Keywords: Cosmopolitanism; Cross-border Work; Women; Indonesia; .... linguistically, the official languages of Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei derive from.
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Work and Cosmopolitanism at the Border: Indonesian Women Labour Migrants Wendy Mee Published online: 07 Jul 2015.
Click for updates To cite this article: Wendy Mee (2015): Work and Cosmopolitanism at the Border: Indonesian Women Labour Migrants, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2015.1049589 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2015.1049589
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Work and Cosmopolitanism at the Border: Indonesian Women Labour Migrants
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Wendy Mee
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
Over two decades ago, Hannerz (1990) inquired into the affinity between particular transnational professions and cosmopolitanism. Within the decade, Werbner (1999) and others reoriented this enquiry to the study of non-elite, ‘working class’ cosmopolitans. Building on these foundations, subsequent studies have furthered our appreciation of how work can give rise to specific articulations of cosmopolitanism (see, for example, Cohen 2004; Pécoud 2004; Hannerz 2007; Werbner 2008; Salazar 2010; Devika 2012). This paper likewise grounds a discussion of cosmopolitanism in the quotidian world of work, in this case, the cross-border work of a group of Indonesian women. Wendy Mee, is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Inquiry, La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC 3086, Australia. Correspondence to: La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC 3086, Australia. E-mail: w.mee@ latrobe.edu.au © 2015 Taylor & Francis
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The question of how Indonesia’s rural communities manage and interpret social and cultural diversity is an important one. Continued, intensified market expansion has made non-farm and off-farm work critical to the reproduction of farms and rural communities across Indonesia (Leinbach 2004). In a context of ‘multi-local livelihoods’ (Elmhirst 2008), labour migration has become one of the most important accumulation strategies of rural Indonesians. A reliance on labour migration is also a feature of rural women’s working lives in the border zones of Indonesian Borneo, where labour migration overwhelmingly takes the form of cross-border international labour migration. The following case study employs a ‘cross-border work’ lens to consider the circumstances that shape the development of cosmopolitan dispositions amongst a group of female labour migrants from the regency of Sambas in West Kalimantan. The focal point of the paper is an investigation of four categories of cross-border work: factory work, songket weaving, domestic work and cross-border trading. Crossborder work presents women in this study with the opportunity to explore and reflect upon perceptions of national, social and cultural differences. The women’s comments also depict a range of cosmopolitan dispositions emerging out of their experience of cross-border work and document how their ability to explore and reflect upon cultural and social differences was shaped in significant ways by the externalities of labour mobility. Here the contours of a geographically situated cosmopolitanism amongst the women is visible, but one that is unevenly developed and, to date, underinvestigated (see, also, Robbins 1998, 2). The question of how this might also be a gendered expression of cosmopolitanism is beyond the scope of this paper, however, and is left for later investigation. This study enriches our understanding of the dynamics of cosmopolitanism by taking a comparative approach to the study of cross-border workers’ engagement with cultural and social differences. The examination of four types of cross-border work brings to light three work-related factors that shaped women’s cosmopolitan orientations: the type of work, workplace relations and women’s independent access to social spaces beyond the workplace. As discussed below, the women’s experiences of the same category of work varied, as did their personal circumstances and goals. Nevertheless, the circumstances of women’s cross-border work affected their cosmopolitan possibilities, suggesting the applicability of a cross-border work lens to the study of cosmopolitanism. The case study also provides a fresh perspective on Indonesian women’s labour migration. The extensive literature on Indonesia’s female transnational labour migrants has mostly focused on one category of worker, the domestic worker (see, for example, Hasan Gaffar 2011; Loveband 2004; Silvey 2004, 2006). In common with this literature, this study also notes how the acquisition of cross-cultural competencies and personal skills is a positive feature of labour migration. The paper explores new ground in its discussion of how such competencies and skills may constitute an important component of women’s cosmopolitanism. In summary, this comparative case study of work deepens our understanding of the dynamics of cosmopolitanism and also constitutes meaningful ethnographic
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research on Indonesian labour migration. Next, I provide an outline on the study’s methodology and field site, Sambas. This latter discussion includes a note on Sambas’ geographical and cultural proximity to Sarawak and Brunei. A discussion of cosmopolitanism follows, including my summation of how women in this study valued the cross-cultural dimensions of cross-border work. This leads directly into an analysis of the four categories of work, before a discussion of some findings framed in terms of the work-related effects on women’s cross-cultural receptivity and critical reflexivity.
