Abstract
In response to global initiatives, Indonesia has increased efforts to register all children at birth. Birth registration has a core goal to transform the act of childbirth into a legal statement about the obligations and entitlements of belonging to a nation-state. Drawing upon a multi-method exploratory study conducted in 2014 in four low-income, high out-migration Sasak communities in East Lombok, this chapter discusses childbirth and birth registration practices in families where the mother or father leave the island for extended periods of low-skill, temporary work. Migration, Sasak pregnancy practices, state childbirth management, and the meaning of documents become bound up with procedures by which the state seeks to align kin and other local relatedness in conformity with membership in the state. Despite the institutionalization of midwives as agents of birth registration, the limited success of state efforts to register children is evident in the ways that migrant families navigate, circumvent, ignore, and selectively exploit the official system, thereby supporting their priorities around work and family. The implications of these patterns for Indonesian birth registration goals are noted.
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