The bilocal migrant: Economic drivers of mobility across the rural-urban interface in Central Java, Indonesia

Abstract

The trends of bilocality – in which an individual will spend part of the year in a rural area, and the other in an urban area – presents a unique and increasingly common manifestation of the circular migrant. In this paper, we explore the dynamics of bilocal migrants in Indonesia from a Central Java city and examine migrant points of origin in terms of their characteristics, mobility patterns, and remittance uses. Data were collected from 105 sample cases among those classified as migrants distributed across the study area. We apply the Flocktracker software for our study, which is a mobile-based application that combines online questionnaires and provides associated locational attributes. Most of the bilocal migrants continue to migrate as a strategy to address the lack of income in rural areas. Migrants not only circulate between two destinations from their rural origins to one city, but also increasingly gravitate to other cities as a multiple destination strategy depending on networks and employment availability. A key finding of this study is that overall, although migration to urban areas supports rural household incomes, it contributes in limited ways to the commonly anticipated rural development outcomes. This suggests that policy interventions are mistaking job creation and remittances as a proxy for rural development, whereas policy priorities should be looking beyond job creation to identify other ways to support development in rural areas. • Bilocal migrants migrate as a strategy to address the lack of income in rural areas. • The amount of remittance is following the income-earning by the migrants in the city. • Migrants invest more on-farm supporting activities instead other types of investment. • Income gain contributes in limited ways to rural development outcomes. • Bilocal migration is a distinct trend to live to some degree in both worlds.