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Marriage migration has gained increasing attention across the many
disciplines of social science in recent years. Within the discipline of
demography, the rising volume of Asian cross-border marriage migrations
has sparked a growing scholarship on this topic since the mid-2000s.
Social demographers have much to gain from the wealth of anthropological
literature on marriage migration. Insights on how the intersections of
race, class and gender affect the lives of marriage migrants are often
difficult to canvass from population surveys and census data—the primary
tools of analysis in our field. With this intention of exploring the
study of marriage migration beyond the discipline of demography, I read
Monika Winarnita's ethnographic work on a group of Indonesian migrant
women dancers in Perth, Australia.
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Dancing the Feminine takes an original approach to study the
lives of Indonesian female marriage migrants in Perth who were, at the
time of the Winarnita's study, members of a cultural dance performance
group. Winarnita's ethnography explicates the experience of the women,
as dancers, and as members of a population sub-group who occupied a
rather marginal position in diasporic politics in Perth. Owing to its
geographical proximity to Asia, and the nature of the city's
mining-centred growth, Perth hosts a relatively large number of Asian
marriage migrants. Winarnita suggests that negative constructions around
Asian women with Anglo-Australian husbands were more pervasive in Perth
than in any other parts of Australia. Indonesian female marriage
migrants who married Australian men working in the mining industry are
typically seen as 'economically well-off and have middle-class
lifestyles.' However, at the same time, they were typecast—by others in
the community—as 'not necessarily hav[ing]) social and cultural capital'
(p. 3).
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Indeed, stigmatisation of Asian women in interracial relationships is a
ubiquitous phenomenon, and can partly explain the nature of marriage
migrant's marginalisation—as a group—in a given community. From
mail-order brides, bar girls, to gold diggers, the prevailing
stereotypes of Asian marriage migrants can be all sexist, racist and
classist at the same time.[1] Such
stereotypes are pervasive across both their host communities and the
women's sending communities. In the case of the Indonesian migrant
dancers in Perth, stereotypes about marriage migrants affect their
standing as bonafide Indonesian cultural performers. While the women
were keen dancers, and some had actually been trained in classical
regional dances in Indonesia, they were often labelled—as a group—as
amateurs and inauthentic representatives of Indonesian cultures by the
members of various Indonesian communities in Perth.
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Winarnita's ethnographic account centres on her joining this particular
dance group in 2007, and her participation in the group's 28
performances across public events held between 2007 and 2011. The book
is organised into seven chapters, providing a nuanced analysis on
multiple sub-themes arising from its theoretical foci: gender,
migration, sexuality and relational identities within a migrant
community.
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In the Introductory chapter, Winarnita outlines the central theoretical framework of Dancing the Feminine.
Here, she draws upon an intersection between the scholarship of
marriage migration, and the literature on migrant's cultural
performance. The first chapter further provides accounts of her research
methods, and a contextual background of the Indonesian diaspora in
Perth. The next five chapters are organised on multiple themes built
around specific events in the dancing group's performance timeline.
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In Chapter 1, Winarnita dwells on the question of authenticity in
cultural representation. Who has the right to represent a nation in a
cultural performance? Who has the authority to define what is a an
authentic cultural performance? What does this say about the nature of
social stratification within a migrant group? Three case studies in
Chapter 1 are centred on the dancers' negotiation with what Winarnita
positioned as a 'structuring discourse of authenticity' (p. 29) in the
Perth Indonesian community. In Chapter 2, Winarnita continues discussing
contestations around the authenticity of a cultural performance,
focusing on gender- and community-prescribed notions of femininity.
Chapter 3 extends the discussion on these prevailing discourses of
femininity, and uses an example of aging dancers who switched to
performing male roles and succeeded in gaining community approval as
successful performers. Chapter 4 takes a study of an Ondel-Ondel
performance—a Betawi syncretic Chinese dance to examine
Chinese-Indonesian belonging in the diaspora. Chapter 5 juxtaposed
'hybrid' and 'authentic' representations of the Balinese version of the
Hindu Ramayana epic and Chapter 6 provides the conclusion to this
ethnography.
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As a reader, I valued how Winarnita carefully outlined her positioning
as a partial insider early in the book. Winarnita shared many
commonalities with the women in her research: being Indonesian, married
to a 'white' Australian, having kids of mixed heritage, and being an
amateur dancer—like approximately half the 40 dancers that she got to
know in the research process (pp. 5–7). Winarnita reflects how having
this emic–etic positioning, as a member of the performing troupe, and as
a cultural insider in the Indonesia–Australia space, would bring its
own benefits and challenges to the research.
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As an Indonesian living in Australia, I can see that there is indeed a
methodological merit in having an emic perspective in marriage migration
research. Such merit was evident, for example, when Winarnita talked
about concepts and experiences of shame (malu vis-ŕ-vis malu-maluin):
being deeply embarrassed when things go wrong during a public
performance, when you failed to move in-synch with the rest of group,
when the accompanying music had a false start, when the audience gave
you a cold reception, when the MC mistakenly pronounced the title of
your dance from Wind to Dog. Understanding these nuances to do with
'losing face' would require both the researcher's active participation
on stage as a performer, as well as a deeply embedded collective
identity as a member of the diaspora.
