Chapter 1. Introduction
1.2. Research purpose
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networked communication becomes significant as it serves as an opportunity to reconstitute their presence in within the families. Furthermore, as a result of advancement in ICTs, especially mobile phones, domestic helpers can partially resume their parenting roles from a great distance – a concept academically referred to as “transnational parenting” (Parrenas, 2005). Scholars have documented that mobile phones have become the most important communication device for the domestic helpers to maintain connectivity and relationship with their close-ties in the home countries (Lin & Sun, 2010; Thompson 2009).
While numerous studies have examined various structural and personal factors affecting domestic helpers’ use of mobile phone activities with family in the home countries (Madianou,
& Miller, 2011; Lin, & Sun, 2011; Ryan, Sales, Tilki, & Siara, 2008; Thompson, 2009), none of past research has examined how technological features of smartphones might affect the
communication processes among transnational families in the context of migrant helpers’
socioeconomic status.
1.2. Research purpose
This proposed study is to explore the smartphones activities among married Indonesian domestic helpers in Taiwan. Specifically, this research delves into the ways in which married female migrant workers utilize various smartphone-based activities to maintain bonds of family relationship in the home country. The impacts of smartphones on various familial ties are examined independently including mother-children, spousal and intergenerational
communication.
A great number of studies have explored migrant workers’ use of ICTs (Uy-Tioco, 2007a & b;
Qiu, 2008) and their impact transnational parenting (Benitez, 2011; Hoang, & Yeoh, 2012;
Madianou, & Miller, 2011; Leifsen, & Tymczuk, 2012). Some have demonstrated the roles of transnational communication in maintaining intimacy with close ties (Madianou, & Miller, 2011;
Fresnoza-Flot, 2009, Parrenas, 2005, Ryan, Sales, Tilki, &Siara, 2008; Thompson, 2009), while others have focused on general ICTs (Law & Chu, 2008) or mobile phones feature (Lin, & Sun 2010; Roldan, 2009; Strom, 2002; Yang, 2008) that migrant workers use to achieve
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communication goals. There is relatively little literature focusing on the prevalent use of multifunctional smartphones for transnational communication among migrant workers.
The significance of this study therefore lies on its contribution to the understanding of how the features of smartphones and activities that they facilitate revolutionize the processes of
transnational communication to preserve familial bond with children, husbands and parents. The subject of this study is Indonesian migrant workers in Taiwan who are married with children. As a result of Indonesian Muslim culture, the dominant power of husbands over wives is likely to influence long-distance marriages and transnational mothering. The qualitative interviews will allow us to understand the intertwined processes of smartphones-transnational parenting within a broader sociocultural framework by taking into account the power status of migrant helpers within the family.
Another gap in the literature is in terms of diversity of research subjects. Most studies investigate the experiences of Filipino domestic helpers in using mobile phones to maintain their close-tie relationship (for example, Madianou, & Miller, 2012; Fresnoza-Flot, 2009), and little focus is placed upon Indonesian helpers whose family dynamics is heavily influenced by Muslim culture and husbands tend to control these women’s choices. The former earns the living overseas and are mostly treated as the glory of the family, while the latter is criticized as playing the slave roles as domestic helpers in foreign land. To fill the void, this exploratory research aims to answer the key research question about smartphone use in the context of transnational
communication mediated by the power dynamics between Muslim husband and wife which may possibly influence their distant martial relationship and mothering.
In sum, the interplay between the distinct sociocultural aspects embedded in Indonesian families and the mechanisms of smartphone-mediated transnational marriage and parenting will be scholarly valuable additions to the current literature on mobile-mediated transnational communication with close-ties.
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Literature Review
This chapter elaborates the existing literature relevant to the research topic: Indonesian domestic helpers and smartphone-mediated transnational communication with families. The first section explains Indonesian migrant workers and their differences from other migrant groups previously studied in similar contexts. The second section highlights past studies on ICTs and transnational parenting while pointing out the gap in the current literature. A specific body of knowledge on mobile phones and migrant workers will also be discussed. The last section will present Muslim culture in Indonesian and possible implications on the smartphones users’ experiences.
