Dominant Positionings and Paradoxical Mobilities: Child Migrants in Java, Indonesia

Harriot Beazley; Dyann Ross

doi:10.1007/978-981-287-029-2_8

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Dominant Positionings and Paradoxical Mobilities: Child Migrants in Java, Indonesia

Book chapter

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Dominant Positionings and Paradoxical Mobilities: Child Migrants in Java, Indonesia

Harriot Beazley and Dyann Ross

Movement, Mobilities, and Journeys, pp.85-109

Geographies of Children and Young People (GCYP), 6, Springer Singapore

2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-029-2_8

Appears in UniSC Diversity and Inclusion Research Collection

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Abstract

Human Geography

Sociology

child migrants

child protection agency

informal economy

Java Indonesia

dominant discourses

mobilities

inequality

exploitation

UniSC Diversity Area - Cultural and Linguistic Diversity

UniSC Diversity Area - Life Stages

This chapter focuses on the diverse mobilities and agency of marginalized children and young people growing up in Java, Indonesia, who migrate to the city seeking escape, employment, and adventure. To argue that young people's lives are constrained or dictated by poverty or hardship, is to refute their agency and implies that they are unable to desire or seek signs of modernity or the status that is attached to their mobility. The chapter is based on multisited participatory research with young male and female migrants working in the precarious informal economy and on the streets of Java. It explores how their realities contradict the dominant constructions of childhood, child labor, child migration, and "trafficking," and challenge the expectations of mainstream society and the protectionist discourses of nation states and the international aid sector. The chapter untangles the paradoxical realities embedded in the mobilities of migrant and adolescent identities, questioning the way child migration is viewed by dominant privileged groups. By highlighting the structural disadvantage and the resilience of patriarchy as contributing factors to migrant children's reality, the chapter calls for a radical cultural shift away from the universalistic, moralistic construction of child migrants, towards an interrogation of the dominant neoliberal forces that underpin their exploitation and control.

Details

Title: Dominant Positionings and Paradoxical Mobilities: Child Migrants in Java, Indonesia
Authors: Harriot Beazley (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - Faculty of Arts, Business and Law
Dyann Ross (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - Faculty of Arts, Business and Law
Contributors: Caitriona Ni Laoire (Editor)
Allen White (Editor)
Tracey Skelton (Editor)
Publication details: Movement, Mobilities, and Journeys, pp.85-109
Series: Geographies of Children and Young People (GCYP); 6
Publisher: Springer Singapore
Date published: 2017
DOI: 10.1007/978-981-287-029-2_8
ISBN: 9789812870285
Organisation Unit: Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre; School of Social Sciences - Legacy; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Law and Society; Sustainability Research Cluster
Language: English
Record Identifier: 99451077602621
Output Type: Book chapter

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