Sexuality, Shame and Subversions in Indonesian Migrant Women’s Fiction

This contribution examines maluShame (malu) (shame) as an effect of Indonesian women’s migrationMigration, illustrating how gendered moral discourses shape the problematic politics of labour migrationLabour migration in the country. It argues that shame not only reinforces several problematic genderGender and moral discourses imposed on Indonesian migrant women but also heightens their precarious role and place in their home and host countries. This essay probes into the possibilities opened by Indonesian migrant domestic workersDomestic migrant workers themselves as they write, publish and circulate their own stories in Hong KongHong Kong, Singapore and TaiwanTaiwan as part of the emerging cultural production of Sastra Buruh Migran IndonesiaIndonesia, Indonesian Migrant Workers’ Literature. It makes an innovative contribution to this collection by analysing how, in five short fiction anthologies of Indonesian migrant domestic workersDomestic migrant workers in Hong KongHong Kong, Singapore and TaiwanTaiwan, instances of shame and shaming matter in the representation of their daily lives and how they narrate their encounters and practices of queer sexual identities and interracial intimaciesIntimacies in transnational spaces. Through migrant women’s understanding of what counts as malu, I argue that their stories present a more complex negotiation of their precariousness, as they exhibit instances of agencyAgency and mobilityMobility that go beyond traditional genderGender discourses upheld back home.