Women versus the state: Organizing resistance and contesting exploitation in indonesian labor migration to Hong Kong

Abstract

This article examines the role of the state and the private sector in temporary labor migration and the responses of migrant workers to resist oppressive practices in labor export from the sending country. More precisely, it explores state-backed practices in the creation of debt bondage among Indonesian migrant women and state responses to developments in the Indonesian women's labor movement in Hong Kong. Indonesian women migrant workers in Hong Kong had begun to organize collectively from 2000 and this study of women's activism in labor migration interrogates their grounded notions and practices that underlie women's empowerment. While ideas and definitions of women's empowerment vary widely and attempts to empower women do not always bring about the desired effects of transforming disempowering structures, this article will attempt to show why certain modes of empowerment lead to structural transformations while others are less promising for women. This article serves as documentation of a historical phenomenon in women's labor migration and concludes with some of the principles that engender women's empowerment as social and collective qualities.