Domestic Workers in Indonesia

This absorbing study examines the remarkable campaign for domestic worker rights in Indonesia. Drawing on interviews with workers, activists, unionists, journalists, and researchers, Austin provides a compelling narrative of the development of feminist-inspired cross-class alliances. She follows the movement from its beginnings in the student protests of the 1980s and 1990s, through its lobbying, street protests, and networking in the 2000s, ending with the digital activism stimulated by COVID-19. Shifting focus from migrant domestic workers to the five million in Indonesian homes, Austin interweaves theoretical insights with evocative portrayals of individual lives. Informed by the author’s experience of living in Indonesia in the 1980s, Domestic Workers in Indonesia offers a novel analysis of the changing imaginaries of domestic work. Chronicling activism in spaces ranging from the neighbourhood meeting house and domestic worker schoolroom to the smart hotels of transnational activism, Austin locates the movement’s resilience in a feminist politics of presence that has enabled the emergence of a nascent Indonesian domestic worker class. This first full-length study of domestic worker organizing in Indonesia will appeal to scholars, activists, and policy makers concerned about the global gender injustices of informal employment and with the futures for feminist, labour and social movement activism in Southeast Asia and beyond.