On Going Research

Mud volcano eruption in Porong, East Java, Indonesia in May 2006 has forced more than 12,500 affected families to migrate. The huge scale of its impacts has invited debates among scientists, policy makers and community organizers. However, those debates have mostly dealt with nature of disasters (natural vs unnatural) or its environmental effects. Even if they deal with socio-economic consequence of the eruption, they mainly discuss it as cost aggregation at regional level. In fact, it is those within the affected families that suffer most from the eruption.

This research would like to analyse the eruption impacts to people’s welfare dynamics at family level. The eruption has caused not only forced migration, but also loss of employment opportunities and weakening social institutions. Focusing on dynamics of affected families’ welfare, while simultaneously using critical view on the concept of family, this research would like to see further impacts of the migration in terms of gender and intergenerational relations within the affected families. Through this perspective, this research is to pursue following objectives:

(1)    to identify the livelihood transformation of those forcedly migrated by mud volcano
(2)    to identify changing gender and intergenerational relations within affected families
(3)    to identify the roles of formal and informal institutions which are significant to support family welfare during the crisis

This research is carried out through interviews, participatory observation, and focus group discussion.