Unlike human mobility in urban settings where the choice of migration is made based on personal preferences, the transmigrants in rural Indonesian transmigrant communities had no choices at all with regard to the targets and means of migration because everything had been arranged by the governments. Thus, the factors contributing to and the effects of sociolinguistic diversity on the community are quite apparent, and there is no need, at least at the current level, for the forming and testing of any diversity- and sustainability-related hypotheses. As the title implied, the article will elaborate on how human mobility has shaped the current sociolinguistic diversity of the Manggelewa community and how this diversity has led to its symbolic social sustainability. As is it is concerned with symbolic sustainability, the factors pushing and pulling for local voluntary relocation migration and their impact on local social sustainability in socio-economic terms should be left for later follow-up works.
3.1. Human Mobility and Sociolinguistic Diversity
The sociolinguistic diversity of the Manggelewa community is inseparable from its beginning as a Dutch colonial park, which comprised a river covered with a roof. Subsequently, the area is referred to in the local narrative as Soriutu [Sori ‘river’ Utu ‘roof’, Roofed River]. In November 1945, the area was a battleground between Indonesian freedom fighters and Dutch colonial soldiers, following the declaration of Indonesia’s independence and the declaration of support for Bima and Dompu and the subsequent integration into the Republic of Indonesia by the then King of Bima and Dompu, Muhammad Salahuddin. The Dutch colonial power in Sumbawa recruited military support from Lombok and Bali and sent it to subdue the kingdom. Realizing this, the king recruited soldiers from across Bima and Dompu and ambushed the enemies by hiding under a tamarind tree in the middle of the Soriutu plain. The area is presently occupied by a hamlet known as Manggelewa [Mangge ‘tamarind’ Lewa ‘war’, Tamarind War]. After the 1998 Reformation, the rural community called Manggelewa became a much larger area known as the district of Manggelewa. Thus, unlike the sociolinguistic diversity reported in most studies, the sociolinguistic diversity, as well as the social sustainability in this article, is still in the process of construction, and its explication in this article is expected to spark interest for more detailed and in-depth studies with data collection and instruments that can enable inferential statistics and hypothesis testing.
The sociolinguistic diversity of the Manggelewa community is not only represented in what Vertovec [
5] refers to as superdiversity through historical development, but also through the immigration of people from several areas, with numerous languages, religions, and nationalities. Traditionally, Manggelewa is a combination of Soriutu with other small villages, such as Teka Sire, Banggo, Soriutu, and Lanci. In the 1960s, the government of Dompu moved some of its people to Tanju and Lanci. In the 1970s, the neighboring government of Bima also transported its people to Lanci 1. In the 1980s, the provincial and national government embarked on massive transmigration programs, sending people from the islands of Lombok, Bali, and Java to the area. Simultaneously, the Dompu government relocated its people from the city of Dompu to Lanci 2. At the same time, more transmigrants from Lombok were also moved to Lanci 3 and 4; to SPT 1, 2, and 3; and to Nusa 1, 2 and 3. These areas are currently known, respectively, as Lanci Jaya, Nusa Damai, and Suka Jaya. Additionally, the national government relocated people from the island of Bali to transmigrant locations in Anamina, Nanga Tumpu, Doromelo, and Kampasi Meci. The areas of domicile for these government-transported people were geographically separated and not yet connected with roads and communication lines. Thus, such geographical separation and a lack of communicative contact established in the beginning what Piller [
45] described as segregation rather than diversity. The ethnic composition of the Manggelewa community is currently 63% Bima, 29% Sasak, 5% Samawa, 2% Balinese, and 1% others (see
Figure 3).
