Proceedings of the International Conference on Education towards Global Peace 30 November – 01 December 2016 Kulliyyah of Education, International Islamic Education Malaysia http://www.iium.edu.my/capeu 2016/index.php/proceedings/ 1 GOD-RELIANCE AND RESILIENCE: COPING STRATEGIES OF LEFT-BEHIND CHILDREN OF FEMALE INDONESIAN MIGRANT WORKERS Sri Nurul Milla (International Islamic University Malaysia) ABSTRACT Children are frequently the innocent victims of social, psychological, economic, and political transformation domestically as well as internationally. They impact community and family dynamics in diverse deleterious ways —some predictable and some are not. About 6 million Indonesian children are left behind by their mothers who migrated to work abroad. As migrant workers, the mothers can only return home after the completion of their contractual tenure (a minimum of 2 years). This is a qualitative study exploring the coping strategies employed by the left-behind children of female Indonesian migrant workers in dealing with the maternal absence. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with five left-behind children. The thematic analysis revealed that God-reliance, self-reliance and diversion seeking represented the major coping strategies of these children. Among these themes, God- reliance emerged as the significant coping strategy employed, contributing to their resiliency. This paper discusses in further detail the ramifications of the above situation in relation to collaborative networking and voluntarism towards a progressive and holistic generation. *Email: sn.milla307@gmail.com INTRODUCTION Huge numbers of Indonesians decided to be migrant workers, might be due to financial hardship in Indonesia, especially after the monetary crises in 1997 (Ananta et al., 1998). Based on the statistics from the National Agency for Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers (BNP2TKI), as cited in its official website until February 2015, about 6 million Indonesians opted to be migrant workers abroad in various countries. In fact, this number does not include illegal migrant workers that outnumbered the legal ones mainly due to “the predations of gate keepers who extract money, both official and unofficial, at every stage of the migration process” (Hugo, 2009). International migration is considered as one of the mediator of poverty reduction (Ratha, 2013). The receiving remittances households might relax their economic constraint and have more chances to heavily invest on children education (e.g. de Glind, 2010; Dorantes & Pozo, 2010; Bryant, 2005; Anthman, 2012). Focusing on female migration, having the opportunity to give their contributions, particularly in the economic sector, the feminization of international migration is considered as women empowerment. Thus, migration is considered as the influencing factor of MDGs achievement (Usher, 2005). However, the impossibility of taking their spouses and children leads migrant workers to leave them behind. The geographical boundaries might lead to the limitation of the communication between children and their migrant mothers. It is found that parental absence due to migration leads to a reconfiguration of the family structure (Graham et al, 2012; Setioningsih, 2010) – namely, the role of the migrant parent is replaced by the non-migrant