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5 Revolving Doors of Dispossession Lina grew up in a village in South Sumatra, a few hours’ drive from the city of Palembang. The daughter of impoverished farmers, she received only a few years of schooling and, at the age of fifteen, following her parents’ prompting, was married to a man twice her age. Lina moved with him to Palembang, but the marriage ended a couple of years later. Unwilling to return home with nothing and still angry with her parents, she found a job cleaning in a hotel and a year later married a man of her own choosing. They had two children before the marriage ended in divorce in 1996. Lina complained that he never worked and was often gone all night, drinking, gambling, and seeing other women. Lacking skills, she was anxious about finding a job that would help support her children and herself. Through a friend she was introduced to a man looking for women to work as maids in Malaysia. “Think of your children,” he told her. “In Malaysia you can make much more than you ever could here. Don’t worry about paying for the trip. That will be taken care of.” Lina could tell that he was a preman (thug) and that he was most likely untrustworthy. However, knowing that she had little or no chance of finding a job that would support her, much less her children, she quickly agreed, left her children with her mother-in-law, and promised to send money as soon as she received her first salary. The man brought her to an agent in the Sumatran city of Pekanbaru, where she was placed in a house with other women who were being sent to Malaysia. After one month Lina left for Peninsular Malaysia on a ferry from the Sumatran port of Dumai with her agent and twelve other women. During the first three months, she was told, her whole salary would be deducted in order to pay off her trip, her passport, and the fees of the first middleman who had brought her to the agent. Throughout the journey her passport remained in the hands of the middleman. Upon arrival in the city of Malacca, Lina was placed with an ethnic Chi- revolving doors of dispossession : 119 nese family with six children. For two years she worked every day from 5:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. without getting a single day off. She was allowed beyond the grounds of the house only every other Sunday, when she would join the family on a trip to the market. During these two years she never received a salary. Instead Lina’s employer promised her a lump sum when she returned to Indonesia at the end of her contract; that way, he told her, she would not waste it. While Lina claimed that her boss treated her well, his wife would often call her “pig” (babi) and give her pork to eat, knowing that she was a Muslim. Isolated, she had nowhere to turn. One day in June 1998, when Lina was taking out the trash, she saw a police officer outside on the street whom she recognized as an acquaintance of her boss. He asked her to come along to the nearby police station, where she was told that they had to get in touch with the agent who had brought her to Malaysia and that she would be sent back to Indonesia. When she complained that she had not received a salary for the past two years, the officer told her that she had to wait to talk with the agent. She was put in jail for a few days before being taken to one of the detention camps where thousands of Indonesians were waiting to be deported. Lina had been caught in the Malaysian government’s Operation Go Away, and although she had entered the country with a passport, it was still with her agent, and she never saw it again.1 In order to make more money, Lina’s agent had probably never processed a work permit for her, and she was therefore in the country on a tourist visa working illegally. In spite of his negligence, it was Lina who suffered the consequences. However, what outraged her most was the suspicion that her boss had set her up in order to avoid having to pay the money that he owed her. Lina spent two weeks in the detention camp before she was...

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