2.1. Indonesian migrant domestic workers
Besides the Philippines, Indonesia is the main exporter of workers in Southeast Asia and one of the largest countries of origin for international labor migration. State-regulated international labor migration in Indonesia dates back to 1979 when the export of 100,000 labor migrants over a period of five years was included in the national development plan. Today, according to government statistic, there are approximately 4.7 documented Indonesian migrants in over 48 countries (and many more undocumented) (BNP2TKI, 2015). The female migrants are mainly employed as domestic workers in the private sector in Southeast Asia and the Middle East and as caregivers and nurses in Japan, Europe and the Middle East (Lan, 2016).
As noted above, the Philippines is another major labor-sending country in Southeast Asia.
Transnational communicative practices among Filipino migrant community has been extensively studied before while their Indonesian counterparts have received much less scholarly attention.
This research argues that it is of a great significance to conduct a research in which Indonesian migrant community is independently studied as the distinct sociocultural aspects embedded in their migration might potentially affect the ways in which they communicate with their families using various internet-based mobile applications on smartphones.
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First of all, Indonesian migrant domestic workers are different from the Filipinos in regards to the initiation of their migration. There are several gender-specific characteristics in the (regular) migration process in Indonesia: Women who intend to work abroad require the written consent of a male head of the family and there is a general attitude of patronization by government institutions and agencies (Rother, 2017).
Second of all, unlike Filipino migrant domestic workers who are considered the pride of family owing to their financial contribution, Indonesian women who decided to leave the country for domestic work were often compared to slaves and considered as sources of embarrassment for national pride, including by high rank government official and Indonesian president, Joko
Widodo (BBC Indonesia, 2017; Strait Times, 2015). In Indonesia, their status as maids in foreign countries is represented in two different ways: the official government’s notion of them as “the hero of GDP” (pahlawan devisa), and the popular stigmatization against them as exploited victims of labor abuse (Chan, 2014). The former has been largely criticized as government’s propaganda of using labor exportation as a means of escape from sluggish economy, and the later has persisted in the society resulting in migrant women being placed in different positions on gendered moral hierarchy – narratives that imply which migrant workers are heroes who deserve media attention; which migrants are unfairly abused and deserve state protection; and which migrants partly deserve their tragic fates (Chan).
Past domestic helpers’ mobile research primarily focuses on helpers from Philippines. However, they are different from the Indonesian helpers cultivated by Muslim culture. Migrant helpers from Indonesia generally belong to the group with low symbolic capital (Lan, 2008). The majority of them have only completed middle school (BNP2TKI, 2015). Their social standing suffers greatly when deciding to work as maids overseas largely due to the social stigma attached to the profession of overseas maids (Chan, 2014). In comparison, many Filipinas came fairly well-equipped for their new lives in the ‘global city’ and a role as migrant organizers: They speak English fluently, hold university degrees and may even have gained experiences as political organizers during their time at university. The Indonesians, on the other hand, come predominantly from poor rural areas, possess limited to none English skills and rarely have experience in political organizing (AMC, 2007). Their low capital in terms of education,
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language and politics make Indonesian migrant domestic workers a unique group of respondents in this research area.
According to Erving Goffman (1963), social stigma can take forms in three types. First, abomination of the body (physical deformities) such as disabilities, scars and obesity. Second, flawed personal characters and traits such as harmful addiction, teen pregnancy, criminal record, unemployment, working low wage jobs and staying in abusive relationships. Third, tribal
stigmas which concerns racial groups and religions that are considered inferior to that of one’s own.
Adopting Goffman’s definition, it is obvious that migrant domestic workers face the second kind of stigma: imperfection in individual characters that the society deems weak, embarrassing and demeaning. These Indonesian helpers’ decision to work as maids in foreign land is regarded by their society as overseas slave despite their sacrifice for families and money power. Drawing on Goffman’s management of spoiled identity, these domestic workers can be understood as the group of people whose identity is spoiled and blemished because of their occupation. Their social class in Indonesia is situated at the bottom of the hierarchy.
Following the increase in their income, their social status is likely to follow suit as they have chances to make up for their lack of symbolic capital in form of education with economic capital and various forms of cultural capital (e.g., taste, manner, and social network) to renegotiate their social identity (Bourdieu, 1987). However, due to geographical separation, their attempts to reconstruct their social identity can only be done through online communication technologies during migration, since regular return visits are legally impossible. In this situation, their encounter with their families in digital world is laden with intention to foster carefully curated self-images in order to justify their migration amidst vicious stigma.
