Not all experiences are this extreme. The life of a migrant worker can often feel like a gamble, and much depends on the employers one receives and the laws of host countries. Many return better off, with money to build new houses and send their children to university. Some open up new businesses, which in turn stimulates local development.

There are even roads known as "migrant lanes", rows of houses built with the wealth of migrant remittances. Thick with fresh paint, the houses stand as living proof, as proud boasts even, that success abroad is possible. 

But for all their grandeur, the houses illuminate a hard truth, especially for women like Aneda. If Indramayu provides family and security, it offers little in the way of opportunity.  For every 5 kilograms of rice she harvests, she receives 1 kilogram in payment.

Aneda's story is particularly revealing. Earlier this year, she lived in Singapore as a domestic worker, where she says she was overworked, underpaid, and mistreated. 6 months after arriving, and despite the huge debts she took on in order to migrate, she asked to be released from her contract. She barely broke even.

Aneda is not the first in her family to seek work abroad. A shy, quietly spoken woman, she reveals that 9 years ago, her sister went to Kuwait as a domestic worker. She lost touch with the family 4 years ago and has not been heard of since. To this day, there has be no formal investigation into the matter.

Nevertheless, Aneda still wants to try her luck overseas. "In the future, I want to go to Taiwan. My friend said the salaries are higher there. And when my contract is finished and I'm back home,
I [will] build a new house.”

If Aneda goes to Taiwan, she is determined her fortunes will be different.

Preparing for Singapore: A Migrant's Journey 

Crossing the strait

The flow of migrants from Indonesia to Singapore is one of the busiest migratory pathways in South-east Asia. There are currently 220,000 domestic workers in the country, the majority of whom are Indonesian.

Working conditions in the country vary enormously. Many are rewarded fairly for their work, and end up with caring families. They are adequately fed, given proper accommodation, and granted a day off every week.

But for thousands of others, life in Singapore is characterised by high debts, unreasonable working hours and limited labour rights.

There are also many cases of abuse. HOME, a migrant workers advocacy group, registered 47 cases of physical abuse in 2014, as well as 9 cases of sexual harassment. The NGO has also registered complaints about poor living conditions, unjustified salary deductions, and horrific cases of food deprivation.

With its wealth and international standing, social workers say Singapore should be a leading light in Asia, a model of labour relations for other countries to follow. But the reality is far from ideal.

There is no minimum wage in the country, and domestic workers receive no union representation. Domestic workers are also excluded from the country’s Employment Act – a cornerstone of labour legislation that grants workers a mandatory day off, regulated working hours, and the right to change employers.

For Jolovan Wham, executive director of HOME, this is the root of many problems. He says that if the government is serious about improving the livelihood of its domestic workers, a fundamental revision of legislation is needed.

When this map was made, Singapore, governed by the British East India Company, was experiencing a massive tide of immigration and growth due to its open immigration and free trade policies. Dated and copyrighted to J. H. Colton, 1855. Published from Colton's 172 William Street Office in New York City. Issued as page no. 31 in volume 2 of the first edition of George Washington Colton's 1855 Atlas of the World .This work is in the public domain in the United States, and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years or less.

The recruitment process

But problems in Singapore are exacerbated by problems in Indonesia.

Wahyu Susilo of Migrant Care, a Jakarta-based NGO, says that aspiring migrants must overcome various barriers at home before they are sent abroad, including unscrupulous brokers, crowded training centres, and exorbitant fees.

For many new recruits, the training is relatively straightforward. Women are taught how to perform basic household tasks and armed with knowledge about their basic rights and entitlements. Their fees are set at government regulated levels, and they are given adequate food and accommodation.

But for many others, the process is full of exploitative practices, including deception about the cost of training, confiscation of personal documents, and insufficient provisions.

“There were no mattresses and no pillows,” Wati, a domestic worker, remembers of her training centre 16 years ago. “We had to sleep on the floor.”

Wati (not her real name) also recalls showering in groups of seven women or more, all of them standing in their clothes. They were too shy – and too religious – to remove them.

“I stayed for two months,” Wati said, “but some women stayed for five months or longer.”

Many facilities have improved since Wati's experience from the late 1990's, but inadequate provisions are still common complaints, according to Susilo of Migrant Care. “We are always finding migrant workers in cramped rooms and living with poor sanitary conditions. In one case we found 200 migrant workers sharing two or three toilets." 

These practices flourish in Indonesia because of weak governmental oversight and poor law enforcement, says Susilo, who added that the government urgently needed to develop stronger policies to protect its migrant population.

Of particular concern are unlicensed brokers – also known as 'sponsors' – who recruit aspiring migrants from towns and rural villages, relying on networks and contacts they have built over years of recruiting.

Many sponsors abide by the law and perform what they see as a vital service, finding jobs for domestic workers both abroad and in Indonesia.

But Migrant Care says that many sponsors actively deceive women. "On many occasions the information women are given is not correct," says Susilo. "The salary is not the same as what was promised and the women receive something else. This lack of transparency at the beginning is the cause of many problems.”

He also says that some sponsors charge excessive recruitment fees, which women pay by taking out high-interest loans. Interest rates can be as high as 60 percent, with loans typically in excess of $2000.

He added that under-age migrants are sometimes recruited under conditions indicative of trafficking.

"Their ages are falsified. They are made to pay large sums of money and wind up trapped in debt. These are workers who, according to ILO, should be working 8 hours a day, but in reality it's more like 24 hours a day."

Gatot Abdullah Mansyur, former head of the Agency for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers (BNP2TKI), says that the government has improved practices in recent years by introducing a national licensing system for both recruiters and migrants.

"Recruiters are registered with us and we provide them with an official identification card and training on how to recruit would-be workers ethically, so that the recruitment process is not coercive or exploitative."

He says that migrants without government-issued cards were barred from leaving the country, and that the government regularly inspected recruitment agencies and acted on tip-offs alleging illegal practices.

Training

Security checks  have improved along border points, but NGOs say exploitation is still a regular feature of the training stage, a mandatory process which occurs at specialised centres around the country and which takes forty days to complete. 

Some women are also forced to take contraception injections, according to a 2013 report by Amnesty International. Centres can make hundreds of dollars from an individual — taken as salary reductions once a migrant begins earning — and since women cannot go abroad if they are pregnant, some agencies protect women like commodities.

The confiscation of personal documents, in order to keep women from running away, is also a common practice. 

According to Migrant Care, these and other problems would be solved by ending the domination of private companies over the training process. The NGO says that the women are the victims of an unregulated market driven by greed.

But for Eka Salim, who runs a training center in Semerang, the problems lie with unethical companies, not with the industry as a whole. He says that many companies are offering legitimate services: charging money in return for accommodation and training. But problems arise, he says, when centers cut corners in order to maximize profits — a practice which leads to inadequate training, insufficient food and accommodation, and occasionally to forged documentation and under-age trafficking. He adds that some Singaporean employment agencies know of these unethical practices, but turn a blind eye as they have no control over their Indonesian counterparts.