
































Microsoft Word - Final_Moving to Serve_Kraemer.doc


1 

 
 
 
Review Title: Moving to Serve 
 
Review Author: Jonathan Kraemer, Stockholm University 
 
Book Reviewed: Follow the Maid. Domestic Worker Migration in and from Indonesia. 
Olivia Killias, 2018. Copenhagen: NIAS Press. 
 
 
Keywords: labor migration; Southeast Asia; domestic workers; indentured labor; migration 
regime. 
 
 
In her recently published ethnography, Follow the Maid, Olivia Killias takes the title literally: the 

reader gets to follow the migratory pathways of  young women from the uplands of  Central Java, 

Indonesia, setting out to become domestic workers in middle-class households in Malaysia, much 

as Killias herself  has done in her long-term, ethnographic fieldwork on which the book is based. 

In writing this book, Killias sets out to provide an understanding of  the intersection of  moral, 

economic and legal processes in making rural Javanese women into maids for households in 

Malaysia and the particular struggles and negotiations that arise at various points in this 

transformation (8). Accordingly, the book is structured to correspond to the various moments or 

steps in this process, with each chapter focusing on one particular moment: from social and 

economic conditions in the women’s villages of  origins (chapter 2), the brokers and agencies 

recruiting women for overseas domestic work (chapter 3), the training camps in Indonesian cities 

that prepare women for their work abroad (chapter 4), their workplaces in Malaysia (chapter 5), 

and their eventual return to Indonesia (chapter 6). This allows at once for a coherent and 

intimate ethnographic thread, closely connecting the various theoretical discussions offered in 



2 

these chapters and engaging the reader at every step, and the continued logical development of  

the book’s theoretical argument. 

 

Killias skillfully highlights the productive intersection of  normative discourses, legal frameworks 

and social and economic structures that defines every stage of  this movement and thereby not 

just enables but creates a particular form of  temporary labor migration. Normative discourses in 

both Indonesia and Malaysia construct Indonesian women as docile and caring, and thus 

particularly suitable for working in the domestic sector, while in need of  protection, and 

represent women’s labor migration as an essential contribution to the economic and social 

development of  the Indonesian nation (113, 146-147). Economic structures provide the need for 

women to seek employment abroad and create a migratory regime that ties women to the 

brokers, agencies and employers through contractual and debt obligation, effectively reproducing 

older forms of  labor bondage (37). Finally, legal frameworks in both the sending and receiving 

countries enable this specific form of  labor migration, while illegalizing alternative modes of  

migration and limiting women’s bargaining power vis-à-vis both employers and agents by tying 

their legal status to their employment and closely circumscribing the conditions for legality (41, 

163, 176). Bringing together these different elements and showing the productive dynamics that 

ensue from their intersection and crucially define contemporary labor migration is the great 

merit of  Killias’ book. All too often, these aspects are being kept separate in the literature on 

labor migration with studies focusing on one aspect while bracketing out the others, even though 

they are, as this study shows, mutually constituted. 

 

Chapter 4, in which Killias discusses the women migrants’ stay at camps run by the recruitment 

agencies in the main cities of  Indonesia, is particularly strong. Such camps serve the dual 

purpose of, on the one hand, providing the migrants with the necessary training for turning 

them into desirable domestic workers, teaching them language skills, acceptable behavior and the 



3 

required forms of  carrying out their daily housekeeping tasks. And, on the other hand, keeping 

the women from failing to honor the contractual obligations they have agreed to in the 

recruitment process by preventing any movement outside the tightly controlled space of  the 

camp – in short, by incarcerating them. Thus, bound up with the contractual and debt 

mechanism structure of  this migratory regime, these camps are characterized by Killias as 

Goffmanian total institutions attuned to reshaping crucial aspects of  the migrant women’s being, 

from their looks to their behavior and their very thinking about what their labor is about and for. 

This presents a crucial moment in the process of  turning young rural women into maids, 

whereby de-personifying, if  not dehumanizing, disciplining practices transform these women 

into the maids that middle-class Malaysians desire. Killias’ ethnography provides a unique, 

intimate and hugely important glimpse into this space control and disciplining, and draws 

attention to an aspect of  contemporary labor migration that is seldom made a subject in the 

current literature on transnational labor migration, not least since few researchers ever gain such 

thorough access to these transitory disciplining spaces as Killias has. At the same time, as in 

much of  the book, the theoretical framework through which she seeks to make sense of  her 

ethnographic material is well fitting, accessible and carefully elaborated.  

 

Throughout the book, Killias pays close attention to the particularly gendered nature of  this 

form of  labor migration. She shows how the migrants’ gender and age is negotiated in the 

economic and legal structures that frame their migration and particularly in the normative 

discourses that are mobilized in relation to women’s labor migration and domestic work in 

Malaysia as well as in Indonesia, both on the national and on the local level. This includes 

specific local notions such as taking responsibility (tanggung jawab; 73) for the migrants or seeking 

experience through migrating (cari pengalaman; 71), which Killias interlocutors in the Javanese 

sending village used in discussing migration experiences. In this context, a more detailed and 

expanded discussion of  these concepts’ historical and cultural construction would have been 



4 

interesting, in particular for scholars of  Indonesian labor migration, though the lack thereof  

does not detract the general argument of  the book.  

 

More generally, Killias offers clear and concise discussions of  key concepts of  the field of  labor 

migration, as with her discussion of  indentured labor and debt bondage in chapter two (34), 

thereby helping her readers find their way through the more dense, theoretical parts of  the text. 

This is no small feat, making it accessible to students only just approaching the study of  labor 

migration. As such, the book promises to be an invaluable source for teaching issues of  labor 

migration on undergraduate and graduate levels alike, especially when considering these clear 

theoretical discussions in conjunction with the book’s lively and engaging ethnographic parts. 

This is complemented by Killias’ choice to include an exceptionally detailed and intimate 

discussion of  her long-term, multi-sited ethnographic research, its logistics, the challenges it 

presented and the connections it allowed her to make (13-21). Uncommon as it may be, such a 

long and detailed discussion of  the daily logistics of  research nonetheless offers a valuable and 

certainly inspiring insight into the work that underpins this study. All in all, Killias’ ethnography 

offers an admirable and refreshing contribution to the vast academic literature on contemporary 

labor migration and will be an important read not only for scholars of  Southeast Asia, but for 

those of  labor migration in general as well. 

 

Jonathan Kraemer is currently a PhD student in the Department of  Social Anthropology at 

Stockholm University. His research concerns transnational labor migration of  Indonesian 

workers to the palm oil fields in Malaysia, with a particular focus on migrant politics, migratory 

networks and the intersection of  exploitation and racialization in the contemporary plantation 

economy in Southeast Asia. He holds a Master’s degree from Heidelberg University and a 

Bachelor’s degree from the University of  Toronto. 

 



5 

 

 

© 2019 Jonathan Kraemer 

 

 


