Daniel Jesayanto Jaya, Wawan Rahmadi, Putu Sudira, Nuryadin Eko Raharjo, Lamri
Indonesia’s construction boom is widely celebrated as evidence of successful development and rising demand for skilled labour in the Global South. Yet the workers who sustain this boom experience a markedly different reality. Drawing on field insights from vocationally trained construction workers in Yogyakarta, this research note argues that the expansion of self-employment and micro-contracting is less a story of entrepreneurial dynamism than a structural response to wage instability, multi-layered subcontracting chains and weak labour protection. Workers exit wage employment not because they reject work, but because employment itself becomes unreliable and politically contingent. As risk is displaced downward within the construction labour regime, workers reconfigure themselves as micro-contractors who survive through trust networks, digital platforms, moral obligations and individual resilience. These practices constitute forms of survival entrepreneurship that absorb the volatility of peripheral capitalism while obscuring deeper failures in labour governance. Situating Indonesia within broader debates on informality, class fragmentation and vocational education, the note conceptualises survival entrepreneurship as a mode of governance through which development is stabilised by individualising risk and normalising fragmented careers. Rising self-employment in construction should therefore be read not as a success story, but as a warning signal of labour disposability under contemporary development. © 2026 Global South Ltd.
Technology and Vocational Education and Training Department, Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta, Sleman, Indonesia; Building Engineering Education Department, Universitas Negeri Jakarta, Jakarta, Indonesia; Management Department, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia; Civil Engineering and Planning Education Department, Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta, Sleman, Indonesia; Language Education Science Department, Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
