Overview

Domestic Workers in Indonesia uncovers the story of a movement for domestic worker rights that has campaigned for a national domestic workers law since 2004. Interweaving theoretical insights with evocative portrayals of individual lives and exceptional events, Mary Austin demonstrates how a feminist-inspired alliance engendered a nascent Indonesian domestic worker class. Shifting scholarly focus from overseas domestic workers to the five million employed in Indonesian homes, Austin follows the movement from its beginnings in the student protests and feminist activism of the 1980s and 1990s to its lobbying, costumed street protests, collaboration with unions, and NGO networking in the 2000s. After exploring the contribution of advocacy journalism and feminist knowledge production to the tasks of dismantling stereotypes, demolishing myths, and questioning the publicprivate divide, the book ends with the movements embrace of digital activism. Press coverage, first-hand accounts, observations, and dozens of interviews evidence the reluctance of employers to countenance change, the procrastinations and broken promises of politicians, and the creative responses of domestic workers determined to have their voices heard. The book takes the reader into spaces ranging from the neighbourhood meeting-house and domestic worker schoolroom to the smart hotels used for transnational organising and the committee rooms of Indonesias parliament. Informed by the authors experience of living in Indonesia in the 1980s, the narrative provides insights into the processes of participation, performance, and fashioning that opened up new identities for former helpers as independent workers and activist citizens. This first full-length study of domestic worker organizing in Indonesia will appeal to scholars, activists, and policy makers concerned with the future for transformative feminist, labour, and social activism in Indonesia and beyond.

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9781789761504

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Mary Austin gained her PhD from SOAS in 2020. She lived in Indonesia from 1980 to 1983, teaching in Jakarta and visiting many parts of the archipelago. After a long career as a teacher, school inspector, and senior education officer, she completed an MA in gender studies before beginning her doctorate. Enjoying interdisciplinarity, Mary has published in Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, Citizenship and democratization in Indonesia, Jurnal Perempuan, and IQAS.

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