Indonesia’s long-standing reliance of labour migration as an economic strategy has positioned Indonesian migrant workers (IMWs) as crucial contributors to both household survival and national remittance flows. While their economic role is widely acknowledged, limited attention has been paid to the ways social class, linguistic capital, and structural inequalities shape their lived experiences and agency, particularly in Gulf countries such as Kuwait. Existing migration research often homogenizes migrant experiences or overlooks how class differences produce divergent identity trajectories and agentive capacities. This study addresses that gap by exploring how social class mediates identity construction, linguistic investment, and expressions of agency among Indonesian migrant workers in Kuwait, comparing the experiences of white-collar and blue-collar workers. It responds to two key questions: (1) How do blue-collar and white-collar Indonesian migrant workers perceive and construct their identities as Indonesians working abroad in Kuwait through their narrative accounts? (2) How do the participants enact their sense of agency, including resistance strategies and adaptive practices, within their workplace and community of practice? This qualitative narrative inquiry involves six Indonesian migrant workers that includes three white-collar and three blue-collar, working in different sectors of Kuwait’s labour market. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and artifact-mediated. The participants’ stories were analysed thematically, drawing on Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, field, and capital; Mahmood’s theory of embodied and covert agency; and Norton’s theories of investment and imagined identities. Findings reveal that class plays a central role in shaping how IMWs access and deploy linguistic and cultural capital. White-collar workers, who entered Kuwait with prior educational qualifications and English proficiency, were able to activate symbolic and linguistic capital to gain professional recognition, renegotiate job roles, and navigate workplace hierarchies. Their identity construction was tied to aspirations of upward mobility, often supported by multilingualism and strategic self-positioning. In contrast, blue-collar workers faced more overt exclusion based on ethnicity, gender, and limited institutional capital. Nevertheless, they exercised agency through alternative strategies, such as peer-based language learning, religious affiliation, moral resilience, and emotional labour, to survive and subtly resist dominant structures. Language emerged as a dual force: enabling white-collar participants to achieve career advancement, while reinforcing the marginalization of blue-collar workers with limited proficiency. The study reveals that identity among IMWs is not fixed but instead dynamically reconstructed across transnational fields, particularly during the process of return migration. Notably, return narratives revealed how transformed identities challenged traditional expectations in home communities, redefining what it means to be a successful migrant. The findings show that identity construction among Indonesian migrant workers is deeply shaped by social class. White-collar participants tended to construct upwardly mobile identities through professional achievement, multilingualism, and strategic self-positioning within transnational workplaces. In contrast, blue-collar workers often experienced marginalization based on ethnicity, and limited access to institutional capital. Despite this, they redefined their identities through religious affiliation, moral endurance, and community belonging. Regarding agency, white-
collar participants demonstrated proactive strategies such as renegotiating roles, leveraging symbolic capital, and asserting themselves in institutional spaces. Blue-collar participants, while operating under tighter constraints, enacted covert forms of agency by drawing on peer networks, emotional labour, and adaptive practices such as self-taught language acquisition, silent resistance, or religious affiliation, to survive and subtly resist dominant structures. These acts, though less visible, reflect context-sensitive and culturally grounded agency within unequal power structures. Language emerged as a dual force: enabling white-collar participants to achieve career advancement, while reinforcing the marginalization of blue-collar workers with limited proficiency. The study reveals that identity among IMWs is not fixed but instead dynamically reconstructed across transnational fields, particularly during the process of return migration. Notably, return narratives revealed how transformed identities challenged traditional expectations in home communities, redefining what it means to be a successful migrant. The study has several implications. It challenges static views of social class by showing how capital is recalibrated in transnational labour settings. It also proposes a more fluid understanding of agency that includes adaptive, relational, and covert forms of resistance. Specifically in the Indonesian context, the findings call for improved pre-departure training programs that emphasize real-life communicative competence, inclusive labour protections, and the recognition of informal language learning. Importantly, the study reveals that the agency of Indonesian migrant workers is often constrained not only by host-country structures but also by the absence of enabling systems in the home country such as limited access to quality education, critical self-development, and migrant-centred preparation that hinder their ability to recognize and activate their own capacities before departure. This study highlights the complex realities migrant workers face and how they navigate inequality, power, and transformation across borders. |