ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the ramifications of Indonesia's industrialization for workers in manufacturing industries in urban industrial enclaves. It presents the routine features of a destitute living environment and much-critiqued working conditions, both of which constitute the workers' experience in the urban setting. The urban-centric modernization as promoted in school textbooks and the media has also narrowed the imagination of a nation down to just the urban centers where economic progress and cultural advancement of modernity are typically epitomized. The outlook for the contemporary neighborhood in Tangerang is completely different from the one when industrialization was in its infancy in the 1980s. Industrial action often shows women to be at the forefront, using their skills in persuasive communication during a negotiation with the company representatives and the state's coercive apparatuses. Women's safety in the town where the crime rate remains a concern is often linked to the abolition of the night shift.
