‘Where Are Your Victims?’

The United States has played a key role in international efforts to address trafficking in Indonesia, as elsewhere. In October 2001, the US State Department established an Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, which prepares the annual Trafficking in Persons Report, widely known as the TIP Report. In the reports, countries are divided into three tiers according to their efforts to comply with minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. Tier One consists of those countries who fully comply with the minimum standards outlined in the US Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (TVPA); Tier Two of those who do not fully comply but are making efforts to ensure compliance; and Tier Three of those who do not comply and are not making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance (US Department of State 2000). Countries in Tier Three are subject to sanctions, including the termination of non-humanitarian aid and US opposition to assistance from international financial institutions (Ould 2004: 61). Critics argue that the TIP reports ignore forms of forced labour other than forced sexual labour, gloss over state complicity in trafficking and are vague about numbers of victims, convictions and sentencing rates (Caraway 2006: 298). Concerns have also been expressed about the impact of United States Agency for International Development (USAID) policy regarding the funding of programmes promoting safe sexual practices within brothels, which stipulate that in order to be eligible for US funding non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in the trafficking field must declare their opposition to prostitution (Ditmore 2005; Weitzer 2007). Organizations that do not take a position on prostitution, as well as those that favour decriminalization or legalization are thus ineligible for funding from the US government

The Borders Within: Mobility and Enclosure in the Riau Islands

The border studies literature makes a strong case against claims for unfettered transnationalism and ‘borderlessness’ in our ‘globalising world’. However, its focus on movement across borders means that it fails to address bordering practices that occur within the nation-state as a result of transnational activity. In this paper, we extend Cunningham and Heyman’s concepts ‘enclosure’ and ‘mobility’ to confront the different layers of bordering (both physical and nonphysical) that have occurred in Indonesia’s Riau Islands since they became part of the Indonesia– Malaysia–Singapore Growth Triangle

The Chinese of Karimun: Citizenship and Belonging at Indonesia's Margins

We argue that the localized expression of Chinese Indonesian identity in Karimun suggests a need to move beyond a focus on integration versus assimilation to an analysis of how identity and belonging are tied to a sense of place. As this chapter shows, in making sense of their position in Indonesia's periphery, Karimun's Chinese community makes reference to a series of binaries – native-born versus foreign-born; center (Jakarta) versus periphery (Riau islands); islanders versus newcomers; and Indonesian versus Singaporean/Malaysian – that serve to structure their accounts of identity and belonging. These binaries are constantly negotiated through interconnected processes of resistance to assimilation and acculturation to a Karimun "way of life.

Introduction: Men and Masculinities in Southeast Asia

Men and masculinities are the subject of burgeoning scholarly interest, much of it driven by a desire to render masculinities visible. Masculinities scholars argue that men as men have rarely been treated as the subjects of scholarly research; the man as ‘male’ occupies the space of ‘the universal, normative subject’ (Louie 2002: 5) – a figure rarely problematized or deconstructed. These scholars claim that even within gender studies men have been largely absent (Connell et al 2005: 1). The aim of research on men and masculinities is therefore to put men at the centre of scholarly enquiry as gendered beings. This has led to an explosion of writing about men and masculinities. In the context of Asia, much of this work is focused on China and Japan (see Brownell and Wasserstrom 2002; Louie 2002; Roberson and Suzuki 2002; Louie and Low 2003; Geng 2004) or on South Asia (Derné 2000; Osella et al 2004; Banerjee 2005). There has been considerable less research on men and masculinities in Southeast Asia where, according to Peletz (1995: 102), masculinity and its constructions ‘have been taken for granted’

Love, Sex and the Spaces In-Between: Kepri Wives and their Cross-Border Husbands

In the Riau Islands of Indonesia significant numbers of women have entered into marriages with men from the nearby countries of Singapore and Malaysia. In many cases, neither spouse migrates after marriage: instead, husband and wife continue to reside in their country of origin. Their close geographical proximity means that the couples can see each other regularly while at the same time taking advantage of the economic opportunities presented by living on different sides of the border. These cross-border marriages challenge the normative model of the nuclear cohabiting couple/family. Our research into the motivations and desires of these cross-border couples living in the Riau borderlands reveals that space and mobility mediate their interactions with the Singaporean, Malaysian and Indonesian states, thus producing localized accounts of citizenship in which class mobility (rather than physical mobility) becomes the dominant frame through which they view state regulation of marriage and migration. This research challenges the state-centric tendencies in some of the scholarly literature on international and transnational marriage which places overwhelming emphasis on the ability of states to regulate access to citizenship rights. In presenting a view of inconsistent and sometimes incoherent states, we highlight the significant differences between perceptions of state influence and actual state practices in relation to the regulation of international marriages

