Stereotype Construction among Indonesian Migrant Workers in Malaysia: A Concept of Intercultural Adaptation Studies

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1 Stereotype Construction among Indonesian Migrant Workers in Malaysia: A Concept of Intercultural Adaptation Studies Melly Ridaryanthi Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Fakulti Sains Sosial dan Kemanusiaan Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia Tel.: melly.ridaryanthi@yahoo.com Indonesian workers movement to Malaysia is not a new story in Southeast Asia migration history. Since the formation of Dasar Ekonomi Bharu to enhance the economic sectors, Malaysia has absorbed numbers of Indonesian Migrant Workers (TKI) in order to fulfil the needs of migrant workers. The high flow of TKI to Malaysia both legal or illegal has raised some cases pertaining to administrative wise or any other matters such as criminals. The stories of abundant amount of TKI in Malaysia are exposed by media that have potency to create certain stereotype in the society. Such stereotype may construct the societies point of view toward TKI that may affect the interactions and the process of adaptation among TKI during sojourn. The aim of this study is to build a basic concept of TKI adaptation experience pertaining to social interaction with local community, with the correlation of stereotype construction in the society. Keywords: Indonesian Migrant Workers (TKI), stereotype, adaptation Introduction The globalising world is constructed (Lewis 2002: 346), therefore all people in the world have created and constructed the meaning and effect of globalisation for the purpose to stimulate all countries to participate in movement of various aspects of life in the rapid, open and boundless world. One country may affect another and the rapid economic movement may affect the other aspects. This condition has impacted the international migrant workers movement as the consequence of high demand on unskilled and low-paid labours in some sectors, this paper specifically discuss the migrant workers movement from Indonesia to Malaysia. Fakultas Ilmu Komunikasi Universitas Mercu Buana Jl. Meruya Selatan Kembangan Jakarta Barat

2 2 The flow of Indonesian migrant workers to the Malayan Peninsula experienced a sharp increase in the 1930s mostly from South Kalimantan, West and North Sumatra, East Java and Sulawesi (Mantra 1999: 60). In the purpose to enhance their economy sectors, Malaysia was faced problem in labour shortage with medium and high education attainment in order to work in plantation, mining and construction sectors. The formation of Dasar Ekonomi Bharu (New Economic Policy) in 1970 had opened abundant opportunity for international migrant workers to work as unskilled and semi-skilled workers. This is, we might say, as the point when numbers of migrant workers are indispensable. The numbers of Indonesian migrant workers both legal and illegal has come in order to pursue their new life in Malaysia for Indonesia, in fact, has a very large population to contribute manpower. The interaction between migrant workers and the local community with its problematic conditions as undocumented, underpaid, abuse as well as criminal has created socio-cultural issues in the society. The coming of Indonesian migrant workers to Malaysia for years and the emerge of several issues with the employers as well as pertaining document and rules have affected some social disease as criminal and the uncomfortable feelings in the society. Such condition may create assumptions as well as stereotype in the society, in general, toward the Indonesian migrant workers that may affect their interaction; both personal and interpersonal communications, as well as the adaptation experience. Here, the paper will discuss and conceptualize how the stereotype construction of Indonesian migrant workers in the society may affect their interaction among themselves and local society in the process of intercultural adaptation. Indonesian Migrant Workers in Malaysia In 1980s, there are international migrant workers who came in order to work as unskilled labour in Malaysia. The improvement of their livelihood and opportunity for running business turned them into entrepreneurs at the end (Utusan Malaysia June 2009). The amounts of approximately 67.4% of the whole migrant workers in Malaysia are from Indonesia. The majority of Indonesian migrant workers are from rural area, mainly from poor family, with lower level of educational attainment that migrate to some popular destination for migrant workers in the Asia Pacific region, especially Malaysia and the Middle East, mainly Saudi Arabia (World Bank 2010: 8). The lack of job opportunity in their place, low education and

