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David Jordhus-Lier
To cite this article: David Jordhus-Lier (2017) Claiming industrial citizenship: The struggle for
domestic worker rights in Indonesia, Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift - Norwegian Journal of Geography,
71:4, 243-252
David Jordhus-Lier, Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, PO Box 1096, Blindern, NO-0317 Oslo
ABSTRACT
The author argues that recent attempts to build a domestic workers’ movement in Indonesia can be
understood as an ongoing and non-linear process driven by claims for industrial citizenship.
Thomas Humphrey Marshall’s concept of industrial citizenship, presented in his historical analysis
of industrial Britain, drew some profound connections between political mobilisation and the
realisation of rights that seemed to resonate with contexts far beyond its (i.e. industrial Britain’s) ARTICLE HISTORY
time and place. Based on a qualitative research project in five Indonesian cities, the author Received 8 September 2016
shows how an embryonic movement has mobilised for legislative recognition of domestic Accepted 16 August 2017
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worker rights, and explains why mobilisation has proved difficult. Based on both a
decontextualised and recontextualised reading of the concept of industrial citizenship, the EDITORS
author concludes there are three main reasons for the limited political success of the domestic Kristian Stokke, Catriona
Turner
workers’ movement are identified: a limiting social identity attributed to domestic workers in
Indonesia; the intersectionality of informal domestic work as reflected in the institutions of the KEYWORDS
labour market; and the lack of mutually constitutive scales of organising between the urban domestic workers, Indonesia,
neighbourhoods in which domestic workers live and work and policymaking at the national level. industrial citizenship,
informal work,
intersectionality
Jordhus-Lier, D. 2017. Claiming industrial citizenship: The struggle for domestic worker rights in Indonesia. Norsk
Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography Vol. 71, 243–252. ISSN 0029-1951.
Introduction
the domestic worker’ (interview, Lita Anggraini,1 3 July
Indonesian domestic workers are taking to the streets, 2015). In this article, I argue that the strategies of politi-
not in marches by the thousands, but in small groups cal mobilisation of domestic workers, as well as their still
of women who carry the personal risk of losing their limited legislative impact, can benefit from a conceptual
jobs by going public with demands for rights at work. discussion of industrial citizenship. To cite Zhang & Lil-
Supported by non-governmental organisations lie (2014, 3), ‘Industrial citizenship, despite the long his-
(NGOs), domestic workers have been trying to organise tory of the term, remains an underdeveloped concept
themselves politically in cities across Indonesia since the within citizenship studies’; there are many reasons for
early 1990s. Since its beginning, one of the central this underdevelopment. Today’s global workforce differs
demands of this embryonic movement has been to on several accounts from the workers of 19th century
secure formal worker rights and social security. Despite industrial Britain on whom T.H. Marshall (1992
years of combining local organising activities, alliance- [1950]) modelled his concept of industrial citizenship.
building and parliamentary lobbyism, domestic workers Moreover, worker organisations such as those that rep-
in Indonesia have had limited success in securing formal resent Indonesian domestic workers are often not trade
recognition as workers. unions in the classic sense. More recently, while unions
Understanding the political mobilisation as a struggle have experienced decline across Europe and North
for citizenship is in line with how one NGO activist America, and while academic observers have proposed
described the movement of which she was a part: ‘The alternatives to trade unionism altogether (Waterman
domestic worker issue is a woman’s issue, a worker 2005; Standing 2009), the concept of industrial rights
issue and a human rights issue. Everything relates to might seem archaic and passé.
Still, workers claim rights all over the world, in work- citizenship as process and industrial citizenship as status.
places as well as in political publics. Even under I favour a process-oriented approach, and use the organ-
unfavourable conditions, there are examples of innova- ising efforts among domestic workers in Indonesia as a
tive worker organisations in developing countries that case to exemplify the merits of a decontextualised and
see their membership rising, not falling (Lambert & recontextualised understanding of industrial citizenship.
