The remittance house on forest plantation land: migrant labour's fixities in mountain Java, Indonesia

Remittance houses are global phenomena that have transformed rural and agrarian landscapes as transnational labour migration has increased. In a montane village-plantation complex of East Java, Indonesia, the wives, daughters, and mothers of forest plantation workers became transnational labour migrants to Asian cities and are building remittance houses on montane state forest land that they do not own. In this article, we discuss how poor Javanese women have built spectacular and subdued remittance houses on state forest land, replacing those of forest materials, and demonstrating a distinct moment in the ever-shifting labour politics of forest-based production and social reproduction. Their remittances paid off debts, secured their families’ social reproduction, and enabled forest workers’ families to invest in cows as commodities, creating new sources of income. We used ethnography and mixed methods to collect hundreds of oral histories about gendered work, migration, housing, and social reproduction, focusing on working-class plantation labourers.