THE RISING TREND OF BALINESE MIGRANT WORKERS AS A FORM OF GLOBAL DISJUNCTURES

Abstract

This article examines the rise of Balinese migrant workers as an expression of the disjunctures that accompany globalization. Drawing on Appadurai’s framework of Global Cultural Flows, the analysis explores the misalignments embedded within the economic and political structures surrounding Bali’s tourism sector, which are shaped and continually reshaped by global flows. The study employs a qualitative descriptive approach and relies on secondary sources, including academic articles, books, reports, and news coverage relevant to the topic. The findings show that the growing trend of Balinese labor migration cannot be understood simply as a matter of individual economic choice. Rather, it reflects deeper structural disparities produced by global flows, visible across the domains of ethnoscape, technoscape, financescape, mediascape, and ideoscape. The study underscores the paradox of globalization: while Bali’s tourism industry continues to expand and generate substantial economic value, the benefits are not distributed proportionally to local workers, who remain marginalized within the broader structure of profit accumulation.