Preface

Summary

This book explores women's mobility in particular geographical, social, and cultural contexts. I am captivated by women's travel as a way of opening a space of inquiry about Eastern Indonesia's spatial relations. Examining practices of travel provides insights into contemporary social and cultural processes (Clifford 1997; Kaplan 1996; Tsing 2000). This book emphasizes how travel situates Eastern Indonesian women at the intersection of ethnicity/place, class and gender politics. I investigate theoretical issues of travel within feminist geography frameworks, in which interpretations of place and ideologies of Self are problematized. The field research focuses on contemporary rural women and was conducted mainly in parts of East Nusa Tenggara and while travelling on boats in the region.

Women from Eastern Indonesia travel by sea along three routes: inter-island, to urban centres and travel overseas. Their travel stories are analysed to magnify the step of “langgar laut” or crossing the ocean. This local term represents negotiations of a range of social boundaries. Boundary is employed as an analytical tool to understand women's engagement in mobility to overcome exclusion from various social categories. My analysis grounds women's micropolitics of place in their journeys and nests it in the larger, macro scale politics of place. The result points to the significance of the history and local specificity in both enabling and constraining the women's mobility. Travel highlights the mutual constitution of spaces and women's subjectivities.

My study on women's mobility moves beyond the dominant economic approach to migration. It highlights the liminal space of travel, allowing re-imagining of identities, new subject positions and subjectivities. Women travellers forge a range of scales of relations and push boundaries. I suggest that these strategic movements raise interesting theoretical issues concerning women's mobile subjectivity. My conceptualization of women's travel takes into account subject, subjectivity and local specificity, aiming to contribute to an understanding of women's mobility and spatial relations in Eastern Indonesia.