Cross-Border Movements and Rural/Urban Migration: A Moral Geography of the Kelabit Community
Matthew Amster (Department of Sociology and Anthropology Gettysburg College USA)
This paper examines the nature of the relationships that emerges between the Kelabit, an indigenous group of Sarawak, Malaysia, and their neighbours on the other side of the international frontier in Kalimantan, Indonesia. The majority of Kelabit today are settled in coastal towns, particularly Miri, leaving a significant void in their rural homelands. The ability to draw Indonesian workers and migrant wives into their homelands has helped facilitate the social reproduction of the rural Kelabit household and family farm. However, these local economic relationships are also largely shaped by the concerns and interests of urban outmigrants, who garner significant economic and moral influence on their relatives in their rural homelands. This paper looks at the relationship between these Kelabit urban migrants and their families in the rural Kelabit Highlands along the frontier, exploring a broader moral geography with regard to the border that extends to town areas. Looking closely at local attitudes and strategies in regard to the transnational movements that have become a critical aspect of Kelabit life, among both rural and urban Kelabit, I consider the complex and, at times, symbiotic relationships that form between both rural and urban Kelabit and between rural Kelabit and their neighbours from across the international frontier. Exploring these interconnections, and the conditions that make them flourish, point to a range of concerns with regard to citizenship, control of resources, and local governance, all of which shape and constrain the localized movements of migrants in the border zone.
