Housing preferences and strategies of Javanese migrants in Jakarta

Abstract

As the center of development growth, Jakarta has been flooded with massive migration from all over the country, especially Java. With the limited skill to compete in the formal economy sector and soaring house price, living in limited size house becomes the plausible solution for the Javanese migrants. This reality bite serves a severe mismatch between the culture-based housing preferences and available rooms in the occupied house. In order to minimize the mismatch, the migrants deliver various meticulous strategies by utilizing the available resources. This paper examines the housing preferences of Javanese migrants in Jakarta and their strategy to minimize the mismatch between the housing preferences and the occupied houses. Qualitative method and means-end chain analysis are conducted to reveal the housing preferences based on Javanese culture, the delivered strategies, and their connections. The respondent selection encompasses low-cost apartment and high-density slum settlements to represent the common housing type of low-skilled migrants in Jakarta. The result demonstrates that the anchored spirit of togetherness in housing preferences takes form in their unique strategies beyond physical boundaries and materiality.