Note, however, that the characteristics of the community are more complex than the demographic figures can illustrate. Though geographically segregated, the area is easily interconnected through the development of better roads, affordable transport, and mobile communication that help to maintain cooperative relationships, whilst creating social homogeneity [
45]. Kwangko, on the border of Dompu and Sumbawa, is dominated by the Samawa ethnic group (60%). Locally, this group is called
Orang Aida [Indonesian: orang ’person’ ‘aida’ ‘oh’,
the Aida Person] or
Orang Dengan [Samawa: orang ‘person’ dengan ‘fellow’,
the Dengan People]. With regard to Lanci Jaya, Nusa Jaya, and Suka Damai, the Sasaks are the dominant ethnic group (80%), although their number is less than 30% of the population of Manggelewa. Internally, they are referred to as
Orang Batur or
Orang Semeton [Sasak: batur ‘fellow’ semeton ‘sibling’,
the Batur People]. Similarly, though fewer in number (less than 3% of the total population), the Balinese ethnic group occupy a separate settlement in Depa [Bima:
scattered] in Anamina; Mekarsari [Indonesia: mekar ‘blosom’ sari ‘flower’
Blossomed Flower] in Nanga Tumpu; Mada Jumba [Bima: mada ‘spring’ jumba ‘coat’
Coat-like Spring] in Banggo; and Puncak Sari [Indonesia: puncak ‘top’ sari ‘flower’
Flowery Hilltop] in Doromelo. Within the area, they are known as
Orang Beli [Bali: beli ‘brother’,
the Beli People]. In other communities, it is the Bima ethnic group who constitute most of the population (90%). Nevertheless, the notion of ‘Bima’ as a term for ethnicity and language is bitterly contested by the Dompu people who perceive ‘Dompu’ to be a label for ethnicity and language. There is, however, no significant difference between the Bima variety spoken by both groups. In this article, ‘Bima’ [Indonesian:
Bima] or ‘Mbojo’ [Bima:
Bima], is the commonly accepted name for the ethnicity and language used to cover what is locally termed ‘Dompu’ [Indonesian:
Dompu] or ‘Dompu’/’dompu/ [Bima:
Dompu]. Note that /‘/ before a consonant is meant to be a symbol of an implosive sound). Domestically, they are called
Orang Lenga [Bima: lenga ‘fellow’
the Lenga People] or
Orang Kalembo Ade [Bima: kalembo ade ‘be patient’
the Kalembo Ade People].
The Samawa, Sasak, and Balinese might be the minority in Manggelewa, but they are the majority in their respective settlements. The ethnic labels above may possibly represent what Al Zidjaly [
36] attributed to the languages in society and that these circumstances highlight the correct use of the ethnic languages in their linguistic landscape. Following the ideas established by de Swaan [
46], we can recognize that
Bahasa Campuran [Indonesian:
mixed language] is the supervernacular [
17] used for the oral and written interethnic communication together with the ethnic languages which are employed peripherally in the oral intra-ethnic interaction. The Indonesian language, Bahasa, is used as the super-central language in the oral and written, as well as the formal and informal, interethnic interactions. With a limited number of tourists, English is almost never used. In Kwangko, the Samawa language is prevalent among the people of Samawa, whereas Bima is used among the Bima people. Being competent in both languages, the Kwangko people can interact in both languages, but the Samawa language is preferred, particularly in formal settings, such as in religious sermons, speeches, and meetings. In Nanga Tumpu, the same bilingual situation is observed, although the Bima language is preferred for formal and informal interactions. In Balinese areas, such as Mekarsari, Balinese is employed. In Banggo, the Bima language is the norm, but among the Balinese in Mada Jumba, the Balinese language is used. In Anamina and in Doromelo, the Bima language is dominant, but among the Balinese transmigrants in Depa and Puncak Sari, Balinese is the principal language of interaction. In Teka Sire, Soriutu, Tanju, and Kampasi Meci, Bima is spoken, while in Lanci Jaya, Nusa Jaya, and Suka Damai, Sasak is common, except in the clusters of Bima and Dompu transmigrants where Bima is the language of communication. To a great extent, this indicates the association between the languages and places, as highlighted in the depiction given by Piller [
45] in relation to the socially segregated and geographically territorial nature of language use in a superdiverse society. However, for interethnic and formal communication the national language, Bahasa Indonesia, is the norm and people have learned by means of experience to make use of the practical expressions found in each ethnic language and to practice them in interethnic communication as a way of forming interethnic solidarity. Overall, the speakers of the languages are as follows: 63% Bima, 30% Sasak, 5% Samawa, and 2% Balinese and less than 1% speak other languages (see
Figure 4).