Erving Goffman proposes the dramaturgical model of social interaction, a sociological perspective that uses metaphor of theater to explain the process of impression management (Goffman, 1959). Impression management is a salient process in social interaction by which individuals create and maintain desirable impressions of the self in the minds of others (Leary, 1995). This concept was first conceptualized by Goffman in 1959. Although the initial
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conceptualization only concerned Face-to-Face (FtF) interaction, following the prevalence of computer-mediated communication, this concept has been used in social interaction in the virtual environment (for example, Chen, 2010; Papacharisi, 2002). The settings in which the interaction occurs range from organizational spaces (Westerman & Tamborini, 2006; Westerman &
Westerman, 2010) to personal and romantic encounters (Becker & Stamp, 2005; Ward, 2017).
Goffman’s dramaturgical model and impression management concept can be used to understand Indonesian domestic helpers’ smartphone communication and interactions with families in the home country.
Returning to Goffman’s dramaturgical perspective, the process of creating favorable self-images is much like putting on a show, the actors leave out unpleasant parts and strive to generate favorable responses from their audience. Goffman further argues that each actor has off-stage and on-stage area. The off-stage area is where the actors prepare and polish their stories in the absence of others while the on-stage area is where they deliver the performance in the presence of others. In the case of migrant domestic workers dealing with social judgment, the off-stage area is their daily life on the real world, where they perform work that is often considered demeaning without those whose perception they wish to control such as families and friends.
Their on-stage area is the networked interaction with their close-ties where they display only the beautified sides of their lives. The on-stage and off-stage performance can be applied to further analyze Indonesian helpers’ smartphone-mediated family interactions.
2.2. Power dynamics in Muslim family and transnational communication
Marriage and family life form the central focus of most Muslim families. Muhammad, the Muslim prophet, said in a hadith (i.e., a collection of sayings or teachings of Muhammad) that
“Marriage is half of one’s religion.” Thus, for the Muslim believers, getting married and having children represent a major task of adulthood (Barise, 2005). Solidarity, loyalty, and respect for traditional ways of doing things are characteristic of Muslim families across the world (Abdul- Rauf, 2007). Marriage, in essence, is an ultimately sacred union upon which the life goals and purposes as well as life-changing decisions of husband and wife are centered (Haddad, Moore, &
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Smith, 2006). Muslim couples feel a social and religious responsibility to preserve their marriage at all costs, especially when children are involved.
As discussed in previous section, the preservation of family intimacy and the fulfilment of the parenting responsibilities in the case of transnational families are dependent on ICTs-mediated transnational communication since frequent visit to the home country is severely restricted by legal limitations (Fresnoza-Flot, 2009). Unique to Muslim families, however, the normative role expectation of “mother nurtures, father disciplines” (Parrenas, 2005.P. 331) might be too
simplistic. Husband and wife become one holy union where the husband is the imam or the representation of God in the family. Because the husband is the gatekeeper to the family, the domestic caring including child-nurturing practices are conducted by the wife but within the context of husband’s authority (Haneef, 1996). Therefore, it is important to examine how this power hierarchy is played out during the wife’s migration period.
This study acknowledges the diversity of Muslim family and their actualization of religious values. This means that although Muslim families are typically structured around patriarchal authority – in which the husband has responsibility for and control over the family – there is wide variation in how patriarchy is played out in Muslim marriages. In some cases, men abuse their authority, while other husbands act kindly and benevolently to their wives and children. In some cases, the father or husband is the final and unchallenged decision maker, while in other families the fathers may counsel with his wife and children when making decisions (Kobeisy, 2004).
Traditional Islamic teaching further supports patriarchal authority by requiring complementary gender roles (Haneef, 1996). The scope of these gender roles suggests that the man is responsible for providing financial support to the family and protecting them from harm. The husband is also responsible for protecting family honor and being a good example of faith and right living for his wife and children.