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Methodology I came to know the 22 women whose stories populate this paper in Sambas in 2008, 2009 and briefly in 2010. In 2008 and then again in 2009, I lived in Sambas for three months to research translocal Malay identity. On another occasion, I visited Sarawak and Brunei, where I visited the cross-border market in Serikin and met songket weavers from Sambas. The women’s ages varied from 18 years to early 40s and all came from rural households where agriculture was central, but insufficient to cover their household’s needs. The women’s relatively low economic status was also reflected in their educational attainment. Half of the women left school during or at the completion of junior high school; and while about a quarter of the women had started senior high school, none had completed it. The remaining quarter had not gone beyond primary school. Eighteen of the women I first met when conducting village surveys, which contained an interview component on women’s cross-border work. Later, I met three songket weavers and a second-hand clothing trader, who had worked in Brunei and Sarawak, respectively. I also interviewed staff at the Sambas Department of Manpower and Transmigration and talked to one registered and two unregistered labour agents. Most of my interaction with respondents occurred in conversational or social contexts and field notes were made by hand. Only three interviews were recorded: one with a cross-border trader and two with songket weavers. Introduction to Sambas The international border with Sarawak, and beyond that, with Brunei, is a significant feature in the livelihood strategies of Sambas’ agricultural/working classes, with crossborder labour migration now an established component of village life and economy for both men and women. Sambas workers receive higher wages and more nonagricultural work opportunities in Sarawak and Brunei. Since the late 1970s, men from Sambas have worked across the border in the timber, industrial, palm oil and construction sectors. Sarawak has been a particularly popular destination. Not only is the per capita income there almost six times higher than that of West Kalimantan (Bariyah, Lau, and Abu Manor 2012), but also there are historical precedents of crossborder trade and migration. From the 1990s, Sambas women increasingly pursued
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cross-border work, notably in the service and industrial sectors. As one second-hand clothes trader said, the administrative centre of Sambas is a kota mati (literally: dead city), where it is difficult to find work. She added that working as a farmer (pergi ke lading) does not yield much income or even a regular one, given the seasonal nature of farming. Therefore, she continued, Sambas women cross the nearby borders for work, as she had done for several years. Women’s labour migration in this paper thus involves a very particular context, one where women are close to two international borders (East Malaysia and Brunei). Many were relaxed about the legality of their migration status (see also, Eilenberg and Wadley 2009; Ford and Lyons 2011) and in one study of Sambas Malay domestic workers, half of respondents entered Malaysia on forged documents organised by unlicensed agents (Hasan Gaffar 2011, 119). Many were of the view that there is no material divide between Sambas and Sarawak: ‘only the ground is different and there’s no fence’ (hanya beda tanah dan tidak ada pagar), and that it is worth taking a risk as the fine if caught is low (kalau di Malaysiakan dendanya kecil jadi orang berani). However, a worker’s illegal status can be exploited by their employer—as in the case of the Brunei domestic worker below. In this situation, the significance of women’s legal status for the acquisition of cosmopolitan orientations cannot be underestimated. Geographical proximity also corresponded with a level of linguistic and cultural proximity in this border zone. Sambas is a predominantly Malay regency, but around 20% of its inhabitants are non-Malays, most of whom are Dayak peoples, that is, nonMalay indigenous peoples, and Indonesians of Chinese background. This ethnic constitution is similar to that of Sarawak and Brunei, although the ratio of Malays to Dayaks and Chinese differs in each place. There are also cultural and religious similarities that Malay Muslims in Sarawak, Brunei and Sambas share, and, linguistically, the official languages of Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei derive from the same (Malay) root. In this context, crossing borders for work does not necessarily incur the levels of stress and unfamiliarity that we might associate with stereotypical ‘international’ labour migration (Eilenberg and Wadley 2009). Cosmopolitanism Robin Cohen (2004, 141) noted the ‘fresh appeal’ of cosmopolitanism, while David Harvey (2000, 25)—more cynically—announced that cosmopolitanism is ‘back’. My own interest was aroused by one of the most productive research areas on cosmopolitanism in recent years, namely ‘vernacular cosmopolitanism’. The study of vernacular cosmopolitanism emerged from an interest in the subjectivities of working class and non-elite transnational migrants (Werbner 1999; Cohen 2004) and quickly consolidated the claim that ‘cosmopolitanism can find fertile soil in many cultures and many contexts’ (Vertovec and Cohen 2002, 16). Two implications of vernacular cosmopolitanism are relevant to this paper. The first is the now broadly accepted idea that it is not only ‘everyday’ or ‘ordinary’ cosmopolitanism that is both
