Between Business and Intimacy

Mobilities and Challenges of Indonesian Migrant Workers to Japan

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-918-6_19How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Migration Infrastructure; Technical Intern Training (TIT) Program; Indonesia; Japan

Abstract

This paper examines transnational labor mobility between Indonesia and Japan through the Technical Intern Training (TIT) program, which will be terminated in 2027 and replaced by the Employment for Skill Development (ESD) program. Although the TIT program was presented as a vehicle for skill transfer to developing countries, it has been widely criticized for exploitative labor practices, limited skill acquisition, and repeated violations of workers’ rights. Yet Indonesia continues to send significant numbers of trainees, driven by structural economic inequality and limited domestic employment opportunities.

Drawing on the concept of “migration infrastructure” [Xiang & Lindquist 2014], the study focuses on the role of sending organizations and intermediaries, particularly vocational pre-training institution, Lembaga Pelatihan Kerja (LPK), operated by former trainees. Based on long-term fieldwork in eastern Indonesia, it shows how such institutions build recruitment networks grounded in intimacy and trust. The case of LPK Magokoro illustrates how “second-generation trainees,” often children or relatives of earlier migrants, sustain a localized and self-reinforcing cycle of mobility.

While these institutions reproduce debt, training costs, and disciplinary practices, they also generate trust-based ties distinct from purely commercial brokerage. The analysis highlights the embeddedness of the TIT program in local Indonesian society and questions whether forthcoming frameworks such as ESD and SSW can resolve the structural contradictions of transnational labor mobility.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Hiroko Yamaguchi
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/16
TI  - Between Business and Intimacy
BT  - Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Strategic and Global Studies 2025 ((ICSGS 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 283
EP  - 297
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-918-6_19
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-918-6_19
ID  - Yamaguchi2025
ER  -