Transmigration: Moving Poverty, Manufacturing Despair

A documented case of transmigration land in Kalimantan being traded. Source: dayaktoday.com

Since the New Order era, during President Suharto’s rule, transmigration was aggressively implemented as a tool of political power under the slogan of 'equitable development.' In reality, it served as a cover for oligarchic control over land, territories, natural resources, and local communities.

Long hailed as a nation-building strategy, Indonesia’s transmigration program was originally designed to resettle people from overcrowded islands like Java to less-populated regions such as Borneo, Papua, and Sumatra. 

Read 10 Dampak Negatif Transmigrasi di Kalimantan: Ancaman terhadap Masyarakat Adat Dayak dan Lingkungan

The policy promised opportunity and prosperity. In reality, it often delivered poverty, land conflict, and disillusionment—a mass relocation of poverty that simply recreated hardship in a new place.

For the transmigrants, life rarely improved. Many were moved from poverty-stricken villages only to find themselves trapped in remote settlements with poor soil, failing infrastructure, and little access to education or health care. Rather than empowerment, they found abandonment.

For Indigenous communities, especially the Dayak in Kalimantan, the influx of transmigrants meant loss of ancestral land, cultural disruption, and sudden competition for resources. They were never asked. They were never compensated. Their lands became "empty" in the eyes of the state: free for taking.

But here’s the truth too often ignored: both transmigrants and local communities are victims. Even though both are victims, the transmigrants are still better off. They can still sell the land, houses, and land titles provided by the state, as shown in the illustration.

And the real winners? The powerful few who designed the system.

A Convenient Distraction from Systemic Failure

Transmigration was not just a logistical solution. It became a political escape hatch. When structural inequality, overpopulation, and rural poverty overwhelmed policy, the state didn’t reform. It relocated. Poverty wasn't solved—it was shipped out.

Read Moratorium Transmigrasi: Teras Narang Dorong Evaluasi Total demi Keadilan Sosial di Kalimantan

Instead of investing in economic justice or addressing land inequality in Java, the government exported the problem elsewhere. Transmigration masked the failures of centralized development while diverting attention from much-needed reforms in land tenure, education, and job creation.

It was a policy of displacement—of people, and of responsibility.

A Tool for Oligarchs: Land Grabs Disguised as Development

At its core, the transmigration program facilitated the silent expansion of corporate empires—paving the way for vast monoculture plantations, logging operations, and mining concessions. What better cover than a humanitarian mission?

Transmigrants often became buffer zones—used by the state to open access to Indigenous territories, creating legal gray zones where corporate land grabs could proceed unchallenged. Indigenous peoples lost forests, rivers, and traditional farming systems. Transmigrants, promised two hectares and a new start, ended up as low-wage laborers or abandoned altogether.

Leo Kumbang Tegaskan Sikap Inklusif di Tengah Demonstrasi di Landak

Behind the slogans of prosperity, transmigration enabled oligarchs to strip the land clean—legally, quietly, and with state support.

A Demographic Strategy Disguised as Economic Aid

Transmigration was never just about economics. It was political. In many regions, the arrival of thousands of new residents changed electoral dynamics, diluted Indigenous voting blocs, and redrew the political map in favor of the ruling elite.

In places where Indigenous people once held communal political sway, the demographic floodplain shifted power. Transmigration subtly served as a tool for demographic engineering, weakening local autonomy and strengthening state control.

It was, in many ways, a soft occupation—not with weapons, but with ballots and bulldozers.

From Conflict to Coalition: A Call for Solidarity

Too often, the narrative pits transmigrants against locals—fueling horizontal conflict while obscuring the vertical power structures that manipulate both. But when the dust settles, it becomes clear: the Dayak farmer and the Javanese settler are not enemies. They are co-victims of a system that values land more than lives.

Alasan Penduduk Asli Kalimantan Menolak Keras Program Transmigrasi: 10 Keburukan Banding 1 Kebaikan

What’s needed is not further division but a politics of shared resistance—against land dispossession, exploitative industries, and state-backed displacement. This isn’t just a call for reform. It’s a call for reckoning.

Because behind the rhetoric of national unity and economic progress lies a hard truth: transmigration has served the few at the expense of the many.

- Rangkaya Bada