Acculturation of Indonesian Migrants in Thailand

Acculturation of Indonesian Migrants in Thailand

Abstract

The number of Indonesian migrants in Thailand is increasing by years. However, their acculturation has unexplored yet despite the potential integration of Indonesians with Thai society in South-East Asian countries (ASEAN). This research use online questionnaire to collect responds from 268 Indonesians since February 2019 by using Bahasa Indonesia as a medium language. The results show reliability of the questions and answers is 0.776, 0.6, and 0.843 for the acculturation, social network, and trans-nationalism respectively. Confidence interval is 95% and margin of error is 5%. From the 268 respondents, the number of female is 137 compare to male 131. According to the faith, 78.7 percents are Muslim; which represents the majority of Muslim population in Indonesia. Given the Javanese as majority ethnic in Indonesia, Javanese people in Thailand also hold the majority with 47% followed by Sundanese 11.6%. Majority of respondents or about 83.6% are living in 7 provinces located in Central region consists of Bangkok, Nakhon Pathom, Nonthaburi, Pathum Thani, and most of them are in productive age (95%). Based on the mean and standard deviation, Indonesian migrants choose integration followed by separation, assimilation, and marginalization. On the integration strategy, around 80% of respondents agree on having both Indonesian and Thai friends, about similar percentage also feel both Thai and Indonesian friends value them. However, the number whose feel very comfortable around both Thais and Indonesians drop to 48%. It is occurred because the common barrier of language and cultures between two nationalities. Regarding the barrier of communication during integration strategy, there are only 26% respondents said that they can think as well in Thai as in Indonesian language, and being able to tell jokes both in Thai and in Indonesian language.
 
Moderator: Rifki Abdul Fattah

Jun 13, 2019 Time: 12:30 – 13:30 hrs. Room Rajawadee (326)