Bilik Migran
Kupang, September 2021
SkolMus (Kupang, NTT)
This art project explores the experiences of migrant women who migrate from villages to cities for work or for other reasons. This “Migrant Room” is an initial effort to provide space for women domestic workers and also female children to share the joys and sorrows of living and working in their “own land”. This activity is expected to be a reflection space for all of us. “Have we treated domestic workers and our living children as brothers and sisters, have they fulfilled their rights as workers and their rights as children?” Are their experiences not much different from the experiences of physical, psychological violence, inadequate wages, large workloads and other formsof modern slavery, experienced by women domestic workers from NTT while working abroad, working for employers who are not Basodara himself, who doesn’t know the term “Kitong All Basodara.” This activity take place October 29-30 and November 1, 2021 at Color Oesapa Beach.
In addition to the story of women domestic workers, we also discuss the experience of Living Children, because it is a very common phenomenon in NTT. Almost every family living in the capital of the sub-district, district and province has a Living Child. These Living Children exchange services (labor and time) to the owner of the house where they live, without rent in the form of cash and also do not receive wages in return for the household work they have done. In general, children who live move from their parents’ homes in the village to continue their education from junior high school to college, because in their original village they do not have a junior high or high school. The owner of the house is usually still a relative who has blood ties or has no blood ties at all.