Economic and Religious Factors: Social Mobility of Migrants Muslim from Central Java in Bengkulu

Abstract

As a form of permanent population movement, migration research can be focused on two levels: the micro and the macro levels. Based on these levels, this study concentrated on the micro-level, emphasizing the psycho-social aspects of migration actors, with the research subjects of Muslim migrants from Central Java in Bengkulu City. Therefore, the determination lay in the centrifugal factor, namely the forces encouraging people to leave the area and the change in status in the destination area. Another essential meaning of this research was to find out the contribution of migration to socio-economic and cultural changes in migrant communities from Central Java, which is geographically differentiated on the coast and land. The analysis results in this study revealed that not all economic and religious factors contributed equally to the urge to migrate. In this research, job change was an economic sub-factor that contributed the most, while religious awareness was a religious sub-factor that could not be used to explain the impulse to migrate because its contribution was very small. Besides, centrifugal factors of a sociocultural nature also contributed significantly to the urge to migrate migrants from Central Java. Meanwhile, the rapid development of Bengkulu City and the friendly socio-cultural system of its people were the determining factors in choosing Bengkulu City as a migration destination. With regard to this socio-cultural system, the phenomenon of migrants from Central Java in Bengkulu City underwent a significant change.