Webster 2001). In this article, I argue that the concept
of industrial citizenship can still inform the study of con-
temporary struggles for worker rights. Industrial citizenship and the struggle for
My argument is based on the experiences of a particu- rights
lar group of marginalised workers, namely those who
perform paid work in Indonesian homes. According to Industrial citizenship refers to the ability of workers to
a national network of domestic worker organisations in organise collectively in the realm of work – from the
Indonesia, there are an estimated 10.7 million2 workers workplace to systems of industrial relations – which in
employed in private homes across Indonesia. In 2015, turn may give workers sufficient leverage to enforce
the majority of the c.6 million international migrants their rights outside the realm of work through, for
working outside Indonesia work as domestic workers example, labour legislation and welfare reforms. As the
according to the International Federation of Red Cross concept can be traced back to Marshall’s (1992 [1950])
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and Red Crescent Societies.3 During the course of historical analysis of citizenship and social class, it is
2015, a research team that included myelf and two Indo- worth revisiting its original interpretation. Marshall
nesian researchers4 conducted c.50 interviews with made the now well-known distinction between three
organisational representatives, domestic workers, acti- forms of rights: civil, political and social. He also linked
vists and government officials in five Indonesian cities their development throughout the history of capitalism
– Yogyakarta, Jakarta, Medan, Palembang, and Kupang to three stages, from the emergence of civil rights in
– as well as holding a focus group discussion with 5– the 18th century, though the expansion of political rights
12 domestic workers in both Yogyakarta and Jakarta. in the 19th century, and the establishment of social rights
The argument presented in this article is also based on in the national welfare states of the 20th century. The
the results of research on the domestic workers’ school relationship between capitalism and these categories of
in Yogyakarta conducted by Gastaldi (2015). rights is contentious in Marshall’s reading, but not in a
By analysing the mobilisation of Indonesian domestic straightforward manner. For example, civil rights are
workers through the lens of industrial citizenship, two individual in their nature and correspond well with the
objectives are achieved. First, the analysis highlights private sale and purchase of labour power at the heart
some key limitations to an NGO-driven, rights-based of capitalist accumulation. By contrast, political rights
political approach to domestic work in Indonesia. The- are collective in nature and hence counter to the logic
ories of industrial citizenship assume that the realisation of capitalism. However, political rights were not seen
of worker rights rests on the mutually constitutive as a threat until the emergence of social-democratic
dynamics between class-based solidarity and political labour parties in the twentieth century. This represents
mobilisation. This is a useful starting point from which the last phase in Marshall’s account (1992 [1950]),
to understand the obstacles facing domestic workers when citizenship became ‘at war’ with capitalism during
and their organisational allies. Second, the case supports the expansion of social rights.
and expands on an existing critique of the concept of Marshall argued that one of the main vehicles for
industrial citizenship. I argue that the experiences of expanding social rights in industrial Britain was trade
exploited, informal workers in the Global South should unionism. According to him, trade unions broke with
lead us to update and revise industrial citizenship as an the linear movement from civil, via political, to social
analytical concept, rather than reject it. rights. Rather, trade unionism established collective civil
However, before presenting a critique of the concept rights – the right to bargaining as a collective unit:
industrial citizenship, I present a detailed introduction This meant that social progress was being sought
to the concept. This article starts with a brief introduc- by strengthening civil rights, not by creating social
tion to the original concept as presented by Marshall rights; through the use of contract in the open market,
(1992 [1950]), and its appropriation and critique by aca- not through a minimum wage and social security.
[…] [T]he acceptance of collective bargaining was not
demic scholarship in recent years. Inspired by Marshall’s
simply a natural extension of civil rights; it represented
original idea of a mutually reinforcing relationship the transfer of an important process from the political
between different forms of citizenship, I draw on to the civil sphere of citizenship. (Marshall 1992
Zhang & Lillie’s (2014) distinction between industrial [1950], 26)
Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography 245
Hence, Marshall saw industrial citizenship in the form Status-oriented and process-oriented
of a well-organised working class as instrumental in the approaches
securement of broader social rights. Since he formu-
Zhang & Lillie (2014) argue that industrial citizenship, as
lated his theory, the concept of industrial citizenship
an academic concept, can be understood as both a
has met constructive criticism from different quarters.
societal process and a status granted to individuals
Feminist scholars in particular have identified short-
within a territorially defined community. Whereas Mar-
comings in Marshall’s assumptions. Fudge (2005)
shall’s original notion, as presented above, clearly
argues that as industrial citizenship emerged in indus-
described industrial citizenship as a socio-historical pro-
trial Britain, it was premised on the privileged subject
cess, others have since come to use the term to describe a
of ‘the male breadwinner’. This is problematic, because
state (or a desired state) of worker rights protection.