3 3 the needs of money in order to support their family financial have encouraged them to migrate with a hope that their difficulties and needs might be fulfilled. The availability of labour force from several neighbouring countries, especially Indonesia, has provided assistance in term of fulfilling the demand of labours in Malaysia. The Malaysian Government admitted that the coming of international migrant workers has solved the lack of labour in Malaysia and helped to achieve the economic growth targets at the same time (Utusan Malaysia June 2009). The sharp economic growth in Malaysia has made the movement of Indonesian migrant workers to Malaysia became so difficult to prevent and it is expected that the number of Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia will increase every time (Mantra 1999: 67). Here, the condition that makes every person under certain condition has a will to go and work in Malaysia through both legal and illegal procedures. In 2010, there are about 792,890 illegal Indonesian migrant workers who are recorded, and a lot more with illegal status due to improper procedure (based on the statistic of Malaysia Immigration Department 2010). Large numbers of Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia, in one side, may help the need of low rate payment labours for several economic sectors. Nevertheless it also may create several socio-cultural transformations which bring about a change in individual perspective and social roles particularly in the relationship between groups of societies (Mantra 1999: 67). As in China, migration has resulted urban diseases caused by the bad order of migration, low level of collective action, marginality in social status, unfair treatment, difficult integration of the new generation and new return trend of rural migrants (Shengzu et al. 2007: 1). The so-called urban diseases are not merely caused by the immigrants, but also due to the involvement of rouge parties associated with the institution or labour distributors. Drawn by the promises of jobs in Malaysia, thousands of men and women from several countries, mainly from Indonesia, travel there every year (2010: 6). Many of these employees do not receive the wages they were promised, some agents that brought them to Malaysia promise jobs that do not exactly exist, many of them never get the contract at all, the payment is not as stated on the prior agreement, and some other cases. Going back home is not a good choice for they have sum of debt before coming to Malaysia due to some of the migrants are illegal in term of permit and undocumented, therefore they cannot covered by the law that

4 4 applicable in Malaysia, therefore they are exposed to considerable risk of exploitation at a number of stages of the migration process (Mantra 1999: 68). For instance, low-skilled migrant women workers, including domestic workers, have often been represented as marginalised (Williams 2008: 344). When women migrate to work, she added, they move from one marginalised position to a different marginalised position relative to their host community and employers. Some of them are unfortunately associated with prostitution and abuse (Williams 2008: 347). The fact that migrant workers and local community will live in the same area has created interactions between them where differ cultures meet. The above illustration has pictured what interaction between the labour and society will be. Intercultural Adaptation on Migration Malaysia as a multicultural country consists of three main ethnics on the population as Malay, China and India. However there are still many sub ethnic groups such as Peranakans and Eurasias with mixed ancestry and some other as Bajau, Iban, Kadazan and so forth. Although Malaysia s cultural background is Malay, yet the cultural daily practice might be different and diverse from one another ethnic groups due to cultural transformation as the consequence of acculturation and assimilation occured in the activity and interactions of sojourners and local community. The fact that social environment in this country occupied by millions different cultures people may emerge the ideologies of racism and imperialism as well as discrimination even in the midst of tolerance among the society (Lewis 2002: 346). Every culture has its own sub cultures that differ in so many ways due to transformation of the culture itself. Malaysia as multicultural country has diverse in norms, rules and values that applied in the society. Moreover, the sojourn of immigrants from several countries has added on the variant of cultures in the society. Even if the immigrants are living in the similar background culture, share some similar norms and daily practice, it does not simply mean that everything are slightly similar one another. In every migration, all the immigrants not only have to understand but also adapt with the host culture where they are living during sojourn. Interaction between immigrants and local

5 5 society may create misunderstanding and clash. As mentioned earlier that multicultural society can lead to racism which can cause discrimination, especially in the interaction among immigrants and host society. Communication, then, is the bridge that able to connect every individual with colourful cultural backgrounds in a society in the form of interaction. Social Interaction on Migration International migration across borders is resulting interaction of diverse people from varies cultures in the society as well as the workplaces. On the daily migration experience, communication has played the very important role as the tool for interact with the other party, either with the other immigrants or local community. Residential mobility involves changing not just locations, but also social environments (Freymeyer 2006: 227) since the Malaysia, considered as multicultural society, have to accept and absorb another ethnic groups in the society by the time they open for the coming of immigrants. Contact between individuals from different cultures is related to uncertainty (Samochowiec & Florack 2010: 507). Therefore, the interaction between immigrants and the local society may create uncertainties pertaining culture, norms, language, and so forth that may affect their interethnic communication let alone the immigrants who undergo adaptation process on their migration. Lee & Gudykunst (2001: 373) stated that interethnic interaction was predicted to increase due to several enhancements in terms of perceived similarity in communication style, perceived self-concept support, the strength of cultural identities, positive intergroup expectations as well as the shared intergroup network. Ethnic and cultural identities are related to the networks individuals share with members of other ethnic groups and their expectations for interethnic interactions (Gudykunst 2001 as cited in Lee & Gudykunst 2001: 376). Someone s expectations toward the counterparts can influence their way of interact and communicate with others on how other party will response to the situations. This condition is as the same as when people move from their country to another since they will create some expectation on the host country pertaining how host society will treat them, how the environment will be, and so forth since one is attracted to another party.

