To understand the current social situation in Indonesia and its changes over the decades, the population census implemented by Statistics Indonesia, Badan Pusat Statistik (BPS), provides us with important basic information. The usefulness of population census data has greatly increased since 2000 because “ethnicity” was added to the questionnaire, and BPS published the digitized raw data. This study analyzes the case of Riau Province mainly using raw data from the 2000 and 2010 population censuses, which show that migration from other provinces increased considerably and the employment structure changed significantly.
The characteristics of migrants in Riau Province varied during different periods. Minangkabau from West Sumatra Province were dominant in the 1970s, but Javanese from Java Island with governmental support (transmigrasi) exceeded this number in the 1980s. Bataks and Javanese from North Sumatra Province have made up the largest number of migrants since the 1990s. The increase in migrants between 2000 and 2010 was driven by the rapid development of the estate crop sector in Riau Province, especially the oil palm industry, and many local ethnic groups also switched from food crops to estate crops. In 2010, more than a third of the total population in Riau Province was engaged in the estate crop sector. Nevertheless, a notable finding from our analysis is that the descendants of migrants are inclined to engage in industries other than the estate crop sector.
