Reconceptualising ‘home’, ‘family’ and ‘self’: identity struggles in domestic migrant worker returnee narratives

ABSTRACT

This article reports on a study of domestic migrant worker returnee narratives. The stories were recorded in villages in Java, Indonesia, and the women talk about their experience of remigration. Because of years of separation, family members are ‘family’ only in name, and the familiar concept of ‘home’ has become a strange place. The homecoming therefore involves attempts to redefine ‘self’ and ‘home’, and to reconnect emotionally with estranged family members. The article also considers returnee narratives as a critique of current identity research, which assumes that everybody ‘has’ or ‘owns’ an identity, but fails to recognise that for many people in developing countries, identity is an enforced position for which there is no alternative. It has to be occupied and it is not attributed with any prestige and therefore, cannot be used a resource for enhancing privilege. Finally, the article argues that migrant workers’ experiences should be included in our thinking about globalisation and intercultural communication.

Denne artikel analyserer narrativer fortalt af hjemvendte indonesiske emigrantarbejdere. Narrativerne blev optaget i landsbyer på Java, og kvinderne deler deres erfaringer med at vende hjem. På grund af mange års adskillelse er nære familiemedlemmer kun familie af navn, og hjemmet er for mange blevet et fremmed sted. Det betyder at hjemkomsten medfører et behov for at redefinere kendte koncepter som ‘individ’ og ‘hjem’, samt at genetablere forbindelsen til fremmedgjorte familiemedlemmer. Artiklen foretager også en kritisk diskussion af den standende identitetsforskning, som antager at alle ‘har’ eller ‘ejer’ en identitet, men ikke anerkender at for mange mennesker i udviklingslandene er identiteten ikke selvvalgt. Den er derimod påtvunget og er ikke behæftet med nogen prestige, og kan derfor ikke bruges til at opnå privilegier. Til slut argumenterer artiklen for at emigrantarbejderes erfaringer skal indgå i vores teoretisering omkring globalisering og interkulturel kommunikation.

KEYWORDS:

• Domestic migrant workers
• returnee narratives
• discourse analysis
• identity struggles
• disenfranchised groups
• globalisation

Acknowledgements

Staff and volunteers at Pathfinders organised my fieldtrip to Indonesia and I’m immensely grateful for their support. My gratitude also goes to the Indonesian migrant worker NGOs who helped me, and to all the migrant worker returnees who willingly shared their stories with me – many of them personal and painful. I’ll never forget the moments we shared and the stories I heard! I also want to thank two anonymous reviewers and the editor for very useful comments on an earlier version of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Hans J. Ladegaard studied at Odense University, Denmark and Cambridge University, England. He is Professor and Head of the Department of English at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His research interests include intercultural/intergroup communication, language attitudes and stereotypes, narratives of migration, and pragmatics and discourse analysis. He has been involved in research and voluntary work with domestic migrant workers sine 2008. He is Co-Editor and Review Editor of Pragmatics & Society (John Benjamins).

Notes

1 It is difficult to know the actual number of migrants leaving Indonesia annually because sizeable numbers leave the country through illegal means. It has been estimated that the number of undocumented migrants is 2–4 times the number of documented migrants. Migration through legal channels has dropped significantly in recent years because the Indonesian government has banned the deployment of DMWs to a number of countries because of widespread reports of abuse, particularly in the Middle East. This also explains why female migration has decreased from 80% in 2007 to 60% in 2014 (Paul, 2017).

2 The Filipina women’s experiences are generally very different and will be analysed in another publication.

3 All names are pseudonyms.

Additional information

Funding

The research in this article was supported by the University Grants Committee of Hong Kong [grant number PolyU 2444/13H].