Protection of Indonesian Women Migrant Worker Returnees Amid Pandemic
Unggul Sagena
GNMP Scholar, Chonnam National University, Gwangju
COVID-19 pandemic which took place since the beginning of the year 2020 has hit the global economy without any exception. Every country experienced the declining of their national economy. Although business sectors, especially tourism and manufacturing are the most affected, blue-collar and white-collar workers both are hit by the impact of the economy stagnant because of lockdowns and very limited people mobilisation. The termination of employment (layoffs) or laying off workers for a while is common in every country. In the receiving countries, those effects make employers unable to pay wages and salaries for months, leaving them no choice other than to terminate the services of women migrant workers who usually work in households or taking care of elderly.
For Indonesia migrant workers, this condition leaves them no choice but to return home to their sending countries. However, returning home is also not easy. Some countries closed their borders for international flights for months because of full lockdowns. Some migrant workers who were able to return to Indonesia were also hampered by complicated problems in terms of their human rights violations, prejudice, procedural handling processes, and also societal acceptance when they are arrived at their villages in Indonesia, especially for women migrant workers returnees.
The National Agency for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers (BNP2PMI) recorded that the number of Indonesian Migrant Workers who departed for working abroad just in 2019 is approximately 276,553 people, and the Bank of Indonesia (BI) recorded current Indonesian migrant workers to 3,192,000 in totals for last year (2020). The World Bank estimated there to be up to 9,000,000 Indonesian migrant workers around the globe. This data is based on migrant workers who work with official documents, so it does not count those who migrate abroad illegally or without complete documents.
The Indonesian National Board of the Central Bureau of Statistics (2019) recorded in Asian receiving countries, South Korea is the third largest Indonesian migrant workers after Taiwan and Hongkong with 6,193 people. Then the cross-border rich neighbour, Brunei Darussalam with 5,639 people. According to Migrant Care, migrant workers are dominated by women, which is 70 percent. In certain sectors such as social services, the number of female workers almost equals the number of male workers. From that number, Indonesian women migrant workers who work according to procedures (30 percent) than men (21 percent). Most of these women migrant workers work in the domestic sector, such as being household assistants, babysitters, caring for parents, and other domestic jobs that are actually not suitable for women.
Challenging returns
Unfortunately, there are many problems arising in the process of return home. For Indonesian women migrant workers, this condition leaves them no choice but to return home to Indonesia. However, returning home is not easy. Some countries closed their borders for international flights for months because of full lockdowns. Some migrant workers, especially women, who were able to return to Indonesia were also hampered by complicated problems in terms of their human rights violations, prejudice, sexual harassment on the procedural handling processes, and also societal acceptance when they are arrived at their villages in Indonesia.There are various issues on Indonesian women migrant workers which divided in the context of when they are abroad, the process of returning and relocation to their home town, and the problems they will face in their hometown. Firstly, Indonesian women migrant workers have a hard life abroad, especially during pandemic. Before the pandemic, Indonesian migrant workers living their hard life as “acceptable” because they were able to communicate and send remittances to their children in their villages. Labour migration shows the reality of wage inequality, unfair employment opportunities for men and women, and inequality in poor and rich countries. Based on the Statistical Data of Placement of Indonesian Migrant Workers (2019) most of women are domestic workers. Domestic workers refer to the type of doing house chores, such as sweeping the floor, cleaning up the house, preparing meals, and taking care of children or elderly.
As impact of the pandemic, unemployment or wage postponed (shadow unemployment) from employer made them only able to eat very economical, and could not send money to their family in Indonesia. Indonesian migrant workers are facing dilemmatic problems. Their option to return home is the last resort because women migrant workers are bread-winners for their family. Indonesian women migrant workers also afraid of unemployment in their villages in Indonesia. Collateral impact for the condition is high degree of stigmatization by society, because they are making money from “western countries”. Some women migrant workers’ parents are also demand them to “find local guy and get married”. Those circumstances drive psychological dilemmas for them before decide to return for good.
