The Change of Former Female Migrants Lifestyle in Sragen Indonesia Ratih Rahmawati Faculty of Social and Political Sciences Universitas Sebelas Maret Surakarta, Indonesia ratih013@student.uns.ac.id Argyo Demartoto* and R. B. Soemanto Department of Sociology Universitas Sebelas Maret Surakarta, Indonesia *argyodemartoto_fisip@staff.uns.ac.id Abstract— Former Female Migrants are identical with less skilled workers having minimum knowledge and skill thereby relying on only remittance to fulfil their life need. This research aimed to find out the change of former female migrants’ lifestyle in Sragen, Indonesia, analyzed using Garner’s social change theory. This qualitative research with case study approach processed the data in-depth and comprehensively through observation, interview, and documentation. The result of research showed that former female migrants used remittance excessively until it is used up rather than used it as business capital. Originally, it could improve their family economy, but after they come back home, they should adapt to environment in their origin area in which husband relies for their life on their wife’s income when they become migrants, children begins to need more attention from a mother, and household need increases. For the sake of their and family’s life former female migrant takes a strategy to enable them to maintain their family wellbeing just like that when they became migrants. The strategy taken by former female migrants is to utilize their remittance optimally for business capital and creating a social network containing productive activities that can increase their income. The activity is conducted in group, including goat breeding, food catering, vegetable-processed food, and handicraft production. Former migrant women who have a business group had equal rights in employment so as to have a lifestyle change was effected in the former migrant women. Their rights when productive activities were carried out because it can access knowledge, information, and capital assistance. Keywords— lifestyle; social change; a former migrant women I. INTRODUCTION Former migrant women who came back to their origin area find difficulty in seeking job in formal sector, because of their limited skill and knowledge, and only Elementary School or Junior High School certificate they have. They are helpless and not independent with income different from that when the became migrant [1,2]. The number of former migrant women with productive business in Mojorejo, Sragen, Indonesia is 65 (27.31%), while that without productive business is 173 (72.68%) in 2015. They are in dilemmatic position: on the one hand, they do not want to work again as migrants but when they come back home, they find difficulty in seeking job corresponding to their ability [3-5]. Meanwhile, former migrant women becomes family backbone because their husbands have no job, thereby needing productive activity to support daily needs [6-8]. To achieve the 5 th goal of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s), Gender Equality and Women and Female Adolescent Empowerment, an empowerment program is required to make men and women powerful by having productive activity. Those having productive activity will be independent and family support [9- 11]. Former migrant women have equal right to get job like men, thereby can make them and their family prosperous [12- 14]. Article 5 of Republic of Indonesia’s Law Number 13 of 2003 about Manpower mentions that every worker has equal opportunity of getting job without discrimination. However, the condition becomes difficult when former migrant women coming back to their origin area find difficulty in adapting to their current condition and have consumptive behavior. Remittance they get when they become migrants is used up when they come back to their origin area, because they use it to buy high-price needs such as house, land, farm, motor vehicle, cow, electronic appliances, and etc. Only few of them use it for business capital [13,15,16]. For that reason, a movement is required to change their habit jointly [17-19]. Migrant workers exist in every region in Indonesia, one of which is Sragen, Indonesia. Organization protecting them is Indonesian Migrant Family Organization (Indonesian: Keluarga Migran Indonesia or KAMI) Mukti having empowerment program and serving as an organization accommodating former migrant men and women to get equal right in the term of productive business supply and ownership, useful to give spirit and to motivate its members to have productive activity, to be independent and powerful. In addition, it can provide new job opportunity to surrounding people, thereby resulting in social change in community members [20-22]. Social change affects individual’s awareness level, thereby doing something impacting on positive change occurring inside them [23]. Social change conducted by former migrant women can occur when they conduct productive activity in an organization like migrant worker organization, because they can assemble with their fellow former migrants having same fate, and briefing will be given to avoid consumptive behavior. In addition, individual can change because the structure where he/she is in will create an individual’s behavior. This research Annual Civic Education Conference (ACEC 2018) Copyright © 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 251 52