Political Economy of Sending Domestic Workers Abroad: Case Study of Indonesian Migrant Workers

The aim of this paper is to describe success story of public policy of the government of Indonesia in sending Indonesian workers abroad. The policy has been started from 1970s since a new regulation related to Indonesian migrant workers has been applied in that year and continued to the recent years through improved regulations. In this article, we collected secondary data through library research and then followed by Rapid Rural Appraisal in number of villages throughout some districts in East Java such as Malang, Lumajang, Jember, Bangkalan, and Sampang districts. The result shows that, the policy has been significantly successful in two aspects, namely economics and politics. In term of economy, the remittance have revitalized rural economy especially the villages which have for such a long time become center of mobilization. At the national level, the amount of remittance has been equivalent to one third of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to the country. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n4p31