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‘grounded and unbounded’ (Werbner 2008, 21); rather, all cosmopolitanisms are necessarily ‘rooted’ in the local, particular and familiar (Appiah 2005, 241). Consequently, a ‘pure’ value-neutral cosmopolitanism is impossible, and a total suspension of class, ethnic and other distinctions implausible. The second feature is that cosmopolitanism is best understood in its plurality and particularity (Kahn 2009, 32). What, then, characterises the rooted and particular cosmopolitanism of the crossborder workers in this study? To address this question, I have distilled women’s comments on the enlarged personal, social and cultural possibilities of cross-border work. While financial considerations were central to their participation in cross-border work, they also talked openly about their broader observations and impressions of working across the border (see, also, Williams 2007). Cross-border work was associated with the direct experience of new cultural and social settings, the acquisition of new skills and the establishment of relationships with people from different sociocultural or national backgrounds. In the following analysis, I propose that these three dimensions of cross-border work provide a relevant set of measures against which to evaluate the cosmopolitan potential of the women’s work. As discussed below, not all women were afforded the same opportunity to pursue all three attributes to the same extent, or even at all, and often determinant here were the conditions and relations of women’s work and mobility. As will become clear below, the cosmopolitan orientations of the female cross-border workers in this study are different from both working-class cosmopolitanisms found elsewhere and other expressions of cosmopolitanism found in Sambas. For example, there was little evidence in my study of a developed anti-capital or ‘subaltern’ cosmopolitanism (see, for example, Werbner 1999; Parry 2008; Zeng 2014) and limited overlap between the cosmopolitanism of these cross-border workers and the cosmopolitan ‘awareness’ (or arivu) of female activists, whose civic cosmopolitanism is framed by discourses of democracy, civil rights and gender equality (Ram 2008; see also, Robinson 2008). And there was only one group of workers—songket weavers— whose cross-border work in Brunei intersected to any degree with a translocal ‘Malay world’ cosmopolitanism articulated by a number of cultural and political organisations in Sambas (Mee 2010; see also Kahn 2006; Sakai 2009; Long 2013). This does not mean, however, that women’s comments on cross-border work lacked comparative or reflexive depth. As I discuss below, women’s cross-border encounters prompted a number of direct comparisons and reflections on the nature of the differences between Sambas and the other side of the border. However, not all women participated to the same degree in the ‘reflexive interrelation of cultures’ (Delanty 2012, 6), and again, work-related factors played a role in establishing the preconditions for their reflexivity. Women’s responses ranged from more pragmatic utilisation of cross-cultural competencies through to enduring engagements with people’s ‘Otherness’. For some, their evaluation was framed in terms of rather static categories of difference; for others, their experiences led them to question the takenfor-grantedness of such categories. This recalls Skrbis and Woodward’s (2007)
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observation that there are different ‘cosmopolitan dispositions’, ranging from the more instrumental cultivation of cultural-symbolic competencies through to the conscious fostering of knowledge, understanding and appreciation of Others/ness. Indeed, there is now a suite of adjectives in the literature on cosmopolitanism that attempts to capture the difference between forms of cosmopolitanism deemed more or less critically reflexive. These encompass cosmopolitanisms understood as relatively depthless and transitory (such as ‘spectral’, ‘accidental’ and ‘sampling’) and those assessed as committed and enduring (such as ‘authentic’, ‘reflexive’, ‘organic’, ‘critical’ and ‘immersive’), as well as a few that can fall either way (namely ‘banal’, ‘mundane’ and ‘strategic’). There is a related tendency to attach judgements of inauthenticity and superficiality to forms of cosmopolitanism characterised as utilitarian and pragmatic. For example, Glick Schiller, Darieva and Gruner-Domic (2011) go to questionable lengths to remove traces of utilitarian motive from their concept of cosmopolitan sociability. Yet it is not clear why (or even how) more instrumentalist intentions are to be expunged from ‘the human capacity to create social relations of inclusiveness and openness to the world’ (Glick Schiller, Darieva, and Gruner-Domic 2011, 402). In Pécoud’s (2004) article on German-Turk entrepreneurs, a form of cosmopolitanism is outlined that combines cross-cultural practical skills and competencies with an awareness of one’s own cultural specificity (see also Salazar 2010). Clearly in the context of work, both instrumentalism and openness to the world can coexist in ways that are difficult to distinguish. For this reason, judgements of authenticity are eschewed in the following analysis of workrelated cosmopolitanisms. However, judgements of reflexivity and an evaluation of how work-related factors may lead to more critical modes of reflexivity are not. This issue is revisited towards the end of the paper, where I consider the circumstances that accounted for women’s more or less critical questioning and reflexive forms of cosmopolitanism. Now, however, I proceed to an analysis of how work-related factors within the different categories of cross-border work impacted on women’s opportunity to engage with cultural differences. As we will see, their levels of investment in cross-border cultural orientations, practices and relationships differed in ways that were profoundly conditioned by the structure and organisation of their work.
Features of Cross-border Work Female cross-border workers’ opportunity to engage and explore cultural and social differences is the necessary first step to developing a level of cosmopolitan receptivity; it is also one shaped by the very nature and context of work. The following description of the four categories of cross-border work focuses on those features that most conditioned women’s capacity to explore the cultural and social qualities of their cross-border local, to develop skills and intercultural capacities and to establish cross-cultural relationships.
