Human Mobility, Sociolinguistic Diversity, and Social Sustainability in Rural Areas: Insights from Indonesian Transmigrant Communities

Abstract

A substantial number of studies have been completed with respect to human mobility, linguistic diversity, and social sustainability in the Global North, but very few have been undertaken in relation to the Global South. Mobility, diversity, and sustainability are not recent phenomena, but little, if anything, is understood as regards how human mobility leads to linguistic diversity and social sustainability. This article fills this gap by explaining how the transmigrants of Javanese, Balinese, and Sasak ethnic backgrounds, along with the Bima and Dompu host communities, have established the ethnically and linguistically multi-diverse transmigrant communities of Manggelewa on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. Data were collected from the participant ethnographic observations of the communities. The main strategies for data collection included taking notes, collecting documents, distributing questionnaires concerning human mobility, sociolinguistic diversity, and social sustainability, interviewing key informants, and recording conversations. Employing qualitative, quantitative, and ethnographic analyses, the study exhibits the community’s dynamic mobility, sociolinguistic diversity, and social sustainability. The study displays how human mobility leads to sociolinguistic diversity and how the diversity is used as a resource for sustaining a better interethnic relationship. The dimensions of mobility, sociolinguistic diversity, and social sustainability are discussed, and the factors that are essential for symbolic social sustainability are statistically attested.

1. Introduction

This article examines human mobility and sociolinguistic diversity in Manggelewa [Tamarind War], a newly established and emergent town in Dompu, Sumbawa Island, Indonesia. In this area, the people of Dompu and Bima ethnic backgrounds, who play host to transmigrants of other ethnic backgrounds in nearby areas, have voluntarily relocated to this area with the aim of improving their lives and business prospects. Accompanied by their languages, cultures, religions, socio-economic statuses, political orientations, and other elements, they have created a linguistic, cultural, and political rural area that is so multi-complex or superdiverse that social integration, interethnic solidarity, and social sustainability would have become problematic if the acts of using more than one language in an interaction (i.e., translanguaging) had not been performed. Ndhluvu [1] and Pavlenko [2] claim that the studies on mobility and sociolinguistic diversity have primarily been Eurocentric, with only a few studies conducted on other regions. Hence, this study is expected to fill this gap by investigating how mobility and sociolinguistic diversity in an Indonesian rural transmigrant community are currently being developed in conjunction with ethnolinguistic and socio-economic multi-complexities.

This study begins by identifying how the numerous social backgrounds represent the geographical mobility and sociolinguistic diversity among the transmigrants of Balinese, Sasak, Samawa, Bima, and Dompu ethnic backgrounds in the government-sponsored transmigration communities. As in all transmigrant communities in Indonesia, the people in the communities in the study were transported by the local, provincial, and national governments of Indonesia, and their livelihood, at least in the first three years of establishment, was provided by the governments) transmigrant communities in the Manggelewa district of Dompu, located in the central part of Sumbawa Island (see Figure 1). Here, a new city, Kota Soriutu [the City of Roofed River], has emerged at the juncture of the roads to Lanci [Wildflower], Tanju [Lily], and Kore [the Calotropis gigantean plant]; to Kempo, Pekat, and all the transmigrant villages situated at the foot of Mount Tambora; to Kwangko and all the villages; and to Empang, Plampang, and the city of Sumbawa. In the 1970s, there was no village here except for the nearby villages of Banggo and Mangge. The migration of the Bima-speaking people from Bima and Dompu to Tanju, sponsored by the Bima and Dompu governments; the Samawa-speaking migrants from Kwangko, sponsored by the Dompu government; the Sasak-speaking migrants to Lanci; and the Balinese-speaking migrants to Puncaksari, Mada Jumba, and Mekarsari in the 1980s, all of whom were sponsored by the provincial and the national governments resulted the area being populated. Note that the government-funded migration (i.e., transmigration) of the Sasak people from the island of Lombok was sponsored by the West Nusa Tenggara provincial government, while the transmigration of the Balinese people from the island of Bali was funded by the national government’s transmigration programs. Moreover, in the 1990s the city of Soriutu began to develop. Subsequently, in the early 2000s, the city became the capital of the Manggelewa district of Dompu, and the migrants began to move in voluntarily from all corners of Saleh Bay. Thus, the former flower garden of the Dutch colonial government has now become a flourishing, new multi-ethnic town.

