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Divorce rate among migrant workers at record high
Long-distance marriage is believed to have led to high divorce rates in Blitar, East Java, as recent data suggests that separation mostly affects women who work as migrant workers and their unemployed husbands
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ong-distance marriage is believed to have led to high divorce rates in Blitar, East Java, as recent data suggests that separation mostly affects women who work as migrant workers and their unemployed husbands.
The Blitar Religious Court in East Java had received nearly 2,000 divorce applications this year alone as of April, most of which were filed by women.
According to the court’s spokesperson M Fadli, of the total 1,839 cases filed, 1,309 were filed by the wives, while the remaining were filed by the husbands. Of the cases filed by the wives, 756 had been ruled on.
“Thus we still have 553 cases left,” Fadli told reporters recently.
The data also suggests that 75 percent of the women who filed for divorce this year had worked as migrant workers. Most of the remaining cases also involved couples who work overseas.
“So the problems were actually similar. The wives work as migrant workers while the husbands were unemployed. This trend has led to the increasing divorce rate,” Fadli said.
Fadli explained that the separation usually began as the husbands failed to financially support the family, encouraging the women to work overseas as migrant workers while the husbands remain unemployed.
Depending on the destination country, a migrant worker may earn much more money compared to what a blue-collar worker can make in the country.
The problems then escalate as the long-distance marriage often leads to infidelity.
“In many cases, the husbands then had love affairs with other women while their wives were working abroad,” he said.
Last year, the Blitar Religious Court processed 4,203 divorce applications, 2,944 of which were filed by the wives while 1,259 by the husbands.
Blitar is among five regencies in East Java that send the highest numbers of migrant workers. The other four regencies are Banyuwangi, Malang, Tulungagung and Trenggalek.
The number of migrant workers from Blitar has continued to increase over the last few years. According to the Blitar Manpower Agency, 3,237 people went overseas to work as migrant workers in 2015.
The following year the figure increased to 3,610 and further increased to 4,002 in 2017. Last year, 4,334 left the city to work as migrant workers abroad.
The majority of migrant workers work in the informal sector, including as housemaids. Last year, 84 percent of migrant workers were women who worked in the informal sector.
The main countries of destination were Hong Kong with 1,992 migrant workers, followed by Taiwan with 1,831, Malaysia with 268, Singapore with 182, Brunei with 55, and then Algeria with six workers.
It is believed, however, that the official data released by the Blitar Manpower Agency does not reflect the real figures, mostly because a significant number of Blitar residents departed from outside Blitar or resorted to other illegal means to work abroad.