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Factory Work Factory workers constitute one of the largest streams of female cross-border labour from Sambas and also the largest group of cross-border workers in my sample. These 10 factory workers migrated as single women, aged in their mid to late teens, following the footsteps of sisters, brothers and fellow villagers. The contracts and travel documents for some factory workers were organised by one of the few local registered labour agents in Sambas. Many more relied on unregistered agents, who had assisted with both the documented and undocumented earlier migration of family members and other villagers. The transnational characteristics of factory work provided the women in this study with some of the best opportunities to acquire cosmopolitan orientations. This was particularly pronounced for Sambas women who worked in office jobs. One former office worker in a plywood factory described the good relationship developed with her manager, a Christian Malaysian from Sabah, East Malaysia, and how she had the opportunity to learn English from him. Now married and living in Sambas, she wanted her daughter to learn English to maximise her life prospects. Another woman had worked as an ‘office boy’ in a manufacturing factory managed by Chinese Malaysians. Working in a busy office, she had the opportunity to interact with both Chinese Malaysians and visiting Westerners. She laughingly recounted that initially she thought Westerners could not eat rice, because the Americans she met never ate any. During her time there, she formed a high opinion of her Chinese Malaysian colleagues. Describing her manager as ‘a good person’, she recalled invitations to eat with his family and join them on weekend trips. He also taught her business skills and she stressed how she saw this work as an opportunity to learn new things (cari ilmu). Having returned to Sambas, she attempts to apply these skills—what she called ‘the Chinese way’ of running a business—in selling second-hand clothing. She reflected upon her relationship with Chinese Indonesians in Sambas, who she viewed as more successful businesspeople than Sambas Malays, and with whom she sought to develop good relations in order to continue learning. These former migrants also expressed a very positive impression of Sarawak as an attractive place to live where the houses are lengkap (‘complete’, i.e., with running water, electricity, bathroom, etc.). The second-hand clothes trader commented that people in Malaysia earn enough to live and ‘can afford taxis’. She compared this to Sambas, reflecting that it was a shame for Sambas people that their life was so difficult, particularly as the people of Sambas and Sarawak share the one ‘land’ (tanah). Unlike the office workers above, most factory workers from Sambas worked on the factory floor. For these women, the cross-cultural benefits of the work were more limited. Instead, as young single women, the rewards of cross-border work were found outside work hours in socialising with other young migrants and, sometimes, Malaysian co-workers. Plywood factory workers typically lived in a hostel or group housing with other female labour migrants. This led inevitably to much socialising
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between Indonesian migrants—‘an intense world of peer-oriented companionship’ (Mills 1999, 131)—which was viewed by the women as a positive aspect of a factory worker’s life. These households and hostels were typically dominated by the two largest groups of Indonesian migrants, those from Java and Sambas. One former Sambas factory worker recounted how she enjoyed sharing a house with Javanese female factory workers. The house was cheerfully crowded (ramai) and living in the household relaxed and under the women’s own authority (bisa kita santaikan). Through her housemates she met her future Javanese husband. In this, she was not unique as the majority of factory workers I met had formed relationships with Javanese migrants. Despite their shared nationality, there were nevertheless linguistic and cultural differences in such unions and it is not unwarranted to suggest that women’s openness here also represented a form of enduring and intimate cosmopolitanism. The ability to independently socialise outside the workplace was central to these women establishing enduring relationships with the Indonesian migrants they met across the border. Yet not every workplace facilitated the forms of sociality required to build such ties. Songket Weaving Songket weaving introduces us to the specificities of Sambas as a Malay-dominated region. Songket is a woven fabric commonly worn by Malays across Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. In Sambas, the weavers come from a small number of villages, where weaving typically provides a supplementary source of income. Over the past 20 years, Sambas songket weavers have migrated to Brunei as documented migrant workers. These early migrant weavers brought back stories, savings and new skills, which resulted in other weavers migrating. The songket weavers’ contractual employment terms, such as pay, living arrangements and length of stay, were the most clearly defined of all the workers in this study. The terms of their contracts were not always fully honoured, however, particularly in relation to days-off. I interviewed four songket weavers who had worked in Brunei. Apart from wanting to earn money (uang tambahanlah), a further motivation was the opportunity to develop their weaving skills and expand their repertoire of motifs. Younger, unmarried weavers also viewed working in Brunei as an opportunity to find a husband and earn money while seeing the world (cari jodoh, cari duit sambil jalan-jalan). Socialising outside the workplace was more limited for the songket weavers in Brunei than for the factory workers in Sarawak. A principal reason was that songket weavers were contracted to live at their place of work (usually above or adjacent to the workshop) and their workplaces were both relatively small and homogenous. In one fairly typical workshop, there were six female migrant workers who lived above their place of work—four songket weavers from Sambas, a dress maker from Java and a Filipina embroiderer. Their employer lived elsewhere, and no weavers reported that employers ever became friends or incorporated them into their extended families or personal lives.