6 6 Attraction to others is one of the primary motivations behind individuals attempts to initiate relationships with others (Berscheid & Walster, 1978 as cited in Lee & Gudykunst 2001: 373). Some individuals, in intercultural encounters, might regard uncertainty as interesting and challenging, whilst some feel in different way when contact with other cultural context that might perceive uncertainty in the interaction as threatening condition make them avoid the intercultural contact (Lee & Gudykunst 2001: 373). This is an illustration of the situation when interaction between immigrants and local society face some constraints due to cultural differences. There is an assumption that individuals like some people and dislike others due to some factors such as uncertainty, perceived similarity, self-concept support, expectations, personality, ethnicity or religion (Lee & Gudykunst 2001: 374). Interpersonal and intergroup factors influence individuals behaviour (Lee & Gudykunst 2001: 374). Intergroup factors involve individual acting on the basis of their social identities that intended to be shared with other members; meanwhile interpersonal factors may involve individual acting on the basis of their personal identities (Tajfel & Turner 1979 as cited in Lee & Gudykunst 2001: 374). There is, sometimes, a social hierarchy that represented through social power, prestige and privilege that socially constructed (Schalk-Soekar et al. 2004: ). The construction related to social status and hierarchy may be in the form of stereotype either constructed in the society itself or through media as a catalyst agent. On migration, migrant workers, have to deal with the differences that exist in the society in order to understand and adapt with the new circumstances. Certain group of ethnics can be recognized based on their culture and norm applied daily. The recognition may created through such a process of construction that tend to form a stereotype. The stereotype construction can affect the adaptation experience of the immigrants in order to acculturate with the local culture as stated by Yilala & Lathi (2010: 326) individuals begin the acculturation process equipped with a number of characteristics which are demographic, psychological and social in nature. Since the interaction between immigrants and the host society will occur through the way they communicate, so that the stereotype that constructed may become part of their daily interaction and also affect the interaction itself.

7 7 Communication as tool in Social Interaction Communication is the medium by which people build relationships and similarity in communication values can be thought of as evaluations of the importance of specific functional forms of communication in the context of a particular relationship (Burleson, Kunkel, & Birch 1994 as cited in Lee & Gudykunst 2001: 375). Through communication, individual or group of people may send and receive messages in the form of language, signs or written materials. Culture, norms, and values in certain environment may be delivered to the new comers in the society by the means of communication. But then, some stereotype may also be created in the interaction among the communicators that can affect the affectivity and quality of the interaction. Sometimes good or bad stereotypes make people tend to mimic the certain attitude or behaviour that might help the interaction as well as the adaptation experience, but at the same time it might be insulted, in certain aspects. Castelli (2009: 836) states that mimicking the mannerism of other persons does play a crucial role in the regulation of social interactions that may function as a tool to communicate to the interaction partner that everything is going well. When positive outcomes are expected, individuals are attracted to their interaction partners (Lee & Gudykunst 2001: 378). Castelli (2009: 838) revealed on his study that the reliance on stereotypes is effective in order to increase social connectivity and stereotype use emerges as an effective strategy for giving rise to subtle processes that may positively impact on the ongoing interaction. Therefore, communication in the social interaction on migration society will play the very crucial role to interact with the society. Basically, interaction on migration occurs in two ways of communication; personal and social interactions (Kim 2001: 72). Personal communication is regarding on how competent they are and how they place themselves in the society. Meanwhile, social interaction is pertaining to their interpersonal communication as well as their exposure to media. Personal Communication Interaction between immigrants and the local society occur in the communication. The membership of someone in certain situation of society directly depends upon their ability to