Marshall ‘appears to assume that women will gain their
Fudge (2005, 635) uses Canada as an example to show
entitlements through their husbands, and his concept
how industrial citizenship can be understood as a ‘status
of citizenship clearly takes for granted the unpaid
limiting commodification and conferring rights to influ-
labour of women’ (Zetlin & Whitehouse 2003, 774).
ence terms of employment’. She thus conceives industrial
Given the specific historical and geographical context
citizenship as a status, corresponding to a given level of
of Marshall’s analysis, one might raise concerns
worker rights protection. As in other Western econom-
about the applicability of the concept to worker
ies, this corresponds well with the employment security
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There are clear advantages to conceiving industrial concept of industrial citizenship can be used to explore
citizenship as status. For example, it can serve as an the interconnections between worker organisation and
ideal type for comparative reviews of formal worker the realisation of citizenship rights. In particular, Mar-
rights between regions and countries as evident in the shall’s insistence on worker organisation as a decisive
databases of the International Labour Organisation factor in enabling the translation of political and collec-
(ILO) (see Caraway 2009 for such a comparison). More- tive civil rights into social rights might be important
over, conceiving industrial citizenship as status can be here.
useful to understand the relative gains and losses that However, even a process-oriented approach to worker
result from worker mobility (see Ball & Piper 2002; Cas- mobilisation could lead to Eurocentrism (Cabrera 2008),
tles 2011 for both micro- and macro-approaches). How- whereby empirical cases are studied to ‘explain the
ever, there are also problems with this approach, because absence of an expected outcome’ (Somers 1996, 180),
it easily leads to what Somers (1996) appropriately labels such as collective bargaining or tripartite social dialogue.
an ‘epistemology of absence’, meaning that a phenom- As Zhang & Lillie (2014, 13) aptly state, ‘we must be cau-
enon is explained by what it lacks, instead of by its tious about the teleological and unidirectional reading of
observed qualities. This is particularly the case when the development of citizenship rights’. The struggle for
investigating workers in countries outside Europe and rights at work does not always take the form of trade
North America. Perhaps this is why industrial citizen- unionism, nor is it necessarily motivated by a clear
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ship is rarely applied to worker struggles beyond this goal of building a socialist or social democratic society.
particular geographical region in the world economy. Hence, to facilitate a contemporary use of industrial
One of the few examples in a Global South context can citizenship in accordance with Marshall’s original idea,
be found in Kenny’s (2007) analysis of post-apartheid we need to decontextualise and recontextualise the pro-
workplaces in South Africa. She describes how employ- cesses of citizenship formation. If we were to manage to
ers’ attempts to lobby for regulatory dispensations in do so, we would open up the concept of industrial citi-
labour law to the detriment of casual workers ‘reinforced zenship to alternative trajectories and other mobilising
the social imaginary of the full-time, permanent worker identities. In the remainder of this article, I use domestic
as the subject of “industrial citizenship”‘ (Kenny 2007, workers’ organisations in Indonesia as a case to illustrate
285). While full-time, permanent employment might the usefulness, but arguably also some of shortcomings,
be the reality for a small core of industrial and public sec- of the concept in a contemporary labour struggle.
