Female Migrant Workers Agency and Divorce in Indonesia: Reaffirming the Prophetic Hadith on Khul’

Abstract

This study examines the factors motivating women to become migrant workers, the impacts of migration on their families, women’s agency, and its relationship to decisions to file for divorce. Using a qualitative approach, this study employs a feminist perspective and agency theory through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with female migrant workers who had filed for divorce and judges from the Religious Courts in Bima and Bulukumba. Data were analyzed through reduction, categorization, interpretation, and source triangulation. The findings show that women’s migration is primarily driven by domestic violence, the transfer of family economic responsibilities, and socio-psychological pressures. Divorce is mainly triggered by infidelity, misuse of remittances, husbands’ irresponsibility, marital disharmony, and poor communication. Migration strengthens women’s economic independence and identity but also creates risks of emotional separation, marital conflict, and psychological impacts on children. From the perspective of Prophetic hadith, the story of the wife of Thabit ibn Qays demonstrates women’s space to express marital dissatisfaction and seek dissolution through khulu‘. Thus, the hadith provides a normative basis for recognizing women’s agency without normalizing divorce, while affirming women’s dignity, safety, and well-being.