Sociolinguistic diversity in the Manggelewa community can also be observed in the practices of multiple religions. The Bima, Sasak, and Samawa people are all Muslims. They constitute 98% of the population, and 114 mosques are established in the communities. While there are no religious restrictions as regards praying in the mosques, the Sasak Muslims prefer the NU or NW mosques and typically refrain from using the Muhammadiyah and NW Diniyah Islamiah (NWDI) mosques, which they assume to be inappropriate. Hence, division is created within the assumed religion-based solidarity. The Balinese practice Hinduism and constitute 2% of the population. Six prayer houses are found in their community. Note, however, that the Balinese places of worship, ‘pura’, belong to a social network known as ‘Banjar’. Only members of the Banjar can be involved in their places of worship, adding new complexities to the assumed religion- and ethnicity-based solidarity among the Balinese. The other religions are insignificant in number, and their prayer houses cannot be found in the area.
The relationship is not, however, as straightforward as it appears. Being Muslims, the Bima, Sasak, and Samawa ethnic groups share religious solidarity (see
Figure 5). Unlike the Bima and Samawa people, who are mostly affiliated with the Muhammadiyah movement [Arabic:
Followers of Muhammad SAW], the second largest Muslim group in Indonesia but the largest (more than 60%) in Manggelewa, the Sasak speakers are associated with Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) [Arabic:
Revival of Islamic Scholars], the largest group of Muslims in Indonesia, or Nahdlatul Wathan (NW) [Arabic:
Revival of the Country], the largest group of Muslims in Lombok. Consequently, new dimensions are added to the local sociolinguistic diversity. Organizational disputes within the latter in its headquarters in Lombok have led to the emergence of NWDI [Arabic:
Islamic Education of Country Revival], with disputes spreading to the Sasak sections of the community in, for instance, Suka Damai, Lanci Jaya, and Nusa Jaya. Relations with Anjani’s Nahdlatul Wathan have prompted almost 90% of the Sasak people in Nusa Jaya to associate themselves with the NW type of Islamic practice and festivals. Similarly, association with Pancor’s NWDI has triggered 80% of the Sasak people in Lanci Jaya and 65% in Suka Damai to link up with the NWDI. With the establishment of local branches and the differences in religious practices, the organizational unease has further enhanced local multi-complexities. Claiming ownership of local schools and other social institutions, both groups have also extended the socio-cultural complexity to post-migration generations.
The sociolinguistic diversity of the Manggelewa community has also been strengthened via the local and transnational mobility of the people. The bus station in Teka Sire brings people daily to and from various parts of Bima, Dompu, and Sumbawa, while the night bus in Soriutu transports people to and from Lombok, Bali, and Java. Although it is problematic to establish data on the exact number of local and trans-island commuters, our observations of the bus station and the streets, in addition to the night bus agencies, suggest that more than a hundred passengers and bikers commute locally, and around three to five trans-island passengers travel in and out of the community on a daily basis. These new roles performed by these particular sections of the community have directly increased the economic significance of the areas. Thus, they have been transferred from small remote hamlets to the emerging interconnected city of Soriutu, the capital town of the Manggelewa district of Dompu. The transnational movement brings more and more people to the community, opening up new business opportunities. As Martiniello [
47] and Vertovec [
5] mentioned, the association with home countries, languages, and cultures can maintain the sociolinguistic diversity of a particular community. As a result, ‘[trans]migrant transnationalism’ is a common practice linking the migrants in the migrant countries with people and organizations in the homelands and elsewhere in a diaspora and enabling people to have dual or bi-focal transnational lives [
48].
Finally, sociolinguistic diversity in the locality can be witnessed in the socio-economic conditions as well as in the associated social inequality. Although the communities have no issues with power, influence, and migration status, the host and the migrants in the communities are constantly fighting for social equality. As Blackledge and Creese [
49] argued, social inequality might deal with the trajectories of life, but it is deeply engrained in relation to access to economic income. With the local definition of poverty classified as earnings of less than IDR four hundred thousand to one million (or USD 30–70; USD 1 = IDR 15,000) per family member per month, the village councils were able to identify families living on average or above the poverty line (see
Figure 6).
