Placemaking and Negotiating Home among Balinese Migrants in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Placemaking and Negotiating Home among Balinese Migrants in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

In this era of movement and mobility, migration has presented both opportunities and challenges within diverse social, political, and cultural arenas in Indonesia. The intersections between migration and home call for understanding migration in Indonesia not only as an economic phenomenon but also as a human and social experience. In this paper, I examine the nexus of migration, home, and a sense of belonging in the context of Balinese people who move to Yogyakarta, a city in central Java. This paper considers the questions of how these people strategize to maintain connections with their homes in Bali while at the same time creating new homes in a different part of the country. It also examines why it is important for the Balinese to maintain their connections to Bali and what types of complexities and opportunities emerge in their attempts to maintain their ties. By drawing on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in 2018 in Yogyakarta, this study explains how the dynamic processes of connecting to home in Bali and creating a home in Yogyakarta are involved in the process of placemaking. Furthermore, their concepts of life and afterlife had special significance in maintaining this connection. This paper argues that old Balinese traditions and changes in the modern era inextricably intertwine in the complex strategies of Balinese migrants to negotiate their sense of home. Having lived in Yogyakarta for many years, the Balinese have created a home in this city, but they feel obliged to return continuously to their ancestral home in Bali and remain closely tied to it.

In this era of movement and mobility, migration has presented both opportunities and challenges within diverse social, political, and cultural arenas in Indonesia. The intersections between migration and home call for understanding migration in Indonesia not only as an economic phenomenon but also as a human and social experience. In this paper, I examine the nexus of migration, home, and a sense of belonging in the context of Balinese people who move to Yogyakarta, a city in central Java. This paper considers the questions of how these people strategize to maintain connections with their homes in Bali while at the same time creating new homes in a different part of the country. It also examines why it is important for the Balinese to maintain their connections to Bali and what types of complexities and opportunities emerge in their attempts to maintain their ties. By drawing on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in 2018 in Yogyakarta, this study explains how the dynamic processes of connecting to home in Bali and creating a home in Yogyakarta are involved in the process of placemaking. Furthermore, their concepts of life and afterlife had special significance in maintaining this connection. This paper argues that old Balinese traditions and changes in the modern era inextricably intertwine in the complex strategies of Balinese migrants to negotiate their sense of home. Having lived in Yogyakarta for many years, the Balinese have created a home in this city, but they feel obliged to return continuously to their ancestral home in Bali and remain closely tied to it.