Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 501–515, 2000 Copyright © 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0277-5395/00/$–see front matter PII S0277-5395(00)00109-6 501 Pergamon DIASPORIC SUBJECTS: GENDER AND MOBILITY IN SOUTH SULAWESI Rachel M. Silvey Department of Geography, Box 260, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0260, USA Synopsis — This article considers the gender dynamics of a migrant population living in an industrial processing zone on the outskirts of Ujung Pandang, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Based on historical, de- mographic, and ethnographic analyses of migration linked to this site, the research focuses on the ways that the relationships between morality, migration, and gender are changing for migrants to this zone. As more young women have migrated to join this peri-urban industrial workforce, their presence has spurred a renegotiation of gendered morality, particularly in terms of gendered meanings of inhabiting “public” space and participating in the industrial labor force. These migrants form their gender identi- ties not only through place-bound contact with people in origin and destination sites, but also through contact with the sociocultural norms of migrants from other parts of the archipelago and world, transna- tional industrial and media expansion, and continued reference to their families’ “Bugis values.” Recent research has analyzed the growth of the new female industrial workforce in relation to postmodern pro- duction relations and new patterns of consumption. In this article, I build on these studies to explore the ways migrants’ cultural struggles around gender are shaped not only by new production relations and consumer aspirations, but also by the interethnic interactions of low-income migrants themselves living in the zone. The tensions that characterize these negotiations mark a historical shift in the gendered meaning of “the local” in the Bugis diaspora. © 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. In 1988, the Indonesian government, with as- sistance from the World Bank, set aside 203 hectares of land for the development of an in- dustrial processing zone on the outskirts of Ujung Pandang, South Sulawesi (Malik, 1991, p. 3). Seven years later, this land, named the Makassar Industrial Region ( Kawasan Industri Makassar , or KIMA), housed 43 factories built by American, South Korean, Japanese, and In- donesian companies. The factories employed 5,174 people in 1995, over 90% of whom were low-income migrant laborers and 64% of whom were women (DTK-SulSel, 1995, p. 1). Similar to gender dynamics associated with ex- port-oriented development and industrial pro- cessing zones in other parts of the world (Ben- eria & Roldan, 1987; Chant & McIlwaine, 1995; Ong, 1990; Ward, 1990; Wolf, 1992), the development of the Makassar Industrial Re- gion (KIMA) has coincided not only with in- creases in women’s temporary migration to the new industrial jobs, but also with a noteworthy feminization of the migrant population perma- nently resident in South Sulawesi. Specifically, between 1971 and 1990, the percentage of women among permanent migrants to South Sulawesi has increased from 38 to 43% of the total permanent migrant population (BPS, 1975; 1990). As the proportion of women in the migrant population has risen, people in South Sulawesi have engaged in “cultural struggles” (Ong, 1991) over what constitutes appropriate behavior for young women. The particular cultural struggles emerging among migrant laborers in South Sulawesi re- This research was conducted during different phases under grant SBR-9406957 from the National Science Foundation and a doctoral dissertation grant from Fulbright-Hays. That support is greatly appreciated. I am grateful to Victoria Lawson and Lucy Jarosz for their guidance on the dissertation from which this article is drawn. Thanks are also due to Lembaga Ilmu Penelitian, Indonesia, and the Institut Demografi at Universiti Indonesia, Jakarta, and Aris Ananta, for sponsoring the project’s fieldwork. I thank the people of South Sulawesi who so generously shared their life histories with me; and, I am indebted to the comments from three anonymous reviewers for their insights which significantly improved this article. Any deficiencies, of course, remain my own responsibility.