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The pace and demands of the work itself represented another key reason for more limited social engagement beyond the workplace. Many weavers described their experience in Brunei as one of working non-stop: benar-benar gak perhatian betul (‘truly without really stopping’). Most worked up to 10 hours daily with only one dayoff a month and a few public holidays across the year—such as the Sultan’s Birthday and at the end of the fasting month. Even then, it was the employer who determined whether they had a day-off. Women felt they should comply if asked to work: ‘we do whatever our employer instructs us to do’ (kita akan apa kata orang [majikan] suruh). There were other pragmatic factors that limited women’s independent social engagements in Brunei, such as the cost of food and limited public transport. In comparison, Sarawak provided affordable places to eat out and inexpensive options in public transport. Hence, women’s opportunities to socialise were limited to spending time with co-workers or other Indonesian migrants on their days-off. One weaver would meet with her two Sambas cousins whenever possible, who worked in catering and construction. Through her male cousin, she met and later married one of his Javanese co-workers, underlining once again the importance of family connections to migrant women’s personal and social life outside work. Despite limited opportunities for social interaction outside work, the nature of the work broadened women’s knowledge and cultural skills. Sambas weavers appreciated the neatness and quality of Brunei songket, describing it as rapi (neat), teliti (detailed), halus (refined), and aspired to reproduce it. In doing so, the weavers exemplify how techniques and materials are also central to the production of cosmopolitan social spaces (Gidwani and Sivaramakrishnan 2003). The weaving of songket also accentuated some weavers’ awareness of the historical ties between Brunei and Sambas as well as the sense of shared adat Melayu (Malay custom), including similarities in Malay dress for men (kain sampin [dan] kain sabuk, sama saja). One weaver had attended the Sultan of Brunei’s annual ‘open house’ for Muslim foreign workers at the end of the fasting month. Greeted by female members of the royal family, she felt Sambas weavers were welcome in Brunei (biasalah kite yang sukanya disana di Brunei) and foreigner workers respected (dihormati pekerja asing). The weaver mentioned above evaluated this matter of respect from a broader perspective. From the experience of her cousins and husband who worked in construction and catering, she felt Indonesian workers were treated with disdain. She resented Bruneians’ lack of respect for the hard work of foreign workers, who made Brunei wealthy (negara kaya dari tenaga kerja asing di Brunei). Nevertheless, she thought geography mitigated this disrespect and that ‘as people from Kalimantan’, they were shown greater respect. Domestic Work Foreign domestic work is the single most significant category of transnational work in Indonesia. It is not only the category of work that accounts for the majority of Indonesian female migrants (IOM 2010, 9), but also the reason why female migrants working abroad outnumber male migrants. I met four former domestic workers in
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the course of my research, who recounted both positive and negative experiences. One former domestic worker, who was 40 and married with children, was a domestic worker for several years when still young and single. An Indonesian family employed her, first working in Indonesia, then for several years in Malaysia and Scotland. Two other women had similarly worked before marriage but in Kuala Lumpur. The fourth foreign domestic worker had worked in Brunei for two and a half years for a Bruneian Malay family. Unmarried, she was in her early 30s when she first migrated. Her experience was very negative and, as an undocumented worker, she endured considerable fear of being reported. Several years later, she sought work again in Brunei, but this time as a documented worker with a registered agency. The experiences of the domestic workers further confirm that the nature of work is at least one element in the complex equation of skill, respect and cosmopolitanism. In the case of domestic workers, the story is told in reverse to songket weavers: specifically, domestic work is perceived to be of low value so can lead to the denigration of the worker. Unlike the other workers in this paper, no former domestic workers claimed that the nature of the work itself (e.g., cleaning, cooking, caring, childcare) broadened their horizons or resulted in enduring relationships, although clearly travelling and experiencing new cities could foster new understandings and cultural capacities. The potential to develop cosmopolitan skills and orientations as a result of mobility was strongest in the case of the former domestic worker employed by an Indonesian family in Bandung. She accompanied them first to Malaysia, then to Glasgow for three years. While in Glasgow, she travelled with the family to France on holidays and made the minor pilgrimage (umrah) to Mecca. She had the opportunity to observe Scottish life, see the tourist sights of Paris and develop her understanding and practice of Islam as a pilgrim—experiences that are exceptional for a village woman from Sambas. On the other hand, she did not develop foreign language skills or lasting ties with even the Indonesian family with whom she felt close. This example contrasts starkly with that of the domestic worker in Brunei, who cooked, cleaned and laundered at the beck and call of her female employer for two and half years. During this time, she did not have a regular day-off and often worked until the early hours of the morning. Her employer was demanding and verbally abusive, contributing to the woman feeling different, inferior and an outsider, despite being Malay, Muslim and living under the one roof. She said that she would silently cry but say nothing (diam-diam saja) as she was threatened with being reported for having overstayed her visa. This domestic worker had very limited opportunities to move beyond the house and subsequently developed an intense but skewed understanding of Brunei largely on the basis of her interactions within the one household. Ultimately, she returned to Sambas when she could no longer stand this treatment. The contrasting experience of the two domestic workers here is not unexpected. Hasan Gaffar’s (2011, 124) study of former Sambas Malay domestic workers also reflects differing experiences, with 8 out of 20 respondents reporting troubled
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migration experiences. Rather than try to explain this diversity, more relevant to the present discussion is to note how this variability is itself a consequence of the very nature of contemporary domestic work. Within the privatised sphere of the home, domestic workplace relations are by nature unpredictable, arbitrary and unequal. This, for better or worse, leaves workers vulnerable to the whims of employers (see Loveband 2009). The lack of control of domestic workers over their conditions of employment stands in stark contrast to the relative autonomy and independence of Sambas traders at Serikin’s weekend market.
