Communication networks in community parenting programmes for migrant worker families in Indramayu

Abstract

This study addressed two research questions: how communication networks among family, village government, and community actors are formed in community parenting programmes for left-behind children in Kenanga and Juntinyuat Villages, and how two-way communication within the microsystem and mesosystem supports programme sustainability. The study applies Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory of Human Development and communication network analysis to examine the relationships among concrete actors, including village heads, PKK administrators, Karang Taruna, teachers, health workers, police officers, religious figures, NGOs, surrogate carers, migrant mothers, and children. Communication networks in this study are understood as functions carried out by concrete actors, rather than as actors themselves. Certain actors influence parenting attitudes within the community, others manage the circulation of information from village institutions to families, while several actors connect local caregiving groups with migrant workers abroad. Using a qualitative approach, this research was conducted in Kenanga and Juntinyuat Villages, Indramayu Regency, through in-depth interviews, participant observation, and documentation involving forty informants. The findings show that community parenting operates as a communication-based social intervention that promotes shared responsibility for left-behind children. In this sense, the villages seek to cultivate a new social behaviour: collective care. This process generates social capital by distributing responsibility across families, schools, village institutions, health workers, youth groups, religious communities, and NGOs. Furthermore, two-way communication functions as a feedback loop through which actors exchange parenting guidance, child protection information, educational assistance, and socio-emotional support. However, the central contribution of this study lies in showing that migrant mothers, despite being primary stakeholders in the care chain, remain relatively isolated within the communication network. Their weak connection with surrogate carers, schools, village institutions, and community actors reveals a fragmented mesosystem and an incomplete care chain. Therefore, Desmigratif requires stronger digitally mediated communication strategies to reconnect migrant mothers with village-based parenting networks.