ABSTRACT
AS UNEXPECTED AS IT MIGHT seem, migrant women sometimes wear Muslim veils or take ecstasy (the popular term for mdma or 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine) in the same places and for the same reasons; reasons that are both comprehensible and explicitly moral. On the Indonesian island of Batam – a place characterized by rapid socio-economic change and dramatic demographic shifts – female migrants use these techniques in order to deal with malu, meaning approximately shame, embarrassment, shyness, or restraint and propriety (Goddard 1996:432; Peletz 1996:228). While veiling reinforces moral boundaries associated with malu, ecstasy use facilitates the transgression of those same boundaries. Wearing the veil, or jilbab, offers an identity that protects against the dangers of social interaction in the context of migration, while ecstasy use allows female prostitutes to engage more easily in morally ambiguous forms of transactions. Both activities, however, can be transformed into legitimate models of personal development (kemajuan), which may displace malu upon return home; one as a sign of religious insight, the other as a means for creating economic value. Veiling and ecstasy use are therefore both directly connected with the demands of home and the expectations of migration. In this context, it is the experience of malu, or of being identified as someone who should be malu, which becomes an organizing principle for social action and the management of appearances.
