winarnita-dontcallme-2018.pdf (319.6 kB)
Don't call me ibu: challenges of belonging for childless transnational Indonesian women
journal contribution
posted on 2018-01-01, 00:00 authored by Monika WinarnitaGlobal Networks © 2017 Global Networks Partnership & John Wiley & Sons Ltd New forms of transnational families are being created by the feminization of migration, particularly of mobile Southeast Asian female workers who take on the financial responsibility of supporting their nieces and nephews who remain in the home country. This understudied kin relationship provides important insights into the complexities of transnational belonging among childless women. Fieldwork conducted in 2015 with Indonesian professional migrant women in Melbourne, Australia, reveals a translocalized Javanese cultural practice of fostering nieces and nephews. Using a framework that extends the anthropology of belonging into a gendered transnational context, in this article I argue that children who are absent, whether living in another country or never born, are yet present in women's narratives and are key to a larger migrant project of recreating oneself as an ambiguously valued subject.
History
Journal
Global NetworksVolume
18Issue
1Pagination
186 - 203Publisher
WileyLocation
London, Eng.Publisher DOI
Link to full text
ISSN
1470-2266eISSN
1471-0374Language
engPublication classification
C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journalUsage metrics
Categories
No categories selectedKeywords
Licence
Exports
RefWorks
BibTeX
Ref. manager
Endnote
DataCite
NLM
DC