Between Precarity and Proximity: Refugee Women’s Navigation of Gender, Border and Inclusion in Indonesia

By late 2023, Indonesia was hosting 12,295 refugees. However, Australia’s strict border policies since the 2000s have created a bottleneck, leaving refugees stranded in Indonesia for extended periods while awaiting UNHCR-mediated resettlement (Brown 2017). Refugees in Indonesia have no legal work rights and have limited access to education. This study examines how refugee women navigate the formal and informal boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, as well as the social hierarchies and community expectations that shape their experiences. This study finds that while the formal boundaries of inclusion are contested through a spectrum of practices at the grassroots level, refugee women actively participate in this contestation by leveraging their gendered roles as caregivers and cultural transmitters to negotiate access to informal sectors.