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Cross-border Trading The last group of cross-border workers in this study is cross-border traders. Crossborder trading has a long history in this corner of West Kalimantan. While much of the trade involves natural resources, such as timber, there is also a lively trade in more prosaic, everyday items that takes advantage of currency and price differences between Indonesia and East Malaysia. The important cross-border market for Sambas traders is the weekend market at Serikin, where the four women in this analysis traded. These female traders came from the same village, one that is renowned for its rattan and bamboo handicrafts, which they produced for sale. The women followed a well-established trading route and as residents of a border zone, had border passes that permitted them to cross into the immediate border zone on the other side without a passport. The town of Serikin was perceived by the Sambas Malay traders as a Malaysian Dayak town. Differences were evident to them in the currency (Malaysian Ringgit) and the predominantly Dayak nature of Serikin (the absence of Malaysian Malays and a mosque, for example). Dissimilarity between Serikin and Indonesian towns was inscribed on the streetscape for these cross-border traders, who commented on the appearance of Serikin as an attractive town, with tidy houses and a neat, well-laid out market in contrast to Indonesian towns. Despite this sense of being somewhere ‘Other’, the Sambas traders felt comfortable in Serikin. First, they represented the largest group of traders at the market and spoke the dominant language of trade, namely, Sambas Malay (Pobas 2010, 27). Additionally, interactions between locals and Sambas traders were cordial and traders reported good relations with local families, who rented them space to store their stock and to sleep. Many of the locals also had family over the border (Pobas 2010, 26). In this way, the weight of formal borders and citizenship diminished in the context of long-standing kinship ties and informal border-crossing routes (Ishikawa 2010, 210–211). This shared ethnicity and history of cross-border trading should not be overstated, however. There were no profound expressions of friendship between the traders who rented storage space and these locals; the relationships remained cordial but businesslike. In fact, one sentiment expressed by some Sambas traders was that Serikin residents had grown rich on the backs of the Indonesian traders. Not only did traders attract weekend crowds and rent storage space, but as stallholders they also paid a
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daily fee that was collected and receipted by Malaysian police and then given to town officials to improve the market and town. The self-directed nature of traders’ cross-border work provided these women with the opportunity to explore cultural differences on their own terms. The Sambas traders I met had developed a range of cross-cultural and business skills over time, which they drew upon in their interactions with people that they had regular contact with. This was a pragmatic consideration—for example, the traders knew what products were attractive to particular consumer groups; they had developed a keen sense of price comparisons as some also bought sugar, cooking oil and other commodities in Serikin to sell in Sambas; and they knew the amount they would probably spend in bribes to Indonesian police on the way home. Yet these practical considerations also became points for the deeper contemplation of differences between the enriched town of Serikin and their own homes. For example, they compared the orderly payment of money to Malaysian police with police corruption in Indonesia. The development of enduring business relationships with local Chinese Malaysians from Kuching also led to reflections on the differences between Chinese Malaysians and Chinese Indonesians. One female trader, who with her husband had a long-standing business relationship with a Chinese Malaysian shop owner from Kuching, opined that Chinese Malaysians speak Chinese and look more ‘Chinese’ than the Chinese Indonesians in Sambas. Her reflections never led her to question the identity category of ‘the Chinese’ (orang Cina), however, only to pluralise its expression. Despite traders’ regular interaction with local (Malaysian) Bidayuh and Chinese Malaysian traders from Kuching, there was little depth in their relationships. These Sambas rattan producers/traders did not live in Serikin; they only sojourned there on weekends. Their principal residence and workplace remained their village in Sambas, and this had implications on their development of cosmopolitan orientations. Crossborder trade was clearly an opportunity to develop cross-cultural skills and relationships. However, these skills and relationship were tempered by the brevity and pragmatic objective of their time in Serikin, even when trust and enduring business ties were evident.
Discussion of Findings There is much in the field data to indicate that the circumstances of women’s crossborder work and the nature of their border crossing had consequences for women’s everyday cross-cultural experiences, acquisition of skills and establishment of relationships. The four occupational groupings highlight how different forms of work and labour mobility conditioned women’s accomplishment of a cosmopolitan self, by making certain versions more viable, achievable and valued. As noted earlier, cosmopolitanism in this paper is understood not only as a cultural receptivity or openness, but also as a critical reflexive practice. Drawing on women’s observations about their experiences of border-crossing, I now examine the work-related
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circumstances that enabled or constrained women’s cultural receptivity and critical reflexivity.
