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Event Detail

Documentary Screening of B.A.T.A.M. in Singapore

Venue Information

Event Details

Date: 4 August 2005
Time: 7:30 pm
Venue: UNIFEM Singapore 2 Nassim Road Singapore 258370

On 4 August 2005, UNIFEM Singapore screened the documentary B.A.T.A.M and held a discussion after with regards to women migrant workers with the documentary maker Dr. Johan Lindquist (bio attached below).

B.A.T.A.M. tells the contrasting stories of two women: Wati, a young factory worker, and Dewi, a prostitute, both of whom live through a dramatic transformation on the Indonesian island of Batam, located on Singapore's doorstep. In this free-trade zone, an official economy based in the factories, and an unofficial economy of prostitution, have developed together increasing Batam's population from 3,000 to 700,000. As the two divergent economies depend on female labor, the experiences of these two women illuminate the ways in which multinational capitalism and migration interact in the shadowlands of globalization.

Johan Lindquist received his BA degree in Cultural Anthropology from Uppsala University in 1994, and his PhD degree in Social Anthropology from Stockholm University in 2002.

Lindquist has been a visiting fellow at Harvard University from 1996-1997, 1999-2000, and during the spring of 2002, and Cornell University from 2003-2004. Between 2002 and 2006 he is a postdoctoral fellow under the auspices of the Swedish School of Advanced Asia Pacific Studies (SSAAPS). Lindquist's primary research interests concern the links between globalization and migration, as well as medical anthropology, while his geographical focus is on Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. Lindquist's doctoral dissertation, "The Anxieties of Mobility: Development, Migration, and Tourism in the Indonesian Borderlands", dealt with the transnational Growth Triangle that binds together Singapore, the Malaysian province of Johor, and the Indonesian island of Batam. It focused on the lives of migrants and tourists who pass through this rapidly developing area. As a part of this project, Johan has recently completed, with filmmakers Per Eriksson and Liam Dalzell, a documentary film that deals with the lives of Indonesian migrants on Batam.

Current research

Currently Johan is revising his doctoral dissertation for publication. His coming research project deals with "human trafficking" from Indonesia to Malaysia. The project is concerned with critiquing emergent global discourses of trafficking, which focus primarily on young women and children, transforming them into "victims" that lack any form of agency. The interest in trafficking has led to new forms of activism and funding that reproduce global discourses and practices in Indonesia.

In order to engage with these processes, the project focuses on the movement of migrants from Indonesia to Malaysia, and the networks that bring them there. Three different groups are studied: male plantation workers, female prostitutes, and female domestic servants. In particular, the project is concerned with the different structures of the networks, and the experiences of the migrants themselves, as they move from their homes to Malaysia.

By comparing these different levels, the project is engaged in critical discussions of labor migration and "trafficking," and aims to create a more complicated understanding of the forces that lead migrants into coercive forms of labor.

National Committee for UNIFEM, Singapore
United Nations Development Fund For Women
2 Nassim Road
Singapore 258370
Tel: 62386761
Fax: 62386762
E-Mail: admin@unifemsingapore.org.sg
www.unifemsingapore.org.sg