Unsettling the Urban: Migration, Indigeneity, and Urban Formation in Jayapura, West Papua

This presentation aims to explore the impact of migration on socio-ecological transformations among the indigenous Papuans living in Jayapura, the capital city of Indonesia’s easternmost and marginalized province of Papua. While migration has been seen as one of the main drivers of socio-ecological transformation in the urban space, most studies on the formation of urban space in Indonesia have focused mainly on rural to urban migration. This study, on the contrary, will consider the broader regional study of inter-island migration and its impact on the indigenous population to examine how indigenous Papuans understand and frame this demographic change in their urban area. By focusing on the shift of Papuan livelihoods and their relationship with the land in the city, this study will also discuss how Papuans articulate and claim a political agency against the backdrop of complex political histories between West Papua and Indonesia.