Indonesian Newspaper in Hong Kong and Migrant Activism

Irfan Wahyudi

2018

Abstract

Hong Kong is listed as one of the most popular countries for Indonesian migrant workers. In 2012, more than 160,000 Indonesian migrant domestic workers (IMDWs) were living in Hong Kong, and 70 per cent of them were women. Hong Kong is the premium destination for IMDWs because of its moderately higher salary, good laws and regulations and its ambience of independence. The IMDWs can also access multiple forms of media, ranging from print media to the internet. This writing specifically discusses the use of print media as the tool of migrant advocacy. There are four existing Indonesian language newspapers in Hong Kong: Suara, Apa Kabar Plus, Koran Indonesia (KINDO), and Berita Indonesia. All Indonesian newspapers in Hong Kong depend on advertising to meet their running costs. Each newspaper allocates around half its pages to advertising. The existence of newspapers helps the IMDW community to stay abreast of recent news and information about their community and livelihood in Hong Kong. Newspaper journalists also actively contribute to migrant activities and are influential in the capacity building of IMDWs. Nevertheless, conflicts between the newspaper journalists and migrant organisations have affected the newspapers’ credibility. Distrust has been declared by migrant activists about several of the Indonesian free newspapers in Hong Kong and has been a major driver of IMDWs publishing their own version of print media, namely Vokal and Sinar Migran. The methodology used was ethnography. Fieldwork was conducted in Hong Kong’s Special Administrative Region (SAR) in 2013 and 2014. Participant observations, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions were conducted in this research.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Wahyudi I. (2018). Indonesian Newspaper in Hong Kong and Migrant Activism.In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Contemporary Social and Political Affairs - Volume 1: ICoCSPA, ISBN 978-989-758-393-3, pages 117-123. DOI: 10.5220/0008817601170123

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icocspa18,
author={Irfan Wahyudi},
title={Indonesian Newspaper in Hong Kong and Migrant Activism},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Contemporary Social and Political Affairs - Volume 1: ICoCSPA,},
year={2018},
pages={117-123},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0008817601170123},
isbn={978-989-758-393-3},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Contemporary Social and Political Affairs - Volume 1: ICoCSPA,
TI - Indonesian Newspaper in Hong Kong and Migrant Activism
SN - 978-989-758-393-3
AU - Wahyudi I.
PY - 2018
SP - 117
EP - 123
DO - 10.5220/0008817601170123