Word: migrant
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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While globalization has turned much of the world into a wide-open labor market, it has also created complex human and societal dramas. Women account for up to 50% of the world's 100 million-strong migrant-worker population - and there is no effective entity to protect their rights and dignity. In 2008, Indonesians working abroad, commonly as domestic staff in the Middle East and parts of Asia, contributed about $6.8 billion to their national economy via remittances, according to the World Bank. And while statistics are difficult to come by, there are increasing reports of many who are physically...
...into Ibu Herlina's care. Their adopted mother points out that the children share "Arab" facial features, in contrast to most of their siblings, who have "Asian looks." Her home, consisting of a modest house and a dormitory-like shelter, is filled with 10 children who were abandoned by migrant workers. Only a few of the biological mothers have made contact with their children. (Watch an audio slideshow about China's internal migrant workers...
...many cases, Normawati explains, female migrant workers are raped and then dumped on the streets by their employers, who refuse to give them their passports after discovering that the women are pregnant. The women are then arrested by police and placed in jail. Sometimes they are deported before the child is born. Herlina claims that airport officials have called her to ask what to do with the babies who are left behind by mothers...
Normawati says there are dozens of children who were abandoned by migrant workers in homes throughout Jakarta and surrounding areas. "I'm in my house one or two days a week," she says. "I travel to see my grandchildren" - as she calls the abandoned infants. Normawati and Herlina sustain their wards by way of donations as well as assistance from the families of some of the children, who are nevertheless too ashamed to raise the children themselves...
...husbands who stay in Indonesia while the women work abroad are often not the type to welcome another man's offspring. It is rare for a biological mother to contact Herlina after giving away her child. Normawati agrees that many men are "sensitive" about such issues. "If the migrant worker takes her baby [to raise herself], three things could happen," she says. The first is the most common: "The husband gets angry and wants a divorce. The second one is [the woman] doesn't go home," abandoning what was once a stable home to go off on her own with...