Space, identity politics and resource control in Indonesia's transmigration programme

Abstract

Indonesia's recent history has revealed the fragility of a national unity created under a political authoritarianism that was itself underpinned by the country's relative economic success. The government's transmigration resettlement scheme has been one particularly powerful mechanism through which the New Order government (under President Soeharto) has sought to achieve unity amidst the country's disparate ethnic groups. By resettling Javanese people, Indonesia's largest and most politically central cultural group, the state has attempted to achieve a presence of the “centre” in the country's “margins”, and in turn, extend a particular imagined geography across the archipelago. This paper examines the spatial politics of this process in one particular region, where transmigration has been coloured by environmental authoritarianism and concerns over the activity of “illegal forest squatters”. It draws on Henri Lefebvre's concept of socially produced space to demonstrate how local people have challenged the spatial authority of the state, and the ways subtle forms of resistance are expressed in agrarian landscapes and livelihood practices in Lampung. The paper concludes by reflecting on the possibilities of linking such resistance to emerging social movements which are beginning to challenge the post-Soeharto government's authority outside Java.