tor workers in certain industrialising developing
countries, such as South Africa or Brazil, most workers
Mobilising for domestic worker rights in
in the world are very far from enjoying the level of
Indonesia
employment protection and social security associated
with industrial citizenship. Hence, a status-oriented The end of the oppressive New Order regime in 1998 sig-
approach holds limited relevance beyond a particular nalled new opportunities for industrial citizenship in
Western historical experience. Indonesia. In the phase immediately after the fall of Pre-
Alternatively, if the focus is on industrial citizenship as sident Suharto, labour legislation was put in place that
a process, the implications are different. Marshall’s orig- guaranteed organisational rights and the number of
inal use of the term contained a sophisticated under- independent trade unions increased dramatically (Ford
standing of how different sets of rights developed in a 2000). Expanded industrial rights were a result of inter-
mutually constitutive sequence, and how social citizen- national pressure, as well as pressure from domestic
ship (e.g. social security and welfare rights) was the result trade unions. However, this initial extension of rights
of political struggle and worker mobilisation. was followed by another process of labour law reform
Approaching industrial citizenship as a process is whereby ‘flexibilisation’ and outsourcing were intro-
potentially a more open approach to the concept, as duced to deal with the effects of the Asian financial crisis
workers politicise their conditions of work in every cor- in the late 1990s. This paved the way for the Manpower
ner of the world, and often through a language of rights. Act of 2003, which stipulated the essential rights and
As this article is concerned with understanding the pol- obligations of employers and workers in Indonesia (Sur-
itical mobilisation of a group of workers who enjoy very yomengglo 2009), and was only passed due to sustained
limited worker rights, it seems more suitable to adopt a political pressure from the newly established trade
process-oriented approach to industrial citizenship. unions. However, the country’s millions of domestic
The organisations of domestic workers in Indonesia do workers are excluded from the definition of workers
engage in rights-based mobilisation, not only at work and workplaces under the current interpretation of the
but also in the political sphere. Hence, Marshall’s law.
Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography 247
The political mobilisation of domestic workers dates Workers in both of these contexts are therefore forced
back to the activities of women activists in Yogyakarta to base their mobilisation on other identities than
in the early 1990s, and has since led to the formation those that served as the basis for industrial citizenship
of local unions in several cities and a national network in 20th century Europe.
for domestic workers’ rights, Jala PRT. Since 2004, Jala Questions of solidarity and identity construction are
PRT has lobbied the Indonesian parliament (Dewan Per- critical to the continued relevance of industrial citizen-
wakilan Rakyat) to pass a Domestic Workers Protection ship, but are not discussed explicitly in Marshall’s
Bill that would end the exclusion of domestic workers (1995 [1950]) original account. If bonds of solidarity
from formal worker rights. Despite the activism of Jala and a common identity as workers do not exist prior
PRT, which included a high-profile hunger strike in to mobilisation, they must be created through mobilis-
2014 and the involvement of international organisations ation. Identity, solidarity and political mobilisation can
such as the ILO, the bill has been dropped from the list of thus be seen to stand in a mutually constitutive relation-
legislative priorities (prolegnas) several times by Indone- ship to each other, and as a precondition for the realis-
sian elected politicians. Moreover, despite having one of ation of industrial citizenship. Mapping the
the world’s largest domestic worker workforces, Indone- geographies of industrial citizenship is therefore not
sia has yet to ratify ILO Convention 189 (dating from only limited to documenting its end product – in the
2011) concerning decent work for domestic workers. form of social and economic rights – but also implies
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A ministerial regulation in 2015 (Permenaker No. 2/ studying concrete attempts to construct worker identi-
2015) compensated to some extent for the legal vacuum ties, to establish alliances between different groups of
surrounding domestic work by requiring domestic workers, and to mobilise politically. Political mobilis-
employers and employees to formalise their agreement ation will always seek to maintain a firm foundation in
in a written contract (Austin 2016). While the regulation social categories and identities from which they draw
was welcomed by activists interviewed in the research their members (cf. Cox 1998).
