Flood Protection and Adaptation Labor in Jakarta, Indonesia

Jakarta is undergoing an infrastructural transformation in response to increasing flood risks, constructing new dams, flood canals, reservoirs and retention ponds, and ongoing normalization of the city’s rivers. However, one crucial element of responding to severe flood risks that has so far been overlooked in Jakarta and other vulnerable cities is the work of building and maintaining this flood protection infrastructure. In this article, we respond to this research gap by analyzing the work of the Blue Troops, a new provincial workforce who construct and maintain Jakarta’s flood protection infrastructure. Drawing from extensive fieldwork interviewing and observing the Blue Troops in Jakarta, we catalog their adaptation labor practices, showing the accumulated health and safety risks of their work. At the same time, we demonstrate that the workers find this to be reliable and meaningful collective work, essential for reproducing cities in a time of climate catastrophe. In short, we show that workers trade precarious labor practices and bodily risks against secure public-sector employment and a sense of contributing to their city. This article, therefore, contributes to a growing scholarly concern with the labor implications of climate change, suggesting that the organization, conditions, and value of this work will be crucial political and analytical terrain.