ADULTS-IN-THE-MAKING: ASPIRATIONS AND GENDER SUBJECTIVITIES OF YOUNG INDONESIAN WOMEN IN THE MIGRATORY CONTEXT OF RURAL JAVA

Abstract

Young people’s economic insecurities in Indonesia’s ‘jobless growth’ situation have knock-on effects on their capacity to undertake the expected rite of passage to adulthood. The effects, however, are experienced differently by young men and women, and have complex social repercussions.

Women are now as likely as men to migrate for work given the burgeoning gendered job opportunities in care and domestic work in overseas markets, and in the manufacturing and services industries in Indonesia. While enjoying favourable economic prospects, women’s labour mobilities are perceived as ‘out of place’ as traditional gendered labour division ascribes them the role of homemakers (with men being breadwinners). Against this backdrop of shifting social norms and gendered subjectivities, I focus on young women’s aspirations in the process of ‘becoming’ adults, interrogating the impact of parental migration on their aspirational capacity, and how they make sense of hegemonic constructions of marriage and gendered household roles.