Paper short abstract:

A central trope in the emergence of peoples and polities later identified as ‘Malay' is that of mobility – especially that of male and Malay-speaking traders, migrants, princes, and Muslim scholars. This paper considers how the contemporary mobility of Sambas Malay women is recasting the association between male mobility and the constitution of Malayness.

Paper long abstract:

In the historical study of Malay societies, the significance of men’s mobility to the constitution of Malayness is well-documented and contrasts with the limited attention accorded to women’s mobility. This paper addresses this imbalance by attending to the ethnocultural effects of Sambas Malay women’s work-related mobility. Sambas Malay women’s socioeconomic mobility is shaped by economic exigency and social expectations that are gendered and geographically-inscribed by the adjacent border with Sarawak. Sustaining these social and spatial influences are also cultural norms and discourses that place value on openness to and incorporation of the non-local. As described in this paper, one consequence of the increasingly independent and work-related mobility of Sambas Malay women is an enhancement – or reconstitution – of elements of Sambas Malay kinship designed to incorporate the outsider and the retrieval of historical narratives and metaphors that celebrate translocal dispositions. The resulting construction of Sambas Malayness sits awkwardly alongside the memory of ethnic violence between Sambas Malays and Madurese, which resulted in the expulsion of Madurese from Sambas two decades ago. Yet, this integrative and open expression of Sambas Malayness – one that is both cause and effect of women’s work-related mobility – provides an important female perspective on how persons, places, and practices deemed Sambas Malay are worked and reworked as a result of mobility.