Trade and Ethnicity
Street and beach sellers from Raas on Bali
By Huub de Jonge
During the past decade, many publications have investigated tourism in Bali, looking in particular at the tourists who visit the island and the impact of tourism on local communities. Yet not much is known about the thousands of Indonesian migrants who work in the Balinese tourism industry. Enterprises both large and small provide employment not only for Balinese but also for job-seekers from all over the country. Young people, especially, see Bali as their promised land. Everywhere in the island, but especially in tourist centres such as Kuta, Sanur, Nusa Dua, and Den Pasar, large numbers of migrants have settled either temporarily or permanently.To obtain a job, it is necessary to enter into relations with people who know the labour market and who are on good terms with employers or their confidants. Without investing in these contacts and without paying bribes, it is almost impossible to find employment. These conditions ensure that quite a number of branches in the tourist industry are controlled by people who know or trust each other, such as individuals from the same place or members of the same ethnic group. The souvenir trade in stalls along the road in Kuta, for example, is dominated by Bataks and Sundanese, while Sasaks from Lombok, Madurese, East Javanese, and Balinese from poor areas have control of the asongan or ambulant trade. Within both sectors, the degree of ethnic control differs according to the commodity.
One of the most successful groups among the street and beach sellers in Kuta are the migrants from Raas, who almost completely dominate the trade in fake designer-label caps and watches. Raas is a small, poor island on the southern fringe of the Java Sea that belongs to Madura administratively and culturally. Merantau (to leave own's home for any length of time) is a well-established aspect of life on the island. For centuries, the inhabitants of Raas have been accustomed to look for opportunities to make a living beyond their island. Since the end of the 1980s, Bali has been their most important destination. Their domination of the trade of fake brand caps (with texts like Nike, Polo, and Benneton) and watches (such as Cartier, Rolex, and Billabong) in Kuta is the outcome of a number of changes in the tourist industry. Initially, the migrants engaged in the sale of these products when this was strictly forbidden. When eventually such activities were tolerated, the people from Raas had already established close contacts with the Chinese suppliers who preferred them to vendors from other ethnic groups because of their diligence and reliability. The establishment of local trade associations, on the initiative of authorities who could not control the violations of the trade laws, offered the migrants the opportunity to consolidate and strengthen their position within the ambulatory sector. They have succeeded in dominating both the government-sponsored associations and the trade network. Nowadays, vendors at all levels of the network are increasingly frequently recruited from their own circles. Ethnicity has become a crucial medium of organization, and, as such, a new source of power.
Ethnicity looms large in more than the economic field. It also plays a prominent role in other spheres of life. The migrants from Raas live together in separate quarters or scattered homestays, they share each other's joys and sorrows, and they try to protect their culture from outside influences as much as possible. Both in the public and private spheres they hardly mix with Indonesians of other ethnic origins. Because of the competition with other groups, the distance between them has widened considerably, which has reinforced the ethnic identity within the local Raas community. With tourists, mainly Westerners and Japanese, they maintain an ambiguous relationship. They live off them and often, in particular on the beach in front of the big hotels, they enter into brief friendly or joking relationships with them, but they are not susceptible to the foreign way of life, in fact many even have an aversion to it. If the truth be told, small differences between fellow-countrymen frequently cause more tensions than great differences between total strangers.
Huub de Jonge is Associate Professor at the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands.