Living in a Makeshift World? Mobility, Temporariness, and Everyday Life in Indonesia

This article uses material from “Recording the Future: An Audiovisual Archive of Everyday Life in Indonesia in the 21st Century” (RtF) in order to explore the creative and emotional processes through which ordinary Indonesians try to make places “their own.” Employing the notion of “makeshift” as an analytical category, I analyze how modes of improvisation and senses of temporariness are visualized in the RtF archive. By doing so, I centralize the everyday conditions and experiences of a seemingly amorphous but increasingly significant class of Indonesian domestic migrants in search of an income and a place to live. Integrating visual materials and textual analysis, I argue that these experiences are based, on the one hand, on a willingness to leave and the ability to adapt and, on the other hand, on a fundamental desire for a stable and regular life.