Despite the well-publicised risks, millions of Indonesian women labour abroad as domestic workers, where they face significant risks. By offering community education and current information on migration, Indonesian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) attempt to mitigate these risks. Yet, interviews with migrant workers and NGOs reveal that rather than seeking out migration information from government or NGO sources, women instead rely on fate and the information they receive from the middlemen who are paid to recruit women for work abroad. This paper, which is based on ten months of fieldwork in Java, focuses on the centrality of fate in women's migration narratives. This paper examines how women's belief in fate helps them explain their position in the migration industry and their ability to control the outcomes of their migration decisions. In addition, this paper analyses why migration authorities take up the language of fate and the challenges this presents to education and activist projects. © 2016 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

NGO s Education Migration Women Indonesia

womens employment education Sunda Isles Greater Sunda Islands nongovernmental organization Java migrant worker coping strategy