The crisis and international population movement in Indonesia

Abstract

<jats:p> Indonesia is the country most affected by the Asian financial crisis which began in mid-1997 and has been the slowest to recover from it. In the present paper the effects of the first two and a half years of the crisis on international population movements influencing Indonesia are discussed. The crisis has increased economic pressures on potential migrant workers in Indonesia and the result has been increased out-movement. In both pre and post-crisis situations this was dominated by women, at least among official migrant workers. The crisis has tightened the labor market in some of Indonesia's main destination countries but the segmentation of the labor market in those countries has limited the impact of the crisis in reducing jobs in those countries. The crisis has created more pressure on undocumented migrants in destination countries but the extent of repatriation, while higher than in the pre-crisis situation, has been limited. The crisis has directly or indirectly affected other international movements influencing Indonesia including expatriate movement to Indonesia and longer-term, south-north migration out of the country. The policy implications of these changes are discussed including the fact that the crisis has led to an increased appreciation of the importance of contract labor migration by government and greater attention being paid to improving the system for migrants themselves and the country as a whole. </jats:p>