The Javanese diaspora in New Caledonia From indentured labourers to a fractured community

This dissertation focuses on processes of identity and community formation among the Javanese diaspora in New Caledonia, a French territory in the South Pacific. Members of this diasporic community are predominantly descendants of Javanese indentured labourers, who were sent to New Caledonia by the Dutch colonial administration between 1896 and 1949 to meet this French colony’s demand for labourers. Most of the studies on this community depict this diaspora as homogeneous. This dissertation finds that the diasporic identities found in the Javanese diaspora in New Caledonia have been constructed and reconstructed, and developed in rather complex ways. Based on an in-depth ethnographic study of the Javanese community in New Caledonia in 2018 and 2019, this dissertation describes how practices of diasporic identity construction and consequent paradoxes contribute to cohesion as well as fractures. Focusing on four key areas; homeland and belonging, history and remembrance, religious beliefs, and political orientations, this dissertation considers discourses, customs, values, practices, tensions and paradoxes that affect cohesion within diasporic communities. This dissertation shows that the formation and continuous reconstruction of a ‘diaspora’ is a multi-faceted process and any sense of communal identity is therefore fluid, fractured, and constantly changing rather than static and homogenous.