Home Divided: Living arrangement of migrant families in the rural Java, Indonesia

Migration to the city or abroad has been adapted as a livelihood strategy by village families in rural Java Indonesia. Adult children support their parents’ economy while husbands or wives left their spouses and children in the village to make ends meet. In term of rural-urban migration within Indonesia, migrants prefer to migrate in non-permanent basis in the form of circulation, weekly or monthly, while international contract workers are naturally in inviduals basis. This living arrangement choice of migrants created a phenomenon of divided households between migrants in the destination areas and the rest of family left behind in the villages. The wives or husbands work and/or maintain the children in the villages, while the husbands or wives work in the city or abroad. The phenomenon of home divided is universal, as a consequence of migration. People migrate from less develop economic regions or countries to the more advance economic areas. The phenomenon of divided home has significant impacts upon household structure and functioning in origin and destination regions or countries, and family solidity. This paper is based on secondary sources of migration and family studies conducted in rural Java, Indonesia in the last twenty years.