The socio-economic conditions vary: the majority of the people living around the city of Soriutu (from Banggo to Tanju) obtain an above-average income, while the people living further away from the city are on the poverty line. This condition deals with inequality with regard to access to irrigation water provided by various water reservoirs near the area. For instance, the reservoirs near Doromelo (Sanggu Pasante Reservoir), in Teka Sire (Tonda Reservoir), in Tanju (Tanju Reservoir), and in Nowa (Rababaka Reservoir) could not adequately reach farming areas in Kampasi Meci, let alone Nanga Tumpu and Kwangko.
Our data show that 409 people have decided to relocate to Manggelewa since 2009, including 68 relocation migrants within the local community. In order to examine the pushing and pulling factors of this local voluntary relocation migration to Manggelewa (particularly Soriutu and Doromelo), we distributed the questionnaire in
Appendix A, asking 70 migrants to select, based on a ranking from 1 to 12, the reasons for leaving the previous transmigration units, as listed in the questionnaire. Ranking their choices, we gave the highest scoring point (12 points) to the first choice and the lowest scoring point (1 point) for the last choice in the list. We also distributed the questionnaire in
Appendix B to the same respondents, asking them to rank from 1 to 19 the possible reasons for selecting Manggelewa as the target of relocation migration. Dividing them with the highest possible scores in each list (70 respondents × 12 points = 840 in push factors, and 70 respondents × 19 points = 1330 in pull factors), we identified an index of the importance of the pushing and pulling dimensions to the decision to relocate to Manggelewa. With such a procedure, we identified a point for each dimension and, dividing this point with the total sum of all the points, we identified the percentage. The ten best reasons of the investigations are presented in
Table 2.
As shown in
Table 2, the decision to relocate to Manggelewa in general and to Soriutu and to Doromelo in particular was pushed and pulled by a number of factors. In general, the relocation was pushed by economic failures in previous transmigration units (12.45%), failure in farming industries (11.94%), failure in agricultural trading (11.94%), and failure in agriculture due to a lack of farming skills (8.96%), and these dimensions of economic failures contribute to around 45% of the relocation decision. Relocation was also associated with conflict with believers of other religions (8.85%) and ethnic groups (8.74%), contributing to around 18% of the decision. Next, the decision to leave was hard-pressed by poor access to better services in education (8.21%), health (7.49%), family (6.81%), and transportation, and these access dimensions contributed to almost 30% of the decision. There were also problems with lands which were not fertile enough or lacked irrigation for sustainable agriculture (4.54%); there was also the factor of being provoked by relocating friends (3.9%), and the contribution of these dimensions was minor, at around 8%. Though relocation was economically driven, the presence of other reasons indicates multi-complexity in internal migration motivation.
Table 2 also shows that relocation as internal migration to Manggelewa was motivated by better opportunities, better social life, and better access to infrastructures. The study reveals that Manggelewa has been assumed to offer better business opportunities (7%), better farming lands (7%), better sales of products (7%), and easier product transportation (7%), and altogether, these dimensions contribute around 34% to the location selection. Relocation was also affected by good quality of life in Manggelewa as it is assumed to offer more harmonious interethnic (8%) and inter-religion relations (7%), as well as better quality of social life (6%), and these life quality dimensions contribute around 21% to the decision to move to Manggelewa. Next, access to good education for children (6%) and health services (6%) contribute around 12% to the choice of Manggelewa as the target of residential migration. Finally, individual reasons exist, and they contribute to around 34% of the choice, but the reasons are not patterned according to social dimensions. Some individuals relocate for security reasons (5%) and for better agricultural lands for rent (5%) and due to marriage (5%), retirement (4%), family reunion (4%), obtaining new jobs (4%), and working with friends (4%) and for joining school-aged children (3%) and for new positions in government offices (2%). These findings imply that although the choice of relocating to Manggelewa was mainly to do with being intrigued by the promise of a better life, the close percentage and contribution above represents the multi-complexity of the expectations, which in essence exemplify the socio-cultural diversity of the migrants and their communities.
