Session Name: Global Asia in the Time of Polycrisis
2 - Maintaining Life Under Neoliberal Rules: A Case Study of Muslimah Labourers in Central Java, Indonesia
Thursday, August 1, 2024
14:00 – 15:45 (GMT+7)
Presentation Abstract In the context of Muslim-majority Indonesia, we see the strengthening of Islamic piety as a response towards the reorganisations of people’s daily life under neoliberal imperatives, which have led to the proliferation of precarious employment practices while promoting marketisation of basic social services. We draw a link between the escalation of Islamic expression among the often overlooked Muslimah labourers in the historical locality of Solo, Central Java, Indonesia and their articulation of grievances. We find that Muslimah labourers in Solo compartmentalise their public and domestic space to fulfil distinctive gendered-roles. They use organised labour movements to fight for workers’ rights and realise the imagination of working-class solidarity—all the while donning hijabs and negotiating curfews from their male guardians. At the same time, they play caregiving roles to parents, children and husbands; filling the absence of basic social and health services they demand from the state, while ensuring security in the afterlife not achievable in their material one. While the pious common sense impinges on the collective wills of the workers to challenge the neoliberal structures that shape their (and our) experiences with marginalisation, it is no less meaningful in maintaining life in an increasingly unfair socio-economic world.
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