Harriot Beazley

False papers and family fictions: household responses to ‘gift children’ born to Indonesian women during transnational migration

Abstract When parents pursue transnational labour migration, challenges arise around ensuring the social belonging of children, especially ‘gift children’ who are conceived or born abroad as a result of out-of-wedlock relationships or sexual assault. Families we interviewed in Lombok, Indonesia, displayed complex social ingenuity to ensure the gift child’s social belonging. Caregivers described how they address discrimination by manipulating and falsifying family histories in identity documents, including census forms and birth registration. These family strategies drive home the local role of identity documents as a tool to enhance belonging rather than as proof of legal identity. We spotlight the time lag between birth and obtaining an official birth record as a crucial space in creating ‘citizenship from below’ in communities with high out-migration and low birth registration rates.

Sustaining the energy: a celebration of the life of Judith Ennew

In October 2013 the world lost one of the leading lights of scholarship and advocacy for the human rights of children. Judith Ennew was an intellectual and an activist who shaped the global agenda for research with children, particularly in the Global South, for almost four decades. Judith was also a mentor and friend to many child researchers around the world. Here, we celebrate the incredible life of Judith Ennew as we remember the breadth and depth of her contribution to research and her unfailing commitment to improving the lives of children around the world.

‘Like it, don’t like it, you have to like it’: children’s emotional responses to the absence of transnational migrant parents in Lombok, Indonesia

ABSTRACT This article explores the experiences and emotions of children in rural East Lombok, Indonesia, who stay behind with relatives or neighbours while their parents leave the country for work. The article contributes to recent scholarship of children’s experiences of transnational migration in Southeast Asia by drawing out the complex emotions of children who stay behind. Based on research conducted in four ‘sending’ villages, the article describes children’s lived experiences of their parent’s transnational migration, and their intense feelings that whether they ‘like it or don’t like it’, they have no choice but to acquiesce to their parents’ long, often indeterminate absences. The research suggests that stay-behind children are entangled in community anxieties pervading the emotional economy of transnational migration, including the embodied emotion of shame (malu) which shapes children’s responses to parental absence. By focusing on children’s own views and experiences, we contribute to growing debates about the implications of migration for children’s rights and well-being in Southeast Asia.

Migrant Mothers and the Sedentary Child Bias: Constraints on Child Circulation in Indonesia

Across the Asia-Pacific region, increasing numbers of women are migrating transnationally for low-skill work while their children remain in home communities, fostered by family or neighbours. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in 2014–15 in Lombok, Indonesia, this paper describes a sedentary child bias within Indonesian policies, and how this bias constrains migrant mothers’ choices regarding the care and well-being of their children. Vignettes describing the challenges of caregivers in Lombok families illustrate how the absence of social services, local forms of child fostering and limits on transnational adoption and child mobility together significantly curtail migrant mothers’ opportunities to arrange optimal support for their children while working abroad. The sedentary child bias in Indonesia raises issues around limits on the circulation of children that are relevant to the wider Asia and Pacific region, where temporary female labour migration and concomitant mother–child separation is on the rise.

Children, youth and development in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia is one of the most diverse regions in the world – hosting a wide range of languages, ethnicities, religions, economies, ecosystems and political systems. Amidst this diversity, however, has been a common desire to develop. This provides a uniting theme across landscapes of difference. This Handbook traces the uneven experiences that have accompanied development in Southeast Asia. The region is often considered to be a development success story; however, it is increasingly recognized that growth underpinning this development has been accompanied by patterns of inequality, violence, environmental degradation and cultural loss. In 30 chapters, written by established and emerging experts of the region, the Handbook examines development encounters through four thematic sections: • Approaching Southeast Asian development, • Institutions and economies of development, • People and development and • Environment and development. The authors draw from national or sub-national case studies to consider regional scale processes of development – tracing the uneven distribution of costs, risks and benefits. Core themes include the ongoing neoliberalization of development, issues of social and environmental justice and questions of agency and empowerment. This important reference work provides rich insights into the diverse impacts of current patterns of development and in doing so raises questions and challenges for realizing more equitable alternatives. It will be of value to students and scholars of Asian Studies, Development Studies, Human Geography, Political Ecology and Asian Politics.

The Methodology and Ethics of Rights-Based Research with Children

As research with children has burgeoned over the past three decades, methodology and ethics have become increasingly important subjects of discussion and debate. Researchers, particularly in the social sciences, are concerned to ensure not only that the methods used in research with children are robust but that the underpinning principles are ethical and treat children with respect. Judith Ennew was one of the most significant contributors to the development of rights-based research with children, pioneering the concept of ‘the right to be properly researched’. This chapter traces Judith’s contribution to research with children over almost four decades, exploring the theoretical perspectives that shaped her approach to methodology and ethics and discussing in detail the practical application of her approach.