Secondly, COVID-19 transparent and fair protocol should be applied to protect women migrant workers rights. In order to ensure non-patriarchal and non-discrimination actions against women migrant workers while they are processing their mandatory health quarantine in Jakarta (government quarantine facilities) and their relocation to home procedures. These women returnees are often become victims to illegal and/or unofficial attempt to bring them to their villages by individuals or groups of criminals by exchange their money to the illegal transportation arranged to get them directly to their villages without mandatory quarantines procedures. In Indonesia, tracing and tracking is the biggest problems after the abundance flow of infodemics. Even in their mandatory quarantine period in government facilities, women migrant workers returnee often forced by certain quarantine officials to buy over-expensive quarantine supplies and communication related things such as local internet data.
Thirdly, acceptance of the neighbourhood and society are also problematic during the pandemic. There is stigmatization by the society that people who suffer COVID-19 are condemned, not belong to the society and a virus carrier. Moreover, women from abroad are considered by patriarchal society as psychological, social and economic problems arise whenever these returnees are able to settle down to their home and united with their family. They are often jeered by their neighbours and the society stigmatized them as not a “good woman” because the are previously worked in liberal-western countries or, in Muslim dominated villages, worked in non-Islamic countries, which make them “not religious”.
Protection of returnees
Therefore, based on the issues elaborated above, women migrant workers returnees in Indonesia should be protected in three dimensions. Legal protection, social protection, and economic protection. Those protections should be able to ensure human rights approach and able to create supporting condition at home for women migrant returnees.Legal protections including creation of sufficient regulations and law enforcement. Rules and regulations from social to economic spheres should be made by the government to protect migrant workers’ physical safety and social economic safety (social safety net) during the pandemic impact. The regulation includes policies to ensure the safety of women migrant workers while working abroad by providing supporting environment such as communication protocols and secure communication devices, and the process of relocation in their home countries. Legal protection must also include binding regulation to ensure a transparent, effective and efficient health procedural that comply with COVID-19 protocols and other health examinations protocol which women migrant workers feels safe when they conduct serials of medical checks.
Social protections including a psychosocial therapeutics solution to the society, where society is literate and can accept migrant workers and erase the stigmatization of migrant workers especially with usually incorrect stereotyping of them as disease carriers (COVID, AIDS, etc), not irreligious, even blasphemous, if they have worked in ‘western’ countries and/or non-Islamic countries. The therapeutic programmes could be carried by Ministry of Health, coordinate with designated psychologist and physiatrist in the designated mental health programmes. A transparent, effective and efficient health procedures that comply with COVID-19 protocols and other health examinations protocols which allow women migrant workers to feel safe when they undergo such medical checks. Migrant returnees have not so far received appropriate protection and advocacy to get access to health information and health insurances. Coordination with local government and local religious institutions is also important to ensure the programmes are implemented and useful to the women migrant worker returnees. Monitoring and evaluation systems should be enacted to ensure impacts and outcomes of such programmes and should be able to solve various societal problems that arise during their relocation and settlement programmes.
Lastly, in economic protection efforts, there should be social and economic protection by creating social safety net, where women migrant returnees able to self-sufficient themselves in their villages. The returnees are afraid of becoming unemployment thus become burden to their families. Providing access to entrepreneurship class for women returnees will guarantee necessary skills for them to start their own small-scale business in their villages. By acquiring necessary skills, the returnees will be able to survive economically and start to think about to settle in their villages and rebuild their family connections, not to go abroad as migrant workers. Access to financial institutions and marketplace also important in providing business environment to the returnee’s survival skills. Government facilitated job creation and business opportunities in local context should also enacted and must involve these returnees as part of its human capital.
Additionally, protection of Indonesian women migrant workers should also include promotion of clear information through various channel of distribution such as social media and social networking platforms about COVID-19 and other health information. The promotional campaign not only about how to deal with COVID-19 technically, but also to provide information about the life of Indonesia migrant workers. Their “untold” stories and their struggle, portraying their effort in sending money for rising purchasing power of their children, husband, family and relatives. By creating those kind of environments, legal, social and economic safety net for women migrant worker returnees upon their return to Indonesia will become feasible.
