By Tari Masdar
Rewatching a favorite film is always a unique experience. We find details we may not have noticed the first time. It often brings new thoughts we had not considered before.
Some time ago, I watched Comrades: Almost A Love Story (1996) by Peter Chan for the third time. The film, starring Maggie Cheung and Leon Lai, is one of my favorites. The aesthetic shots of the city of Hong Kong and the various songs by Teresa Teng add to the beauty of the love story between the two main characters.
From the Screen to Our Lives
I first watched the film when I was in my teens. At that time, all I thought about was the romance of two poor people from the countryside of mainland China struggling to live in a metropolitan city. The film left such an impression on me that I even dreamed of traveling to Hong Kong one day. However, just as a film can carry different meanings when we watch it at different stages of life, as an adult I began to question several things around me through Comrades: Almost A Love Story. I no longer saw the film as an affair wrapped in romance, but began to notice bigger things I had not realized before, one of them being inequality and the phenomenon of merantau.
As a woman born and raised in an environment with a strong culture of merantau, since childhood I have heard many stories of success from people who made it in faraway lands. Successes that made relatives proud because they changed the family’s economy. Those stories were told by elders with pride and struggle, with hopes they could inspire other young people.
As a child back then, I was very admiring of people who merantau. This is also what underpinned my decision to continue my studies in a big city. However, as I grew older, I felt that something is often overlooked in conversations about merantau. We have focused too much on how merantau changes a person’s livelihood. We rarely ask: is that personal decision also influenced by the limited opportunities in the place of origin?
The Never-Ending Problem of Inequality in Indonesia
When we open social media, perhaps many of us often see news about how hard it is to find work as a university graduate. Perhaps some of us reading this are going through something similar. Graduates looking for work often face pressure to get a job quickly from family, the surrounding community, and social media. Not infrequently, young people from the regions merantau to big cities hoping to get a job quickly.
There are various considerations that push them to merantau: wider job opportunities, higher wages, and social pressure. Data from BPS (Statistics Indonesia) 2025 shows a difference in average net monthly wages between workers living in urban and rural areas. In urban areas, the average net wage of workers reaches Rp3.62 million, while in rural areas it is Rp2.58 million. Furthermore, the provinces with the highest average wages are DKI Jakarta, Central Papua, and the Riau Islands. This is reinforced by BPS census data, which shows that economic factors and the drive to find work are the main reasons people merantau.
This structural problem fits the concept of violence put forward by Johan Galtung (1969, 1990). He proposed three forms of violence that influence one another: direct (physical) violence, structural violence, and cultural violence. In looking at the phenomenon of inequality in Indonesia, the concept of structural violence helps us understand how unequal access can limit a person’s choices. In the context of this discussion, one example is how a young man who grows up in poverty and limited access has a fate that is inversely different from that of well-off people. Although perhaps no one hurts him directly, there are structural barriers that make opportunities unequal. So, according to Galtung, this is an example of the practice of structural violence.
Yet most of us see this problem only as a personal issue. We fail to see the problems within the structure we are living in now. Often, we still blame individuals for not trying hard enough, not taking initiative, and even not praying enough. Yet from the start, there were already structures that limited them.
Solutions That Obscure the Root Problem
When young people find it hard to get decent work in their home region, we need to ask: is the job availability and economic access there adequate? If not, the issue is a clear sign that we are in an unjust social structure. When criticism emerges trying to show problems in the social system, the government sometimes offers solutions that do not touch the root of the problem. For example, telling young people to become entrepreneurs and not be picky about jobs. That advice may be useful for some people, but it is not enough if the limited access and job opportunities are left unaddressed.
Perhaps the statement from the Minister for the Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers, who named working overseas as one alternative amid the need for jobs, is still fresh in our memory. They also emphasized that this choice is not coercive and should be pursued through safe and legal channels. However, the offer to work abroad still leaves a question: what about those who want to work and build a life in their home region? Limited job opportunities at home are not automatically solved when some people have the option to leave.
If inequality of opportunity makes it hard for many people to get decent work, the solution offered should not simply be moving or merantau abroad. Solutions must respond to systemic problems and improve the distribution of access and resources so they are no longer concentrated in a few big cities, but spread across all regions of Indonesia.
Therefore, central and regional governments should take concrete and measurable steps to reduce inequality. This can begin with broad access to job opportunities, improved education quality, and the redistribution of resources to the regions that have long been marginalized. In this way, merantau can be a choice for building a life, rather than a path that must be taken when opportunities at home are too narrow.
Ultimately, this problem requires us to demand system improvements and state responsibility, rather than continuing to blame individuals for decisions they make under living conditions that may be far from ideal.
References
Galtung, Johan. “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research”, Journal of Peace Research, 1969
Galtung, Johan. “Cultural Violence”, Journal of Peace Research, 1990
