel titled Raumanen by Marianne Katoppo (1977); the movie Ci(n)ta by Sammaria Simandjuntak 2009; the movie Cinta Tapi Beda by Hanung Brahmantyo (2012).

7 For example: https://life.idntimes.com/relationship/erwanto/11-hal-yang-kamu-pasti-rasakan-jika-punya-pasangan-beda-suku;

8 See for example: http://showbiz.liputan6.com/read/2163308/pacaran-beda-keyakinan-junior-liem-dan-putri-titian-jalani-saja.