Tobacco Use and Exposure among Children in Migrant and Non-migrant Households in Java, Indonesia.

This research note aims to understand the impact of parental migration on the children who stay behind by examining the issue of smoking. It asks whether tobacco use and exposure are higher among children in migrant households compared with those in non-migrant households in Java, Indonesia. Data were collected in 2008 in two provinces, West Java and East Java, as part of the Child Health and Migrant Parents in South-East Asia (CHAMPSEA) Project. The analytical sample used here relates to children aged 9, 10 and 11 living in both non-migrant and transnational households (N=451). The findings show that the incidence of ever having smoked among these primary school-aged children is relatively low at less than 10 percent, but that boys are much more likely to have used tobacco than girls. Findings from multivariate logistic models predicting smoking behavior show no difference between the children of migrants and non-migrants; nor does household wealth appear to influence whether or not a child has tried tobacco. Gender, child stunting (low height-for-age), carer's education, family functioning and tobacco use by friends are the four main factors found to be significantly associated with child smoking.

Transnational labour migration and the politics of care in the Southeast Asian family.

Recent increases in female labour migration in and from Asia have triggered a surge of interest in how the absence of the mother and wife for extended periods of time affects the left-behind family, particularly children, in labour-sending countries. While migration studies in the region have shown that the extended family, especially female relatives, is often called on for support in childcare during the mother's absence it is not yet clear how childcare arrangements are made. Drawing on in-depth interviews with non-parent carers of left-behind children in Indonesia and Vietnam, the paper aims to unveil complexities and nuances around care in the context of transnational labour migration. In so doing it draws attention to the enduring influence of social norms on the organisation of family life when women are increasingly drawn into the global labour market. By contrasting a predominantly patrilineal East Asian family structure in Vietnam with what is often understood as a bilateral South-East Asian family structure in Indonesia, the paper seeks to provide interesting comparative insights into the adaptive strategies that the transnational family pursues in order to cope with the reproductive vacuum left behind by the migrant mother.