(see endnote 4), it was also criticised for relegating the A fruitful analogy is arguably to think of industrial
politics of domestic work to the private sphere (cf. Silvey citizenship as an imagined community (cf. Anderson
2004). 2006) of common interest that is continuously in need
When examining how organisations representing of being affirmed and reproduced. However, all ima-
domestic workers in Indonesia have engaged with these gined communities entail processes of exclusion and
political and legislative processes, I would argue that inclusion. Hence, for many workers worldwide, particu-
this case highlights three challenges that have been insuf- larly marginalised groups such as informal workers,
ficiently discussed in the literature on industrial citizen- transnational migrants and domestic workers, the
ship: the constraints of existing social identities, the struggle for industrial citizenship is also a struggle to
intersectionality of informal domestic work, and the pro- be included in existing class categories or to create new
blem of scale. While each of these challenges is structural ones. Processes of collective identity construction are
in nature, as they are rooted in deep-seated cultural prac- therefore an important part of struggles for industrial
tices, they also appear as political and institutional citizenship (Melucci 1995; Kelly 1998).
obstacles for those attempting to organise Indonesian The social identity attributed to domestic workers in
domestic workers. In the following sections, I discuss Indonesia represents a formidable obstacle to collective
these challenges in turn, as well as the responses they identity construction. Domestic workers are still seen
have drawn from domestic workers and their as making limited contributions to society, because
representatives. their work is not recognised as producing economic
value (Weix 2000; Gastaldi 2015). Hence, they are nor-
mally referred to as domestic helpers (pembantu
Challenging social identity through collective
rumah tangga) rather than as domestic workers (pekerja
identity construction
rumah tangga). This social identity is borne out of the
Zhang & Lillie (2014, 5) argue that the emergence of semi-feudal and familial work arrangements that tra-
worker mobilisation requires the development of ditionally have governed domestic work in Indonesia.
class capacities and bonds of solidarity through ‘shared The fact that Indonesian domestic workers are women
symbols, networks, organizations’, all of which they working in a patriarchal society serves to deepen their
see as on the wane in many Western countries. In social exclusion. This feeds into a politics of intersection-
developing countries such as Indonesia, this class- ality (cf. Bernardino-Costa 2014), where their role as
based solidarity has never been established beyond a outsiders in the public domain is cemented by their sta-
limited group of workers in the industrial sectors. tus as poor, as migrants, and as women, whereas their
248 D. Jordhus-Lier
role as insiders in the private domain excludes them schools, trained activists and domestic workers meet to
from acting as political subjects: define what it means to be a ‘domestic worker’ together:
Interviewer: Have you ever asked her how For every meeting we hold, the more we get our mind
she describes herself? clear about our rights as domestic workers. […] Thanks
Employer in Kupang: No, we don’t ask things like to this organisation, my friends are now able to stand up
that. We don’t even introduce for themselves. We didn’t have the guts before. Myself
her as a ‘helper’ (pembantu), included. (Leader of a domestic workers’ union in
we introduce her as ‘the one Jakarta)
who helps us’. More polite.
I used to be a helper, but now I am a worker. (Member of
These perceptions were not limited to the interviewed a domestic workers’ union in Jakarta)
employer, as domestic workers encounter the same social When I first met [the union] I was hopeless, had many
identity in their own social networks: problems. But joining up with other members gave me
the spirit not to give up. Now I know I’m not alone.
Some of our own family members don’t think that we
We have a solidarity network with many activities.
are workers. We get less respect than other family mem-
(Member of a domestic workers’ union in Yogyakarta)
bers who work as factory workers. Society doesn’t think
domestic workers exist. We are just a complement at Apart from Sekolah PRT, also worker associations and
neighbourhood meetings. (Member of a domestic credit schemes are available to domestic workers in
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states than they do in most countries in today (Standing most other countries. For informal workers, levels of
2009). Many of the processes that led from industrial unionisation are extremely low among domestic employ-
citizenship to social citizenship in Europe entailed the ees, and it is only recently that some of the major trade
formalisation of the standard employment relationship, unions have attempted to organise informal workers in
which in turn guaranteed extensive welfare provisions. a separate organisation. To compensate for this, the
When understood in this way, informal employment national network Jala PRT cooperates loosely with
arrangements in developing countries might appear as trade union federations on certain lobby activities. How-
the antipode of industrial citizenship. ever, building trust between trade unions and the organ-
If we are to maintain our commitment to a process- isations is a painstaking exercise, as trade union leaders
oriented understanding of industrial citizenship, we and many of their members themselves employ domestic
would be ill-advised to neglect the possibility of mean- workers.