8 8 communicate with other people (Lewis as cited in Kim 2001). Personal communication and social communication of the immigrants toward their home and host society become factors that support the adaptation phase in the host country to mingle with the society as well as the applied culture. In the host country, there is a time when the immigrants have to receive every new things; such as language, food, norms, daily practice and so forth, without equipped by adequate preparation that prompt to stress and uncertainty conditions. In order to overcome such situation where immigrants face culture shocks, uncertainty and uncomfortable feeling, the ability to communicate will play its part. In order to carry on daily life activity and adapt with the local culture, the immigrants will interact with local society through communication. Here the personal communication plays role on how they interact by implementing the local norms in daily activity as well as react to every situation occurs. This type of communication is related to the social communication when two or more individuals interact with one another, knowingly or not (Kim 2001: 72). In the purpose to adapt with local culture, someone, immigrants in this case, have to reduce the self-centre practice and control our ego during interaction with the host society. Here, interpersonal communication becomes the tool of ego-reduction and self-decentring practice since we deal with the societies who hold different cultural practices (Miike 2009: 42). The competence of immigrants in the social interaction may be affected by some factors such as the motivation, pre-sojourn preparation, and the community acceptance on their existence, the satisfaction in term of job, salary and so forth. Besides, the communication that involving the native of the host environment plays a vital role in the process of adaptation (Kim 2001: 75). When interacting with local society, immigrants will experience either good or bad treatment from the environment. The social status inherent with the immigrants who work as lower middle income workers has given certain impression in the society that constructed as stereotype. The existence stereotype may be perceived as something bothers the social interactions. The way local society construct and how the immigrants perceive the construction of migrant worker existence can create such a bridge in the daily communication and interactions. Therefore, the communication of every personal immigrant has to be completed by the ability of their social communication.

9 9 Social Communication When personal communication deals with any other people in the support system, here social communication has another role which still linked to the personal communication. Social communication occur both in macro and micro levels. At macro level it deals with mass communication tools as newspaper, television, movies, social media and so forth. Whilst in micro level it occurs in such place as homes, neighborhood, workplace, even if it occurs with stranger in a serious dialogue (Kim 2001: 74). Interpersonal communication plays a key role in the perpetuation of stereotypical representations about social groups, however little is known as to what specific social process actually reinforce and sustain the use of stereotypes during the social interaction (Castelli 2009: 835). When a person moves to another culture, he or she has to prepare themselves with a new set of relationship. Besides, exposure to both home and host media may help them to create an idea about what the home country or culture is all about. Media exposure can, at least, help immigrant to gain some knowledge pertaining to the host country, so that they will not get into bad depressed facing the social change. This media exposure can crucially help them to interact with local people, as well as understand what circumstances they are dealing with. Relationships between individuals and other sources of information will generally include mass media (Ball-Rokeach 1998 as cited in Gandy 2001: 601). Some of the problems we face in understanding the role that racial identity plays in realm of media effects are related to the difficulty we face in separating the cues to racial identity that may be present in our inquiries and the cues that may be present within the media content to which survey respondents are exposed (Gandy 2001: 604). Media as the catalyst of interaction among people may tell something that become the construction of the society. In the case of international migrant workers, there might be some sort of stereotypes that constructed in the society due to several events such as illegal migrants, robbery, underpaid, persecution and so forth. The stereotypes put migrant workers in certain position as lower middle class society. This condition may be perceived as something challenging for the migrant workers to interact with local persons. Due to that reasons, the adaptation may be influenced by such condition.

10 10 Media usage and the Construction of Reality In the social life, people cannot live apart from the existence of media. Some sort of point of view, as well as prejudice and stereotype, may construct as the consequences of the exposure on the media. The subjective social reality of ethnic minorities, indicated by group identification and group perception, can also be conceptualized as a composite of attitudes, feelings and perceptions toward other ethnic groups in the interactions (Liu 2006: 368). Liu statement is supported by Clawson and Trice (2000) who have studied on the portrayals of poverty on media that considered important due to the impact on public opinion. They argue that it is possible that the text of stories on poverty contains data describing the true demographic characteristics of the poor, and the photographs would build certain public opinion on poverty (Clawson and Trice 2000: 62 Liu (2006: 365) stated that on the migration of Chinese people to Australia indicate that exposure to mainstream newspapers is only positively related to one indicator of subjective reality, namely, out-group perception whereas exposure to ethnic newspapers was not significantly related to any of the indicators of subjective reality. But then, media constructed symbolic social reality fuses into individuals sense of group identification and group perception, which in turn, influences their attitudes and behaviours (Liu 2006: 367). Freymeyer (2006:227) stated based on his study that frequency of watching national news, local news and reading a newspaper increases with the length of residence, moreover people with better education will read the paper more compared to watch the local news in order to aid their adjustment. Based on the studies of some scholars that have been explained above, we can conclude that the exposure to media can affect the behaviour as well as how people construct some concept about others in the form of stereotype. Concepts belonging to the human system of mental representations is productive and systematic, but we do not think that concepts are images or definitions but we do not think they could be stereotypes either (Connolly et al. 2006: 1). It is related to the construction that may form such a concept or stereotypes in the society pertaining to one or several groups of ethnics.

