Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Who marries whom?: Ethnicity and marriage pairing patterns in Indonesia

2016; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 12; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17441730.2015.1130327

1744-1749

Ariane Utomo, Peter McDonald,

Migration and Labor Dynamics

ABSTRACTThis paper examines regional, ethnic-specific patterns and individual-level correlates in same ethnic marriages (endogamy) and ethnic intermarriages in Indonesia. With data from over 47 million couples in prevailing marriages from the full enumeration of the 2010 Census, we outline the provincial variations in endogamy against development indicators and an ethnic fractionalisation index. We compare the prevalence of endogamy for major ethnic groups, and use network plots to examine pairing patterns in ethnic intermarriage. We use multivariate analysis to summarise the relationships between the likelihood of endogamy and migration status, ethnic group size, age group, and education for individuals in two selected provinces: North Sumatra and Jakarta. There is evidence to support negative associations between endogamy rates and provincial development indicators. Endogamy rates vary across major ethnic groups, and as expected, are higher in relatively large ethnic groups. In Jakarta and North Sumatra, individuals in urban areas, with younger age, and higher level of education have lower likelihood of endogamy. We found a positive relationship between ethnic size and endogamy, but conflicting results on the association between lifetime migration and endogamy in both provinces. By studying ethnic pairing patterns, this research provides a unique window to understand the dynamics of development, social change, and social stratification in an ethnically diverse emerging democracy.KEYWORDS: Assortative matingethnicityIndonesiaethnic intermarriagedevelopmentsocial changemarriage Notes1. In the 2010 Census, the question on ethnicity is combined with the question on citizenship: "What is the citizenship and ethnic group of (respondent)?" A column for an open-ended response on ethnicity is provided only for Indonesian citizens (Ananta et al., Citation2015)2. Of these 31 categories, 18 are actual names for ethnic groups, and 13 are aggregated grouping of ethnicities originating from an Island or a province (Ananta et al., Citation2014). Sub-divisions of major ethnic groups have no clear patterns. The dominant Javanese, for example, have 5 sub-groups, of which four are very small in numbers. In contrast, the Dayak people of Kalimantan have 260 sub-groups.3. Given the ethnic diversity in Indonesia, a relatively large number of observations are required to examine interethnic marriage patterns at both the national and provincial levels. While the IFLS is nationally representative, its sample size makes it less than ideal for ethno-demographic profiling at the regional level.4. Tanasaldy quoted the work of Giring (Citation2004) in a village called Salatiga, where among 1200 Madurese and 200 Dayaks, there was only one case of intermarriage (P.222). In our dataset of over 47 million married couples from the 2010 Census, we identified 1215 Madurese wife – Dayak husband pairs, and 2093 Madurese husband – Dayak wife pairs. Among exogamous Dayak, Madurese-Dayak pairings ranked ninth in frequency after Dayak-Jawa, Dayak-Banjar, Dayak-Malay, Dayak-other non-Dayak Kalimantan ethnicities, Dayak-Bugis/Makassar, Dayak-Chinese, Dayak-Sunda, Dayak-Batak pairings. Indeed, while Madurese-Dayak marriages do occur, their occurrence is relatively less frequent in the Dayak intermarriage networks.5. See how the phrase is commonly used in popular discourses on ideal spouse criteria: http://www.merdeka.com/artis/syahrini-mau-suami-lokal-atau-import-ayo-yang-penting-seiman.html6. See Jones, Leng, and Mohamad (Citation2009) on how interreligious marriage is effectively discouraged in Indonesia through the Marriage Act 1974.7. The 2010 Census used provided 1331 unique ethnic codes, each with a province of origin identifier. These 1331 ethnic codes include: 1315 codes for ethnic groups whose origins are from within Indonesia and 16 codes for groups whose origins are from outside of Indonesia (e.g. Arabs, Chinese, Dutch, etc.). In addition to these 1331 ethnic groups, we have added nine additional codes for ungrouped ethnicity with small numbers according to their island of origin.8. While the official reports on ethnicity provide tabulation of 31 major ethnic groups, we were provided with codes for 44 major ethnic groups in the census by Statistics Indonesia. The 44 groups fare are preferable as they provide more definitive boundaries of ethnicity attributed to each group's island of origin.9. As a reference to the number of couples we had effectively excluded from our analytical subset, the 2010 Census enumerated 58,502,602 men and 57,4125,213 women aged 10 and over as married at the time of enumeration.10. The Regional Development Index (referred to in Indonesia as IRP) was compiled by Statistics Indonesia and includes sub-indices that measure regional development across multiple dimensions (economic development, social development, infrastructure development, and the environment).11. Statistics Indonesia reported that for 2010, the Gross Regional Domestic Product was Rp 275, 056.51 for North Sumatra and Rp 861 992.09 for Jakarta. (http://www.bps.go.id/eng/tab_sub/view.php?kat=2&tabel=1&daftar=1&id_subyek=52¬ab=1). For the same year, per capita GRP (without oil and gas at 2000 prices) were Rp 9, 055.34 thousand and Rp 40 939.43 thousand for North Sumatra and Jakarta respectively .http://www.bps.go.id/eng/tab_sub/view.php?kat=2&tabel=1&daftar=1&id_subyek=52¬ab=812. As anticipated, using the detailed categories would yield lower endogamy rates compared to rates of endogamy based on the aggregate ethnic categories. On average, there is a 2.2 percentage points difference (s.d. 2.9) when we calculated the provincial rates of endogamy using the two different classifications. Two provinces with notably high gaps between the two endogamy rates are Maluku (11 percentage points) and East Nusa Tenggara (7.4). The two rates also yield a different ranking of provinces.13. As the fractionalisation index was calculated using the detailed ethnic categories, we can see a weaker correlation between fractionalisation and endog_44 in Table 2.