ingful claims for rights and recognition outside the The dilemma of the employer’s role is manifested also
realm of standard formal employment. Moreover, such on the other side of the negotiation table. Because
claims do not have to be met with the same trajectory employers are the heads of private households, there
of formalisation that workers in industrial and public are no employers’ associations or interest organisations
sectors have pursued in the past. While the literature dedicated to those who employ workers in their own
on labour regimes in the Global South has rarely households. This does not mean that the interests of
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employed the theoretical lens of industrial citizenship, the employers are not channelled into the political pro-
the exclusion from formal labour regulation has been cess, albeit in an informal manner. Politicians, employ-
identified as a key challenge for very different subjects: ers, trade union leaders and NGO representatives are
workers in special economic zones (Jenkins 2015); street all likely to be employers of domestic workers in Indone-
vendors and other informal workers forced into self- sia, and this spurred the leader of Jala PRT to comment
employment (Lindell 2010a); and those who work within that ‘they are all the employer side’ (interview, Lita
the confines of private homes (see Ally 2010 for an analy- Anggraini, 30 June 2015). This is an often-overlooked
sis of South African domestic workers). aspect of intersectionality underlying the politics of
Industrial citizenship has always been exclusive in domestic work. The hesitance of various actors to
nature, excluding particular groups and being confined embrace the extension of minimum wage regulation to
to particular spaces. Even more than in countries such domestic workers is illustrative of this fact, and was
as South Africa (cf. Ally 2010), Indonesian domestic repeatedly expressed during interviews with the author
workers have found the boundary between home and (Jordhus-Lier & Prabawati in press).
work – between what is perceived as the productive
and reproductive spheres of society – hard to cross
The problem of scale
(Weix 2000). However, this boundary is not static.
Since the period in which President Suharto was in In addition to having to break loose from their social
office, urbanisation and a growing middle-class have identity and meeting the problem of intersectionality in
led to an increasing commodification of domestic labour. industrial relations, a third challenge for organised dom-
Even in cases in which the arrangements remain infor- estic workers has been to agree on where to seek political
mal, urban domestic work is no longer confined to kin- change. The domestic workers’ movement in Indonesia
ship networks and constitutes a de facto employment is currently drawn between national legislative change
relationship between an employer and an employee. as the main goal, and a small and embryonic group of
This has opened for attempts to establish a collective membership-based organisations focused on recruiting
‘domestic worker’ identity by union activists. However, and servicing members. Whereas the legislative cam-
the Indonesian state still represents a main hurdle for paign is coordinated by a network of NGO activists at
these attempts, by refusing to accept domestic work as the national scale, the latter group views the metropoli-
a public concern, and instead confining it to the intimate tan area (or even the neighbourhood) as their scale of
politics of the home (Silvey 2004). organisation. The politics of domestic work as a problem
To domestic workers, the formal–informal divide also of scale was conceived by Silvey (2004) in her study of
entails renegotiating multiple roles and relationships Indonesian domestic workers in Saudi Arabia. She
with their employers, as well as with other workers. argued that labour migrants’ individual strategies of
This intersectionality of domestic work is reflected in migration and their collective strategies of transnational-
the exclusion of domestic workers from the institutions ism (e.g. remittances) was a form of scalar politics.
of industrial relations. Domestic workers in Indonesia Through their transnationalism, domestic workers have
lack a national trade union in the formal sense as in broken out of a particular construction of the household
250 D. Jordhus-Lier
scale in Indonesia where it is simultaneously seen as Marshall 1992 [1950]). Policies and legal protection tar-
‘foundational to the nation’ and as a workplace beyond geting domestic workers in Indonesia are predominantly
the scope of state jurisdiction (Silvey 2004, 150). By anchored in the national level. Currently, there is a lack
using the language of industrial citizenship, nuance can of mutual benefit between these national lobby efforts
be added to the problem of scale by identifying a mis- and the embryonic organising activities in local urban
match between a national scale of political activism communities across Indonesia. Drawing on the scalar
and the local scales of organising among domestic language of Cox (1998), the Indonesian domestic
workers working in Indonesia. workers’ movement suffers from a disarticulation
The growing presence of the domestic workers’ move- between the workers’ ‘spaces of dependence’ – which
ment in a national political space has been strengthened refers to the privatised workplaces and local associational
by the alliance-building between Jala PRT and various life where they live and work – and the national legisla-
actors in civil society. Since emerging from the broader tive process that they have identified as their ‘space of
women’s movement in Indonesia, activists in Jala PRT engagement’.