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Cultural Receptivity As a form of cultural receptivity, cosmopolitanism encourages people to engage with and incorporate aspects of other cultures/peoples. The varied work situations discussed above provide considerable support to the argument that the context of work can condition women’s opportunity to develop cultural openness and receptivity. In relation to the type of work and workplace conditions, the different workplaces fostered in quite particular ways women’s access to and experience of everyday crosscultural experiences and skills development. Many work-sites enhanced women’s ability to learn new skills of value to them by incorporating these skills and opportunities into women’s everyday work (such as English, business skills, songket weaving and cross-border trade know-how). Indeed, the acquisition of new skills was one of the most commonly noted features of cross-border work. The opportunity to experience new cultural milieu through cross-border work was more mixed. At one level, simply by crossing the border women were made aware of differences with Sambas, as noted in women’s comments about police behaviour, the quality of housing, the wealth of Brunei, etc. Despite this, there were significant differences in women’s experiences. Moreover, while some lived in more confined enclaves, others had opportunities to explore a broader range of social and cultural contexts. The work-related opportunity to explore cultural difference and pursue crossborder relations was most limited in the case of the domestic worker in Brunei, who laboured in a highly constricted, privatised zone. Subordinated by power relations and the illegality of her status, her ability to explore the host society more broadly and freely assert a level of cultural accommodation was tightly constrained by her employer’s demands. A further dimension of cross-cultural awareness here involved recognising the negative evaluations made of her as a ‘stupid’ and ‘lazy’. Hers was a restricted cultural openness, limited by arbitrary modes of control. However, a level of caution is required here on two counts: not all domestic workers were similarly constrained and the failure to consider the cosmopolitan practices of ‘private’ spaces risks leaving unchallenged an implicit private/public binary in the conceptualisation of (public) cosmopolitanism (Stivens 2008, 92). The broader message is the way power relations in the workplace operate to shape migrants’ acquisition of cross-cultural skills and dispositions beyond those necessary to respond to the immediate contingencies of migration. This is most evident when contrasting the situation of songket weavers with that of the domestic worker in Brunei. Despite having certain constraints on their movement (e.g., long working week and living at the workplace), songket weavers usually got a monthly day-off, which allowed the opportunity to socialise with other migrant workers away from the gaze of employers, and even participate in annual festivities at the Sultan’s palace. In contrast, the domestic worker in Brunei was deeply disempowered both by privatised relations of power and cultural hierarchies of worth and skill.
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Some fortunate factory women formed office friendships with locals (a benefit not often extended to production line workers). This provided these women with the opportunity to participate in the private, daily lives of Malaysians and to enrich their understandings of Malaysia. This was notably rare when we consider that none of the songket weavers had the opportunity to develop friendships with employers or other Bruneians. For the majority of women, other migrant workers constituted the most important source of social contact. This had particular implications for young, unmarried women whose cross-border migration was accompanied by a desire for an intimate relationship not dissimilar to the sexual frisson of a visceral cosmopolitanism (Nava 2007). In pursuing friendships and relationships, women’s ability to independently participate in other social spaces outside the immediate work environment was critical. Through such opportunities, young factory workers and songket weavers established cross-cultural relationships. For songket weavers who had less independent time outside their small, all-female place of work, drawing on family/village networks in Brunei was central to forging social contacts over the border. While this study has not explored in detail how local Malaysians’ and Bruneians’ reception of Indonesian migrant workers affects migrants’ cosmopolitan possibilities, there is some evidence that when Sambas women were treated with friendliness at work, or seen as valued colleagues and business partners, they had more opportunity to increase their range of cultural competencies. When combined with a longer period of stay, as in the case of the factory workers, this could also lead women to bridge categories of difference in more enduring, reflexive ways (see below). Women who were not invited home, treated as an equal or viewed as potential friends, tended to socialise with Indonesians (where possible) and had much reduced insight into the lives of locals.1 The most independent, self-directed cross-border workers in the sample were the Serikin traders, who developed a repertoire of cultural skills and competencies, such as currency knowledge and trading know-how. Yet a notable difference between cross-border traders and other migrant workers was their duration of stay. The crossborder traders clearly developed continuing, trust-based relationships with locals and traders from further afield. That these relationships did not extend to friendships or more intimate bonds suggest the extent to which the main locus of social ties of the traders remained their village. Here, their more pragmatic goals as traders and the geographical possibility of making weekend trips did not foster more intimate and personal relationships, such as those found amongst the longer sojourners in this study. The concept of a ‘transnational habitus’ (Guarnizo 1997) seems particularly apt in the case of Sambas Malay women’s relationship to the economic and sociocultural dimensions of cross-border work. These women inhabit a social field that spans Sambas, Sarawak and Brunei and channels them into forms of cross-border work made familiar through family members, social contacts, etc. These social networks also provide social contacts for longer-staying migrants that are particularly
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important for workers who lack the opportunity to socialise with locals. The existence of social networks along well-established border pathways also allows unregistered labour brokers and undocumented migration to flourish. Thus far in this section, we have discussed how work can foster cross-border engagement and cultural openness. Below I consider the field data in order to draw some conclusions on how workrelated factors shaped women’s critical reflexivity.
