Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion

Migrant remittances have far exceeded foreign aid in many migrant-origin countries, including Indonesia, constituting an important potential poverty alleviating strategy for these countries. Although Indonesia’s migrant workers contribute significantly to the national economy, and are hailed in everyday and public discourse as “foreign exchange heroes” (pahlawan devisa), they are also vulnerable to forms of financial exploitation and extortion during their journeys. Fraud and extortion—mainly involving cash— may occur from the time they are recruited into migration, during pre-departure training and procedures, while they are working overseas, until the time they return to their places of origin. These perpetrators typically include formal and informal recruitment agents, insurance companies, local and foreign police, immigration and customs officers, and bus drivers.

To reduce migrants’ exposure to these financial risks— which arguably keep many migrants in a cycle of debt and repeated temporary migration— the Indonesian government, alongside international and national financial institutions, has funded various financial education programs in rural migrant-origin villages. Since 2008, these programs, facilitated mainly by local non-governmental organizations (NGOs), have encouraged and introduced digital forms of remittance transfers, payment, and money storage. However, in 2014, when I conducted fieldwork in migrant-origin villages of Yogyakarta and Cilacap, I found that many villagers still appear to evaluate migrants’ journeys as successful or not based on how much cash they physically carry back to Indonesia (pulang bawa uang).

This sparked my main research question: Despite the high risks associated with physical cash transfer, the presence of financial education programs in some migrant-origin villages, and availability of digital payment platforms in migrants’ destination countries, why did migrants, their kin, and peers seem to privilege carrying rather than sending money home?