This study in the context of diaspora examines the migration of Indonesian Chinese and the formation process of Chinese Peranakan community. It also analyzes multiculturalism of Indonesian Peranakan, and considers the meaning of the modern hybridity through their racial and cultural hybridity.
It is noticeable that Chinese in Indonesia have special characteristics of migration like indigenization due to assimilation, westernization, and re-sinicization. The position of Chinese Peranakan in Indonesia could be characterized as the third group or the middle class situated between the colonial rulers and local people which need to form a symbiotic relationship with native society. That is to say, it is similar to ‘the status of diaspora’. Besides, the position is different in the relations between Totok and Peranakan.
The migration and settlement of Chinese to Indonesia involves varied issues such as ethnic conflicts, alienation, discrimination, exclusion and inequality, which are explained in sense of multiculturalism and diaspora. Especially, although the problem of ethnic and cultural hybridity occurred in such process would not be treated well, it is becoming an important field of area study.
Racial hybridity of Chinese Peranakan was a flexible adaptive strategy to the local circumstances for the survival of Chinese migrants and they formed family relations in order to ensure stability of economic activities. Also, Chinese Peranakan culture has drawn unique their own pattern as well as mixed features through creatively accepting and reinterpreting different cultural factors from Europe, India and Malaysia on the basis of Chinese traditional culture. This cultural hybridity is due to mutual influences in the cultural transformation process caused by contact between races.
The hybridity sometimes disintegrates conventional identity of Chinese Peranakan in Indonesia and it is sometimes used to build a community for state from conflict, social inequality and political issues by the difference. It shows the value of cultural exchange and fusion among different nations very well.
Hybridity of Chinese Peranakan in Indonesia provides the meaning as follows; Firstly, the hybrid society, as a multicultural society mixed with races and cultures, should further actively seek for human rights of minorities and expansion of democracy in various areas above all. Secondly, the existence of difference and diversity of immigrants symbolized in the multicultural society should operate the opportunity to stimulate changes of political community through tolerance of the mainstream and politicization of the difference. Finally, it should be become a diaspora in community that marginal individuals and minorities could be a main actor with multiculturalism which could form pure and homogeneous national identity, overcome the hierarchical dichotomy between majority and minority, and broaden the mutual coexistence and understanding, rather than segregation and exclusion to subordinate others.
Eventually, the hybridity problem of Chinese Peranakan in Indonesia is an issue of nation integration between native Indonesian and overseas Chinese and ethnic Chinese. In fact, the hybridity in Indonesia should play a role in providing the necessary ideology for the future of the heterogeneous society, and create even more powerful concept of the future symbolic community.