Johan A. Lindquist
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824832018
- eISBN:
- 9780824869977
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824832018.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
Since the late 1960s the Indonesian island of Batam has been transformed from a sleepy fishing village to a booming frontier town, where foreign investment, mostly from neighboring Singapore, ...
More
Since the late 1960s the Indonesian island of Batam has been transformed from a sleepy fishing village to a booming frontier town, where foreign investment, mostly from neighboring Singapore, converges with inexpensive land and labor. Indonesian female migrants dominate the island's economic landscape both as factory workers and as prostitutes. Indonesians also move across the border in search of work in Malaysia and Singapore as plantation and construction workers or maids. Export-processing zones such as Batam are both celebrated and vilified in contemporary debates on economic globalization. The book moves beyond these dichotomies to explore the experiences of migrants and tourists who pass through Batam. The book portrays globalization in terms of relationships that bind individuals together over long distances. It offers a unique ethnographic perspective, drawing together the worlds of factory workers and prostitutes, migrants and tourists, and creating an account of everyday life in a borderland characterized by dramatic capitalist expansion. The book uses three Indonesian concepts (merantau, malu, liar) to shed light on the mobility of migrants and tourists on Batam. The first refers to a person's relationship with home while in the process of migration. The second signifies the shame or embarrassment felt when one is between accepted roles and emotional states. The third is used to identify those who are out of place, notably squatters, couples in premarital cohabitation, and prostitutes without pimps. These sometimes overlapping concepts allow the book to move across geographical and metaphorical boundaries and between various economies.Less
Since the late 1960s the Indonesian island of Batam has been transformed from a sleepy fishing village to a booming frontier town, where foreign investment, mostly from neighboring Singapore, converges with inexpensive land and labor. Indonesian female migrants dominate the island's economic landscape both as factory workers and as prostitutes. Indonesians also move across the border in search of work in Malaysia and Singapore as plantation and construction workers or maids. Export-processing zones such as Batam are both celebrated and vilified in contemporary debates on economic globalization. The book moves beyond these dichotomies to explore the experiences of migrants and tourists who pass through Batam. The book portrays globalization in terms of relationships that bind individuals together over long distances. It offers a unique ethnographic perspective, drawing together the worlds of factory workers and prostitutes, migrants and tourists, and creating an account of everyday life in a borderland characterized by dramatic capitalist expansion. The book uses three Indonesian concepts (merantau, malu, liar) to shed light on the mobility of migrants and tourists on Batam. The first refers to a person's relationship with home while in the process of migration. The second signifies the shame or embarrassment felt when one is between accepted roles and emotional states. The third is used to identify those who are out of place, notably squatters, couples in premarital cohabitation, and prostitutes without pimps. These sometimes overlapping concepts allow the book to move across geographical and metaphorical boundaries and between various economies.
Johan A. Lindquist
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824832018
- eISBN:
- 9780824869977
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824832018.003.0006
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
This chapter writes an ethnography of eviction that highlights the ambiguous position of Indonesian migrant labor in the Growth Triangle. More specifically, it demonstrates not only a process of ...
More
This chapter writes an ethnography of eviction that highlights the ambiguous position of Indonesian migrant labor in the Growth Triangle. More specifically, it demonstrates not only a process of eviction, but also a kind of revolving door of accruing dispossession. This suggests that the position of Indonesian migrant labor in the Growth Triangle should be located at the historically contingent intersections between state regimes of deportation, a gendered transnational labor market, and the emotional economy that keeps migrants on the move. Moreover, taking the experiences of migrants seriously, and situating them historically, illustrates how state strategies and migrant tactics form part of an interconnected system that keeps people on the move in the borderlands.Less
This chapter writes an ethnography of eviction that highlights the ambiguous position of Indonesian migrant labor in the Growth Triangle. More specifically, it demonstrates not only a process of eviction, but also a kind of revolving door of accruing dispossession. This suggests that the position of Indonesian migrant labor in the Growth Triangle should be located at the historically contingent intersections between state regimes of deportation, a gendered transnational labor market, and the emotional economy that keeps migrants on the move. Moreover, taking the experiences of migrants seriously, and situating them historically, illustrates how state strategies and migrant tactics form part of an interconnected system that keeps people on the move in the borderlands.
Malini Guha
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748656462
- eISBN:
- 9781474408585
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748656462.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Drawing upon examples from contemporary British and French cinema, this book explores the sights and sounds of “migrant” London and Paris, providing entirely new ways of visualizing and ...
More
Drawing upon examples from contemporary British and French cinema, this book explores the sights and sounds of “migrant” London and Paris, providing entirely new ways of visualizing and conceptualizing the cities we think we already know. The study of globalization in cinema assumes many guises, from the exploration of global cinematic cities to the burgeoning “world cinema turn” within film studies, which addresses the global nature of film production, exhibition and distribution. This book draws together these two distinctly different ways of thinking about the cinema, interrogating representations of global London and Paris as migrant cinematic cities, featuring the arrival, settlement and departure of migrant figures from the decline of imperial rule to the global present. The book also considers their world cinema status in light of their reconfiguration of established forms of filmmaking, from modernism to social realism. An illuminating analysis of London and Paris in world cinema from the vantage point of migrant mobilities, the book explores the ramifications of this historical shift towards the global, one that pertains in equal measure to cityscapes, their representation as world cinema texts, and to the rise of world cinema discourse within film studies itself.Less
Drawing upon examples from contemporary British and French cinema, this book explores the sights and sounds of “migrant” London and Paris, providing entirely new ways of visualizing and conceptualizing the cities we think we already know. The study of globalization in cinema assumes many guises, from the exploration of global cinematic cities to the burgeoning “world cinema turn” within film studies, which addresses the global nature of film production, exhibition and distribution. This book draws together these two distinctly different ways of thinking about the cinema, interrogating representations of global London and Paris as migrant cinematic cities, featuring the arrival, settlement and departure of migrant figures from the decline of imperial rule to the global present. The book also considers their world cinema status in light of their reconfiguration of established forms of filmmaking, from modernism to social realism. An illuminating analysis of London and Paris in world cinema from the vantage point of migrant mobilities, the book explores the ramifications of this historical shift towards the global, one that pertains in equal measure to cityscapes, their representation as world cinema texts, and to the rise of world cinema discourse within film studies itself.