Narratives of Agency: Sex Work in Indonesia’s Borderlands

Lia’s and Ani’s narratives raise questions about how we can theorize the “constrained choice to become a sex worker, without moralisingly declaring all sex work to be exploitation or violence against women” (Schotten 2005: 230). The latter view is espoused by those writers who, writing from an abolitionist stance, argue that prostitution is the ultimate expression of male dominance and thus the cornerstone of all sexual exploitation (cf. Barry 1996). According to this argument, there is no place for sex workers to claim that their work is not harmful or alienating. Such a totalizing perspective provides little space for alternative accounts of the intersection between structure and agency and overlooks the ways in which women themselves understand and explain their life histories. The stories that Lia and Ani, two women who became labor migrants, then sex workers, and finally the wives of ex-clients, tell about their lives demonstrate these complexities and challenge commonsense understandings about women’s agency

Where Internal and International Migration Intersect: Mobility and the Formation of Multi-Ethnic Communities in the Riau Islands Transit Zone

While migration studies scholars have paid considerable attention to internal migration within Indonesia, as well as to international labour migration flows from Indonesia, they have rarely considered the intersections between these two processes. This paper addresses the gap through a close analysis of migration flows in one of Indonesia’s key transit areas – the Riau Islands. We argue that in the borderlands the processes of internal and international migration are mutually constitutive. The Riau Islands’ status as a transit zone for international labour migrants and as a destination for internal migrants determines its demographic profile and policies of migration control. Bordering practices are strongly influenced by the fact that not everyone who comes to the Riau Islands has the intention of moving on, and not all international migrants returning to the islands intend to go home. Our analysis demonstrates that internal migration cannot be understood as a solely national phenomenon, and that international migration cannot only be explained by push and pull factors in sending and receiving destinations. These complexities necessitate research and policy responses that take into account the unique character of the transit provinces, and the role that their geographical location plays in the formation of multi-ethnic communities and the management of migration

Smuggling Cultures in the Indonesia-Singapore Borderlands

In this chapter, we examine the unauthorised movement of goods across the border to and from Indonesia's Riau Islands from the perspective of the individuals who smuggle and consume them, and from the perspective of local agents of the state - individuals whose stories demonstrate the multiple meanings associated with cross-border flows across the straits and, in doing so, shed light on how state practices intersect with competing ideas about legality and licitness. The first part of the chapter examines this nexus between the historical formation of the border and cross-border flows of goods in the colonial and post-colonial periods. Here we show that although many individuals who live in the Riau Islands experience the border as a boundary and as the imposition of state rule, it also represents a resource that can be exploited. The second part of the chapter demonstrates how the often contradictory processes of bordering have shaped not only the ways that Riau Islanders imagine the border but also the state's changing definitions of, and responses to, smuggling. ln particular, our study of the Riau Islands reveals that local state involvement in 'illegal' acts (such as corruption that supports smuggling) can be seen as a legitimate response to local needs and the perceived failures of the national government and legal system- a fact that points to the need to explore local ecologies of licitness (and illegality) not just in terms of community perceptions but also in terms of different levels of the state

Travelling the Aspal Route: Grey Labour Migration through an Indonesian Border Town

This chapter explores the state's role in semi-legal migration flows through Tanjung Pinang, the capital city of the province of Kepulauan Riau (the Riau Islands) in the borderlands between Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. In the Riau Islands, local officials play a pivotal role in facilitating the flow of temporary labour migrants across the border. They collaborate with a range of other actors involved in the labour migration process, including official and unofficial labour recruitment agents; local brokers who act as middlemen between agents, officials and prospective migrants; and numerous other private entrepreneurs who provide specialized services, such as those running 'passport bureaus'. While some of these actors are involved in legal businesses, others operate illegally but with local government sanction. Together they are part of an alternative labour migration system that sits alongside the official process, and which has both legal and illegal aspects to its operation

Trafficking Versus Smuggling: Malaysia's Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Malaysian government has faced increasing pressure to improve its treatment of its large migrant population. To address international criticism and to improve the treatment of victims of trafficking, the government introduced an Anti-Trafficking in Persons (ATIP) Act in 2007, which was subsequently amended in 2010 to include crimes associated with migrant smuggling. The first section of this chapter traces the emergence of the Act, while the second documents and analyses national and international responses to it. The chapter argues that the Malaysian example offers important insights into the ways in which international pressure can be brought to bear on the drafting of national laws dealing with human trafficking and smuggling. It demonstrates that the geopolitics of regional border control is increasingly shaping Malaysian responses to its large migrant population. In particular, the distinction between smuggling and trafficking is becoming an important means for Malaysian authorities to strengthen border protection while, at the same time, paying lip service to international demands to address 'the most heinous of crimes'. In the absence of human rights laws that address the exploitation of migrants, these anti-trafficking and anti-migrant smuggling laws have done little to address the system-wide factors that create and sustain endemic abuse of the labour rights of temporary labour migrants