11 11 Social Construction on Stereotype Stereotype can be viewed as an examination and perception that constructed on how individuals feel about others in terms of, for instance, age, gender or race that many commentators argue that such stereotypes are a source of discrimination (Burns 1995: 213; Lee & Fiske 2006: 2). Clausen (2010: 57) described stereotype as categorization and preconceptions of others that may at best hold some truth about groups of people and nations. Hall (2001: 107) stated that a racist stereotype is a communal but unscientifically validated belief about the performances of out-group populations. Meanwhile, Countant et al. (2011: 92) hypothesized that some of the dimensions that may compose stereotype are closely associated with the perceiver s group. Furthermore, the study revealed that stereotype construction is related to the age of perceivers, the specific target group with specific age range may affect the structure of certain stereotype. It is argued that the dimensions not only create the stereotype per se, but also may affect to the changes of in-group perception in the form of categorization and in-group/out-group differentiations. According to Worchel and Rothgerber (1997 as cited in Countant et al. (2011: 93), stereotype are composed of five components as content, category, homogeneity, salience and interpretation. Stereotype is a complex cognitive structure that composed of various components in certain stereotype are more group-based perception (Countant et al. 2011: 94, 100). The history of minorities in media suggests that the use of negative stereotypes tends to dominate the portrayal of those groups (Grandy 2001: 602). Grandy statement is supported by Clausen (2010: 58) that stereotype of national culture and people are perpetuated and created through historical account and media representations. Worchel and Rothgerber 1997 (as cited in Countant 2011: 93) had involved discussion among participants of the study to get some point of views of the stereotype that revealed more comprehensive result in term of how in-group interpret the situations, and they specifically argued that content, category, and homogeneity components are mostly related to perceived group consensus, whilst interpretation, salience and uniqueness are more based within the individual. In that case, Countant sees stereotype issue should be studied in term of the how perceived consensus dimension plays an important role in stereotyping which need to be studied independently. Deaux et al. (2007: 386) stated that stereotype may poses the threat

12 12 that the person will be judge or treated in terms of stereotype and it can reduce performance on their tasks. Based on the study toward African American students, Deaux et al. revealed that when negative stereotype of black intellectual ability is made salient, the students perform more poorly compared to whites and when the ethnicity salient, both black and white groups of students perform at equivalent levels. Guan et al. (2010) studied on the Mainland Chinese s stereotype toward Hong Kong Chinese and whether these stereotypes could be predicted by their perceptions pertaining inter-group structural relations between the groups. Although Mainland Chinese and Hong Kong Chinese are both called Chinese, however these two groups are different due to the historical background (Guan et al. 2010: 394). The study revealed that among Hong Kong people, values and beliefs served as important content of stereotypes towards Mainland Chinese, whilst Hong Kong Chinese perceived as more westernized when the study found that Mainland Chinese in fact shared similar views on the value difference between both groups. Stereotype construction among cultural groups is not only pertaining to values and beliefs that describe basic and unique characteristic of cultural system that related to perceptions about inter-group structural relations as well as the basis formation of inter-group attitude, but also serve as functionally important components of stereotypes towards other member groups (Guan et al. 2010: 398). Castelli et al. (2009: 835) stated based on the findings of their study that stereotypers are faced with subtle nonverbal cues from the audience that can retroactively reinforce their behaviours that make those stereotypes dismissal so difficult to be achieved. Perceptions are important because they have implications for how we view and communicate with each other (Burns 1995: 214). Therefore, in such interaction where communication become the main aspect on it, stereotype construction will play certain role that may affect the interaction due to it is pertaining on how people construct and create such point of view and judgment to the other party Conclusion Remarks When we are talking about the migration of international labours all over the world, we cannot just merely put concern on why and how they migrate, but we can see this phenomenon more specifically on to how they adapt and interact in the host culture through

13 13 Intercultural Communication perspective. Every migration may involve communication in the interaction, whether it is among the immigrants or toward local community. Besides, culture applied by these two groups of society, immigrants and local citizens, has become an important element that may affect the interaction for it employs communication as a tool, meanwhile we cannot separate the communication and culture in some episodes of interactions. In the case of Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia who have faced so many problems in the host country, they live under uncertain situation when interact with the local society. This condition assumed as the consequence of the stereotype construction existence as one of the causal things, besides cultural different. Some of the intercultural adaptation studies more focus on the process of how the immigrant adapt with the new environment without put further concern on how the stereotype construction may affect their interaction in the process of adjustment, as well as how they perceive the stereotype. Basically, this paper shows the interconnection of stereotype construction, and how important it is, with the social interaction and intercultural adjustment experience among immigrants.

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