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By weaving in her partial insider perspectives into dance
performance-centred narratives throughout the book, Winarnita
effectively teased out the subtlety of relational identities and
belonging within a migrant group. This idea of substratification, in my
view, would be the strongest contribution of Winarnita's ethnography to
the multidisciplinary field of migration. Winarnita introduced her
proposed typography of Indonesian (women's) communities in Perth in her
introductory chapter. On the very top, Winarnita proposed, were the
Dharma Wanita committee members. These would be the spouses of the
Indonesian consulate in Perth: the symbol of respectable modern women,
and gatekeepers of culture and femininity. On the second layer were
Indonesian women married to Indonesian men. On the last tier were the
marriage migrants, stereotyped as Indonesian women who married up
to 'white' Australian men (p. 19). She further elaborated about how
among marriage migrants, there are further sub-divisions based on class,
education, ethnicity and religion. Winarnita further argues that 'it is
this very typology that functions as a normative device for Indonesians
in Australia [and] is what the female marriage migrant dancers try to
subvert' (p. 29).
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In this particular study, it seems that the centrality of Dharma
Wanita's women and the Consulate has much to do with their position as
the patron of Indonesian culture and arts in Perth. The dancers have a
particular interest in making sure that that their performance as female
dancers would fit the mould of certain ideals of femininity; that their
performance is valued by the Consulate; and that their group would be
officially included as one of the Indonesian performance items in
various events in Perth. I wonder whether Winarnita's proposed
hierarchical typology would be agreed upon and/or equally sensed by most
Indonesian marriage migrants in Perth. There may be other migrant
groups who see little value in lining up for a patron-client
relationship with the Indonesian Consulate. One may propose that
instead, for the majority of marriage migrants, a more fitting model of
stratification of their sub-groups in the diaspora would look like overlapping circles that have no clear hierarchical order.
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While a fitting model of social stratification within a migrant group is
likely to be context-dependent, Winarnita's study has challenged the
perceptions of homogenous and close-knit migrant networks that
often come up in popular discussions about migrant communities. Through
studying dance performances, Winarnita's ethnography illustrates a
social stratification system and its associated relational conflicts
among members of the Indonesian community in Perth. Such findings
support Ien Ang's proposition that, much like the way Ben Anderson
characterised nations, diasporas are 'imagined communities.'[2]
On one hand, Indonesian migrant networks may provide the much-needed
social capital for the dancers. On the other, the dancer's relative
positioning and relational identities within these networks has
important bearings to her sense of identity, acceptance and belonging in
the community. Hence, as proposed by Ang, it is crucial 'to recognise
the double-edgedness of diasporic identity: it can be the site of
support and oppression, emancipation and confinement, solidarity and
division.'[3]
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Something that I would like to see more in the book are longer direct
quotes from interviews with her informants. For example, the discussion
around self-exoticisation in the adaptation of a Balinese Ramayana
performance in Chapter 5 would benefit from first-person narratives.
Given the richness of her data, I am also eager to see several aspects
of the study to be further developed in Winarnita's other or future
work. In the book, the changing social status of dancers was discussed
largely in the context of the Indonesian diasporic community, but not
within the dyadic realm of a husband-wife relationship. It will be
interesting to read how becoming a reputable performer of Indonesian
dances would affect the power dynamics in an interracial marriage.
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Beyond its contribution to the study of migrant cultural performance, Dancing the Feminine
is a thought-provoking read for those interested in understanding how
the intersections of race, class and gender may shape the lives of
marriage migrants. To what extent does migration create new layers of
stratification within a group of marriage migrants sharing a common
country of origin? How can migration transform or amplify inherent class
structures in a particular ethnic community? Does 'who you are married
to' matter more than what you are? In other words, is it much more
common to have numerous cliques of migrant women based on their
spousal's occupations and racial categories—as opposed to other
characteristics of the women's themselves? How do these layers of
in-group stratification affect marriage migrants' sense of identity,
belonging and well-being? Research that delves into marginalised groups,
relational identities and diasporic politics may incite some discomfort
among involved parties within those particular migrant communities. I
commend Winarnita for tackling such a sensitive subject with an
intellectual rigour and innovative methodology, making this novel and
insightful ethnography appealing to readers across the multidisciplinary
fields of migration, gender, and Asian studies.
Notes
[1] See Kathryn Robinson, 'Of mail-order brides and "boys' own" tales: Representations of Asian-Australian marriages,' Feminist Review 52(1) (1996): 53–68; Pei-Chia Lan, 'Maid or madam? Filipina migrant workers and the continuity of domestic labor,' Gender and Society 17(2) (2003): 187 – 208; Nicole Piper and Mina Roces (eds), Wife or Worker?: Asian Women and Migration, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004.
[2] Ien Ang, 'Together-in-difference: Beyond diaspora, into hybridity,' Asian Studies Review, 27(2) (2003): 141– 54.
[3] Ang, 'Together-in-difference,' p. 142.
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