have maintained close ties with women’s groups. They A further spatial dilemma facing the domestic
have also had an active international engagement as workers’ movement is the mobile nature of the domestic
part of the International Domestic Workers Federation labour workforce. Millions of Indonesian workers work
(IDWF) and other transnational activist networks. abroad, many of them in the Middle East and in Asian
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Often, such international NGOs employ a rights-based megacities such as Singapore and Hong Kong. While
discourse with a focus on strengthening legal protection domestic workers abroad experience ‘triple exclusion’
at the national scale. However, these actors are also faced from citizenship in their host country, due to being
with the above-mentioned dilemmas of intersectionality female, foreign and working in private homes, there
and institutional exclusion. The ‘Decent Work’ agenda of are also examples of attempts to claim citizenship
the ILO is a good example, as it acknowledges the politi- through the establishment of social organisations and
cal character of worker rights through championing ILO interest groups (Yeoh & Huang 1999). The level of inter-
Conventions 87 and 98 on the right to organise and to national mobility among Indonesian domestic workers is
engage in collective bargaining, yet its main efforts also likely to impact on claims for citizenship at home.
remain top-down, geared at compelling states to commit The future prospects of working abroad attracts many
to formal agreements guaranteeing rights at work, social Indonesian domestic workers and functions as a disin-
security and tripartite social dialogue. As described centive to invest long-term in organisational efforts in
above, the ideal of tripartite social dialogue as stated in their current place of work. Many interviewed workers
the ILO’s ‘Decent Work’ agenda appears far-fetched had alternated between work locations overseas and
for Indonesian domestic workers. employers in Indonesia throughout their careers, mean-
Thus, Indonesian domestic workers are not yet rep- ing that the social basis for unionising workers in ‘transit
resented by leaders with a background in domestic ports’ such as Kupang or Medan was fluid and unstable.
work at the national scale (what Pitkin 1967 labels
‘descriptive representation’). Moreover, they are unable
Conclusions
to sanction their demands for social rights through act-
ing as collective actors in the labour market (e.g. in the Struggles for worker rights such as the attempts to build a
form of industrial action). While the organising efforts domestic workers’ movement in Indonesia can be under-
of Jala PRT range from relatively well-established unions stood as an ongoing and non-linear process driven by
in Yogyakarta to younger, emergent organisations in claims for industrial citizenship. Indonesian domestic
Jakarta and Semarang (Gastaldi 2015), a crucial chal- workers’ organisations and their national network, Jala
lenge for this movement is how to connect its activism PRT, have articulated a clear political goal – the realisation
at a national scale with a strategy of establishing dom- of social rights in the national legislative assembly. How-
estic workers’ unions across Indonesian cities. ever, success in this political arena hinges on the concomi-
Lessons from the discussion of industrial citizenship tant creation of a collective domestic worker identity,
can help to explain why a liberal discourse of citizenship, meaningful access to the civil society institutions regulat-
in which socio-economic rights are only granted the role ing industrial relations, and effective political mobilis-
of a secondary accompaniment to civil and political ation. Despite years of committed activism, the
rights (cf. Jones & Stokke 2005), has proved insufficient. movement has yet to see fundamental legislative reform.
Attempts to enforce socio-economic rights from above However, as Austin has noted in an unpublished
are often less effective than struggles that substantiate manuscript, one should not be content with simply ask-
their mobilisation through worker mobilisation (cf. ing why Jala PRT has not achieved greater political
Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography 251
Lambert, R. & Webster, E. 2001. Southern unionism and the Somers, M.R. 1996. Class formation and capitalism: A second
new labour internationalism. Antipode 33, 337–362. look at a classic. European Journal of Sociology 37, 180–202.
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