The characteristics of migrant family challenges these supposedly tenacious notions. Regardless of what flows across borders, the transfers tend to exacerbate inequality, because they are conducted over conduits that favor certain actors' interests over others (Mahler, 2001). The
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demand of migrant workers comes largely from domestic work, traditionally assigned to female migrant workers (Lan, 2016). This engenders inequality in terms of labor migration opportunity against men in a reversed fashion compared to that of what Mahler (2001) observed among El-Salvadorian in the United States. In many cases of migrant domestic workers, the wife
immediately assumes the roles of breadwinners and often the single wage-earner on which the family livelihood depends (Parrenas, 2005). They also have more resources to use
communication technology. Subsequently, they usually initiate the communication, although their family can signal their intention to communicate through “miscalling.” (Madianou, &
Miller, 2011). The current literature has focused mostly on the communication process between migrant mothers and their children in their home countries. However, this proposed study will also look into the process that occurs before the phone is handed over to the children.
The gendered power dynamics have been shown to influence the communication between family members separated due to migration. Generally, male family members have a higher degree of digital literacy in which case, female family members are silenced in the communication process (Kang, 2012).
This proposed study argues that given the tenacity of religious values in Muslim marriage, within which the notions of patriarchal are deeply embedded, the benefits of transnational
communications are more complicated than who lives where or who has the money and the communication device.
In her study on Filipino migrant families, Parrenas (2005) described one of the implications of transnational communication is the impediment of gender reconstruction following women’s migration.
The migration of mothers prompts the rearrangement of households and consequently the reconstitution of gender in migrant families. The physical removal of mothers from the home, coupled with their higher income contributions to the household, ruptures the order of gender in the Filipino family (Parrenas, 2005. p. 331).
She further argued that migrant women’s economic contributions do not necessarily prompt a
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reconfiguration of the family’s gender division of labor. Mothers rightfully express their love across great distances through transnational communication. Acts of nurturing unfortunately counteract the gender transformations initiated by women’s reconstitution of mothering to include breadwinning. This is only the case because of the continued rejection of caretaking by men.
This argument was challenged by Madianou and Miller (2011). Migrant mothers view this performance of mothering as empowering and as evidence of ICTs ability to reconstitute their role as effective parents. Rather than simply seeing this as a confirmation of traditionally asymmetrical gender roles whereby the woman does all the caring in addition to her newly acquired role as main breadwinner, they argue that the situation is more complex as mobile phone communication allows mothers to deal with the ambivalence that is deeply ingrained in their decision to migrate, or even prolong migration (Madianou, & Miller, 2011). ICTs-mediated transnational communication, therefore, can and should be viewed as something empowering, and not a “no-win situation for migrant mothers,” as Parrenas asserted (Parrenas, 2005. p. 333).
2.3. Transnational communication among migrant families
The family members of migrant workers, although geographically separated, still maintain strong ties with each other throughout the migration period (Bryceson, & Vuorela, 2002). As Parrenas (2005) argues in her work on Filipino migrant mothers, mothers separated from their family due to transnational migration do not abandon their nurturing roles to their children. In their absence, they do not even pass down all their gender responsibilities to other family members left in the Philippines. Instead, they not only reconstitute mothering by providing acts of care from afar, but also often do so by overcompensating for their physical absence and performing a transnational version of ‘intensive mothering’ (Parrenas, 2005, p. 323).
However, the fact that their structural norm involves sustained geographical distance means that transnational families are denied the joy and intimacy of physical proximity (Parrenas, 2005).
For contemporary migrant families, their efforts to preserve the bonds of emotion between family members rely heavily on ICTs, especially mobile phones (Benítez, 2012; Fresnoza-Flot, 2009; Madianou, & Miller, 2011; Senyureklu, &Detzner, 2009).
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To maintain family relations, transnational families use a variety of communication strategies involving ICTs. In 2011, Madianou and Miller conducted comparative research with UK-based Filipina migrants – mainly domestic workers and nurses – and their left behind children in the Philippines. Their methodology allowed them to demonstrate that mobile phones have been enthusiastically welcomed by migrant mothers who report that mobile phone communication has
To maintain family relations, transnational families use a variety of communication strategies involving ICTs. In 2011, Madianou and Miller conducted comparative research with UK-based Filipina migrants – mainly domestic workers and nurses – and their left behind children in the Philippines. Their methodology allowed them to demonstrate that mobile phones have been enthusiastically welcomed by migrant mothers who report that mobile phone communication has