How do generations of rural families in East Java, Indonesia, reconcile the need for an income and the emotional costs of gendered migration? Lai Wo’s scholarship delves into the complex and intimate dimensions of labor migration between Indonesia and Hong Kong. Her work is centered on rural Javanese women; she explores the intricate sacrifices, challenges, and everyday lives that lie under the surface of journeys for domestic employment.
Historically, the narrative of migration tends to highlight the stories with either economic achievements or individual hardships, often covering up the moral dilemmas faced by women whose absence shapes the foundation of their families. Wo’s research takes a different angle: she foregrounds those intimate crossroads. She brings to light the moments when women weigh the needs of their loved ones against their own aspirations, and when the prospect of a better future collides with the cost of separation. Her ethnography is shaped by sustained engagement with women at multiple phases of migration: those working in Hong Kong, returnees resettling in the home village, and aspirants in Indonesia preparing for departure.
During her fieldwork, Wo embedded herself in everyday life, participating alongside families, learning the languages of care, labor, and resilience. These personal connections brought about a layered understanding of the "choiceless decisions" migrant women regularly face. These choices are an economic necessity that often sets in motion fractured relationships, interrupted childhoods, and altered family dynamics. For many rural families, the home transforms from a site of togetherness to one defined by distance and the psychology of absence.
One of Wo’s central focuses is her examination of the emotional depths and logic that underpin these choices. Her research reveals how departures for work abroad are often propelled not only by desires for financial security, but also by a sense of duty and hope for the family’s long-term well-being. Yet, this hope is frequently complicated by feelings of guilt, estrangement, and the challenge of reintegrating upon return. Wo details how children left behind sometimes struggle to interpret parental absence, particularly in communities where resources are scarce and the burden of care falls on the extended network of relatives. The push-pull between economy and care, self-sacrifice and agency, emerges as an ongoing negotiation rather than a one-time decision.
In both Hong Kong and the villages of East Java, Wo observed infrastructural gaps and how precarious working conditions produce a landscape of vulnerability. Mandatory living arrangements in employer households, unregulated working hours, and a lack of personal spaces for migrant domestic workers all compound the risks faced by women upon arrival in Hong Kong. Wo’s work also speaks to policy. She points to activist efforts advocating for migrant workers’ right to live independently from employers, as well as the need for financial protections to prevent exploitative debts. On the Indonesian side, her research highlights the importance of labor reintegration programs and skill development initiatives. These efforts seek to offer returnees more sustainable employment options, enabling them to remain with their families rather than perpetually cycling through migration.
For students and researchers interested in migration, gender, and agrarian change, Wo encourages a methodology rooted in humility, deep immersion, and flexible thinking. She emphasizes the value of sustained fieldwork—of participating fully in the communal life of research sites and allowing assumptions to be challenged. The process, she argues, is about building trust and recognizing one’s limitations, with learning often emerging from mistakes and vulnerability.
For Wo, the humanities encompass all forms of engagement with the complexities of human experience. Anthropology, in particular, investigates the lived conditions, moral undertones, and existential questions of communities and individuals across contexts. Wo’s scholarship at the Institute for the Humanities stands out with its careful and distinct reckoning of the unseen costs and resilient strategies of migrant families. By centering the everyday lives and dilemmas of Javanese women, her work highlights the webs of connection and meaning that shape migration far beyond economic exchange.
Lai Wo is a 2025-26 Marc and Constance Jacobson Graduate Fellow and PhD candidate in Anthropology.
Zoë Tracey is a 2025–26 Public Humanities Intern at the Institute for the Humanities in her fourth year, majoring in Global Health & Environment.
