Precarity, migration and brokerage in Indonesia: Insights from ethnographic research in Indramayu

Abstract

This chapter offers a structural analysis that problematizes the role of informal brokers in Indonesia’s labor outmigration. Drawing from ethnographic engagement in Indramayu, West Java, this chapter employs the concept of “precarity” in understanding the recruitment of Indonesia’s low-wage migrant workers. We push the collective understanding further through focusing on brokers, and how their precarity affects migration. For Indramayu’s informal brokers, brokerage is often just one among the many odd jobs they involve themselves in for their survival. Besides this, we direct attention to locals’ deep entanglement to argue that perpetuation of migration intermediation stems out of widespread acceptance of brokerage as a rural livelihood in the face of economic and ecological crises.