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Critical Reflexivity As a critical reflexive practice, cosmopolitanism encourages people to reflect upon and bring into question categories and stereotypes of cultural differences that separate and hierarchically order people. In terms of the findings of this study, it is worth noting many women’s resentment that they were not valued as workers given what they saw as their important economic contribution to Sarawak and Brunei. For some, this was further fuelled by a perception that the border marked an artificial distinction between peoples who share the one land. Despite this common ground, there were significant differences between the women, including the extent to which women’s experience of cross-border work led them to question (and not merely work within) conventional identity categories. In the case of the cross-border traders, their regular border crossings heightened their awareness of the relative poverty of Indonesians compared with Malaysians, but this disparity was also fundamental to their financial success and thus not something deeply criticised—in contrast to their criticism of the behaviour of Indonesian police. The similar constellation of groups and institutions found on both sides of the border, such as the goods on sale, the trading practices and the presence of ‘Dayaks’ and ‘Chinese’, did prompt the traders to reflect on differences. Yet in a manner similar to Guarnizo’s (1997) ‘dual frame of reference’, this did not entail a profound engagement with the Other/ness or any significant deconstruction of categories. Rather their comments revealed a more practical approach to those categories of people and things that were apparent or important to business. In contrast, for the longer-term factory workers and songket weavers, the social spaces conditioned by work profoundly changed their way of seeing the world. Factory workers who worked in office jobs, in particular, reported developing close ties with Malaysian managers and supervisors. These relationships provided them opportunity to reconsider prejudices, as revealed in the comments that Chinese Malaysians are friendly, good people. For other workers, whose opportunity to socialise was predominantly with other Indonesian migrants, their personal relationships with Indonesians from other provinces had expanded their way of being Indonesian. Many women had married young Javanese men and/or had developed an understanding of the broader experience of Indonesian workers. Anchored in isolated workplaces, songket weavers had less opportunity to explore the cultural and social context of Brunei. Nevertheless, their work was itself a source of reflection, and working as songket weavers in Brunei had extended their understanding of ‘Malayness’ as shared cultural heritage. Weaving songket was a
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concrete expression of both the similarities and hierarchies across Malay societies: while songket and their skills were more highly valued in Brunei than in Indonesia in general, the women were also aware of the reputed superior quality of songket techniques and materials in Brunei. Generally, women’s cross-border work gave rise to a range of reflections on national, economic and sociocultural differences. For some factory workers and weavers, the social spaces afforded them over a longer period of time, presented the opportunity to further explore and even critically question categories, such as ethnic identity and national difference. The most explicit comment of this sort came from the former factory worker who believed that it was unfair that life in Sambas was so difficult in comparison to Sarawak. A further example was the young songket weaver who criticised the lack of regard shown to Indonesian workers who do the work that Bruneians will not perform. With reference to ‘Indonesian’ and ‘from Kalimantan’, she criticised the way such designations were deployed to discriminate against some migrant workers more than others. Both women’s comments suggest a latent political cosmopolitanism, one that is fuelled by a critical assessment of the power of national borders to determine people’s socio-economic fortunes.
Conclusion One aspect not yet fully explored in the literature on cosmopolitanism is the extent to which cross-border migrants’ predisposition to reflexively engage with cultural and social differences is conditioned by work. Employing a cross-border work lens, this paper examined the work-related circumstances that shaped the receptivity and critical reflexivity of a group of female Sambas Malay cross-border workers. Based on an analysis of four forms of cross-border work, women’s ability to explore the social, cultural and relational dimensions of their cross-border milieu was shown to be strongly influenced by the conditions of work and the workplace. The case study also demonstrates how work-related factors influenced the level of women’s critical reflexivity in relation to perceptions of cultural and social differences. Cross-border work could lead women to question taken-for-granted understandings of national, ethnic and regional forms of identification. This contrasted with other women’s less critical reflections that operated within given categories of identity. In explaining such variation, women’s depth of social interaction and length of stay were primary influences. This paper has argued that women’s cross-border work can be seen as a process of cosmopolitanisation when it expands women’s social and cultural horizons, and not only their economic prospects. The ‘cross-border work’ nature of women’s labour mobility in this context also infused their cosmopolitanism with a geographically situated quality in particular ways. First, the cultivation of cross-cultural skills, capacities and relationships was conceptualised largely in terms cross-border work for these women, who had few alternatives for travel. This association of cross-border mobility with broadened cultural and personal horizons was in turn strengthened by
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the proliferation of cross-border work opportunities and pathways. The geography of the border further featured in women’s critical (and paradoxical) claims that the border was irrelevant as a marker of difference (and thus as grounds for discrimination) as Sambas, Sarawak and Brunei constituted one geographical and sociocultural topography. Overall, the analysis reveals significant differences in how cross-border workers respond to the contingencies and opportunities of cross-border mobility, ranging from fostering cross-cultural capabilities necessary to their work through to establishing intimate relationships. Importantly, the findings reveal differences both within and between categories of work. Consequently, while this analysis of four types of cross-border work does not preclude the discovery of patterns within particular forms of work, such patterns cannot be assumed. The contrasting experience of two domestic workers drives this point home by making it clear that there is no generic way of being a domestic worker. Instead, our attention is drawn to the cause of such variability, which is a consequence of the arbitrariness attached to powerlessness (a condition not unique to domestic workers). On the strength of this and other insights from this study, further research into the everyday processes and relations of work could deepen our understanding of how work can instil the very foundations of cosmopolitanism, namely, a cultural openness and a critical interrogation of the differences that separate Self from Other. 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.
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].
Note [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).
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