New Fataluku diasporas and landscapes of remittance and return

In the following paper, I seek in a preliminary way to explore one distinctive aspect or expression of that migration desire in Timor-Leste by drawing on the Fataluku ethnography of far eastern Timor-Leste. Young people from this region have been prominent participants in the new flow of migrants within Timor-Leste, most of them heading to Dili where resident familial connections smooth the transition to urban life. But more significantly, they have also pioneered new forms of trans-national migration that include neighbouring countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia but also well beyond to destinations in Western Europe, such as the United Kingdom and Portugal. As a source of new capital, both social and financial, this opportunistic trans-national chain migration has unexpectedly become a key factor in the post-independence economic landscape of certain Fataluku settlements. Here I focus on the semi-rural administrative capital of Lautem District, Los Palos, and two of its constituent hamlets, Ira Ara and Lere Loho where these processes have flourished. They illustrate something of the complex intersections at work between local custom and nation building, mediated through relations of long distance migration.