| Since the 1980’s there has been a growing in Indonesia phenomenon of women moving out to work overseas. The main destination countries of this movement is Saudi Arabia, but some other countries in the Middle East, such as Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar have also become important destinations in recent years. There are strong economic factors influencing labour migration such as dearth of job opportunities in the areas of their origin. However, the phenomenon in Indonesia has other important dimensions. The majority of Indonesian female labour migrants to Saudi Arabia work as domestic workers. Many of them had bad as well as good experiences working overseas in terms of how employers treated them. This paper is an elaboration on Indonesian female migrant workers’ experiences working in Saudi Arabia based on a study among returned migrants in their places of origin in Indramayu and Cianjur districts in West Java. West Java is known as one Indonesian province where many international female labour migrants to the Middle East come from. The many cases of mistreatment and bad working experiences among Indonesian female returned migrants in the study area do not seem to deter a number of them to work in Saudi Arabia. Some female returned migrants in the study area believed that what they would experience during their work overseas dependedon their fate. |