Jember is one of the cities with the largest number of Indonesian Migrant Workers or Pekerja Migran Indonesia, hereinafter referred to as PMI. Based on data from the Indonesian Migrant Workers Protection Agency or BP2MI. The data shows a significant difference in the number of male PMIs of 7,925 while the number of female PMIs is 9,529 from Jembe. This data shows the urgency of education as an effort to filter the entry of several ways of thinking in the place they took for jobs overseas that may potentially lead to violence based on religion, race, and other exclusivity such as extremism and radicalism.
Female migrant workers are a vulnerable group as a target of extremist narratives. To address this point, the Tanoker community (one of community originally in Jember initiated by Farha Ciciek) presents a sekolah ibu or school for mother that better known as sekolah bok-ebok as a school for empowering women through women’s education facilities. Various material education provided to mothers in Ledokombo village, which is a village in Jember city, starting from materials on self-introduction and roles as women, materials on parenting, till materials related to safe and correct migration including how to filter migrant workers from extremism.
Migrant workers, especially female migrant workers, are vulnerable to extremist narratives. This may be caused by various things such as culture shock, being persuaded by narratives to take part in charitable movements or amal sholeh, or even accepting narratives to join in the name of religious struggle. However, women’s vulnerability to involvement here is also supported by women’s potential role in extremist movement strategies to focus on admin or online communication management, fundraising and management, logistical support, and playing a role in recruitment by sharing information with fellow migrant workers and other families.
Furthermore, this vulnerability will likely spread further and potentially has significant influence to other people around the migrant workers, both those in the country of employment and those in their hometowns. As a real example of this argument; Dina Yulia Novi, one of the women involved in the suicide bombing in Jakarta, precisely at the Presidential Palace in late 2016, was a former Indonesian migrant worker who previously worked in Singapore and Taiwan.
Another fact reveals that Indonesian migrant workers are specifically targeted by one of the religious extremist movements, namely Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or ISIS. This fact is supported by the existence of a number of Indonesian citizens who are involved in radical actions by joining ISIS. In terms of numbers, data reveals that approximately 500 Indonesian citizens joined ISIS in 2016, and 217 of them were deported due to involvement with radical groups including ISIS. Still with data from the same year, the number of women who were deported because the involvement in radical movements was higher than the number of men.
Tanoker community in Ledokombo through the sekolah bok-ebok provides educational facilitators on this matter. Facilitators who have the opportunity to learn together with female prospective Indonesian migrant workers are given material emphasis on the urgency of instilling an understanding of the potential for PMI involvement in movements based on radicalism and religious extremism, which is based on previous experiences. Facilitators are advised to show several videos on how PMI and extremist movements have high potential connection and require more vigilance from prospective Indonesian migrant workers.
In addition, facilitators are also encouraged to emphasize to female migrant worker candidates to always think critically and conduct deeper analysis first on several invitations such as campaigns, social media promotions and so on, and especially if it is related to religious teachings. In addition, sekolah bok-ibok’s facilitators are also encouraged to remind female migrant workers to always enrich themselves with information about extremist and radical movements in order to enable themselves to fortify and be careful of potential extremist narratives that may emerge without being realized.