Thus, like the urban cosmopolitan cities, the rural transmigrant areas of Manggelewa are indeed superdiverse, strongly supporting the claim that “[super] diversity is a feature of all human societies”, resulting from their socio-political history [
45]. Having established the sociolinguistic diversity of the locality, we can now examine how those dimensions are explained in languages and how these language practices are constituted by and for social sustainability among people of multi-complex social backgrounds, as seen through the lens of language use and other symbolic practices.
3.2. Sociolinguistic Diversity and Social Sustainability
The study has reframed social sustainability at the level of individual relations, social interactions, and social networks, escaping the trap of the predominantly economic definition of it by looking at language and language use as human resources for creating and maintaining sustainable social inclusion, cohesion, and coherence. With language and language use in communicative interactions, people can build mutual trust and sustain desirable social relationships. Though diverse, social sustainability in Manggelewa communities can be maintained, at least, through a shared sense of a common identity, mutual awareness of sociolinguistic diversity, and communal positive attitudes towards ethnic labels.
The communities of Manggelewa communally see themselves as members a newly created multilingual and multicultural society called
Orang Manggelewa [the Manggelewa People]. They describe their community as a
miniature Indonesia, a symbol of what Michele Gu et al. [
51] termed ‘the flexible multiculturalism of geographical space’. This, at least to the eyes of one of its residents, is because the inhabitants come from across Indonesia.
The Manggelewa community is a mini-Indonesia. The people are not only from Dompu or Bima, they are also from Sumbawa, Lombok, and Bali, as well as Java. They are even from Sumatra, Batak and Aceh, Borneo, and Celebes. All gather in a small area here at Cabang Soriutu [the Soriutu Junction]. This area was previously known as Cabang Banggo [Banggo Junction], that is, a junction leading to a village called Banggo, west of the junction, as the end of the road. Later development of a road for land transportation to the city of Sumbawa and to other areas in Lombok, Bali, and Java islands has popularized Soriutu as the name (Adri Matarima, aged 28).
Though communally labeled as such, the people of Manggelewa are aware of the linguistic and ethnic differences among them. This awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity has also been applied in order to label people. The labels are based on prominent linguistic behaviors or forms, allowing us to comprehend what Al Zidjaly [
36] recognized as society in language. The prominent linguistic behavior of the people of Sumbawa who were discovered to express surprise or sympathy with the ‘aida’ [Samawa:
Oh My God], is labelled
Orang Aida [Bahasa Indonesia:
the Aida People], specifically the people of Aida. The Bima or Dompu people who were determined to frequently use
kalembo ade [Bima:
be patient] have been locally identified as
Orang Kalembo Ade [Bahasa Indonesia:
the Kalembo Ade People]. Other ethnic groups do not have labels based on prominent language behaviors but, rather, labels based on the words for ‘friends’ or ‘fellows’. The Aida people are also referred to as
Orang Dengan [Bahasa Indonesia:
The Dengan People], for the reason that ‘dengan’ is a word and a symbol of friendship in the Samawa language. The Kalembo Ade people were more frequently called
Orang Lenga [Bahasa Indonesia:
The Lenga People], and
lenga [Bima: friend] is used to refer to an acquaintance. The Sasak people are called
Orang Batur [Bahasa Indonesia:
The Batur People], and
batur [Sasak: friend] is also used for an acquaintance in the Sasak language. Finally, the people who are of Balinese extraction are known as
Orang Beli [Bahasa Indonesia:
The Beli People] and
beli [Balinese: male big brother]. These chronotopic identities, which follow the ideas developed by Blommaert and de Fina [
52], are co-constructed in complex interactive negotiations across contexts replacing traditionally dichotomic local, national, and global identities, such as ethnicity, nationality, and gender. These forms are used positively by people to greet each other on the streets or in neighborhood meetings. Unlike the terms applied for cultural culinary items, which are received as insulting, the use of these words of friendship is positively welcomed, and they socially sustain the communal identity as that of being co-members of the Manggelewa communities. The use of such forms is demonstrated in the following extract.