Strategic actions of transnational migrant parents regarding birth registration for stay‐behind children in Lombok, Indonesia

Abstract

Challenges to birth registration for children whose parents migrate transnationally for work have been inadequately investigated. Often a prerequisite to accessing state resources such as education and child protection, birth registration may meaningfully indicate a family's capacities to provide for children's well‐being. A multimethod qualitative study in 4 high‐migration communities in East Lombok, Indonesia, explored the strategic actions migrant parents take regarding birth registration. Families register children based on priorities, capacities, understanding of entitlements, and labyrinthine application processes. Three case studies describe the strategic actions families take with regards to registration to allow some measure of control over their children's well‐being: prioritising documents for adult migration; strictly conforming to registration requirements; and relying on false documentation. Findings suggest that parents' strategic actions result in limited family success in the context of weak state initiatives to link birth registration to valued resources for children and families.

Frequent border‐crossing children and cultural membership

“…It is active because these individuals are mobilising their knowledge and resources in response to the specific socio‐structural situation confronting them to achieve certain goals for their children. Their agency is therefore “context‐specific responses” (Butt & Ball, ) to the challenges facing them. It is reactive because the frame of reference of these goals reflects the stereotypes against migrants and the rhetoric of cultural membership that is often mobilised by antimigrant groups to exclude perceived outsiders from society.…”

Under one roof? Left‐behind children's perspectives in negotiating relationships with absent and return‐migrant parents

“…Childhood experiences are notably diverse across and within both countries, but the lives of the left‐behind Indonesian and Filipino children in this article are joined by a common thread of growing up within a prevalent migration context that is influenced by a host of factors including gender (of migrants, carers, and children), length of migration, and destinations. Although we are increasingly gaining insights into the mixed impact of parental migration on the citizenship (see Butt & Ball, ) and developmental aspects (such as behaviours, education, mental and physical health, and relationships) of Indonesian and Filipino childhoods through a growing number of studies (examples include Asis, ; Battistella & Conaco, ; Graham & Jordan, ; Graham et al, ; Parreñas, ; Sukamdi & Wattie, ), it is nonetheless still difficult to derive a comprehensive understanding of left‐behind childhoods. Existing studies investigating the impact of parental migration on specific aspects of children's well‐being seldom include children's perspectives and inadvertently end up portraying children as relatively passive vessels waiting to receive the effects of the adults' actions (exceptions include Episcopal Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People/Apostleship of the Sea‐Manila, Scalabrini Migration Center, & Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, ; Parreñas, ).…”

Editorial introduction: Situated agency in the context of research on children, migration, and family in Asia

“…More often, their agency is expressed as mundane actions that “contribute to the ongoingness of the world” (Ansell, , p. 202) and may not be constitutive of more overt or transformative resistance. At other times, the expressed agency of migrant children and their parents might even appear to be accommodating and compromising (see, e.g., the mothers studied by Butt & Ball, , and Chiu & Choi, ). Yet, simultaneously, such expressions may be regarded as culturally dignifying, obligational, socially desirable, and situationally rational, at least in the immediate contexts of significance to children and their families.…”

“…Similarly, the agency of mothers of Hong Kong–China cross‐border children has to be situated within the postcolonial political tensions between the two polities, along with intensified regional integration and continued economic inequalities that divide Hong Kong and China politically, legally, and culturally (Chiu & Choi, ). Finally, the diverse strategies and different scope for agency expressed by the mothers of children in migrant families studied by Butt and Ball () in Indonesia can be more fully understood if we consider the widening gap between the state policy ideal of citizenship for all and local political realities plagued by corruption and policy failure, as well as the often straining and isolating family circumstances that many families in economically deprived communities face.…”

“…More often, their agency is expressed as mundane actions that "contribute to the ongoingness of the world" (Ansell, 2009, p. 202) and may not be constitutive of more overt or transformative resistance. At other times, the expressed agency of migrant children and their parents might even appear to be accommodating and compromising (see, e.g., the mothers studied by Butt &Ball, 2018, andChiu &Choi, 2018).…”