The mobility of people with various ethnic and linguistic backgrounds has subsequently led to the sociolinguistic diversity of the new city. This article teases out the current sociolinguistic conditions by discussing how the social categories and social identities of people from particular sociolinguistic backgrounds are linguistically constructed, a concept that has been extensively discussed in classical and contemporary sociolinguistic and anthropological linguistic studies. While the issue is not at all novel and it has been significantly contested in various work situations (see, for example, [3,4,5]), in urban settings [6], in social conflict [7], or in residential changes [6], mobility and sociolinguistic diversity, nevertheless, have not been observed from the perspectives of rural transmigrant communities, where people from various ethno-linguistic backgrounds and all sectors of society across Indonesia have been ‘dumped’ in the most remote corners of the country to begin anew as farmers and to form new communities. It will also examine how the social dynamics in human mobility and sociolinguistic diversity have been used as a discursive means of constructing common ground, mutual co-membership of social groups, and mechanical and organic solidarity.

In general, transmigration, local or global, forced or voluntary, is associated with the economy, mobility, and employment [8,9,10]. In various places, people move from one area to another due to wage differences [8,9], more demand for particular services, and greater opportunities to secure better jobs [9,11]. David et al. [12] define mobility as the self-reinforced geographical movement of people, resources, languages, and texts driven by a scarcity of resources in home communities and encouraged by an economy that is performing well in the target communities [9]. Mobility is assumed to be predominantly international [8] and rarely regional or local [12]. In fact, Della Puppa et al. [13] asserted that “mobility is always directed from South to North” (pp. 513–514), suggesting that the geographical axis of mobility is always South–North and never North–South or South–North–South. Thus, mobility is continuously assumed to be from the economically and technologically less advantageous rural villages of the Global South to the economically and technologically well-advanced urban cities of the Global North and to be a consequence of the prosperity and security of the latter [14].

When the Global North is the target of mobility, sociolinguistic diversity is always understood to be an issue in relation to it. Vertovec [5] succinctly described sociolinguistic diversity as diversity within diversity in a community, due to the historical development prior to migration and the continuous interaction with in-migrating people of various backgrounds both during migration and post-migration. It should be mentioned that sociolinguistic diversity also comprises the causes, patterns, and methods of migration [15]. Blommaert [16] suggested that change is constant, mobility is the rule, and complexity and unpredictability in social conditions have been the norms across societies. Furthermore, it should be noted that the mobility of people and resources leading to sociolinguistic diversity as a social condition also contributes to the formation of a supervernacular as a linguistic variety [17].

As explained above, mobility is primarily defined as the geographical displacement of people and resources from the Global South to the Global North for economic or security reasons. Thus, sociolinguistic diversity is primarily described as a factor that impacts the Global North or urban cities. However, the movement of people and resources, along with the multi-complexity, cannot be confined to cross-border movement alone. Movement within local borders deserves considerable attention and is the aim of this article. Although Merriman [18] and Juffermans et al. [19] extended the notion of mobility and sociolinguistic diversity to biological changes in human life and to spatial movement in digital practice (moving from one geographical space to another on the internet), internal mobility and sociolinguistic diversity have not been satisfactorily expounded [13]. In their preoccupation with transnational migration to the modern day urban cities of northern Europe, contemporary migration researchers have neglected this type of migration, although Zelinsky [20] has illustrated it as residential movement that is common in traditional or pre-modern migration. In this article, we explore this gap by identifying the factors affecting transmigrants’ decisions to move locally to new places of residence and how these movements have affected the ethnic and linguistic composition in addition to the sociolinguistic diversity and social sustainability in the newly formed community.

Social sustainability has been primarily seen as one of the pillars of sustainable development: environmental, social, and economic sustainability [21,22]. Although discussions on urban sustainability are as ancient as the cities that they debated [23], the definition of sustainability has not moved away from economic sustainability [24] because the so-called environmental and social sustainability, though confusing in its conceptualization [24], is always supportive to economic sustainability. Maloutas [25] argues that if it is primarily concerned with fulfilling the future generation’s economic needs, sustainability will be mainly environmental, and the social one will have limited room to play. Even when social sustainability is discussed, the overemphasis on basic economic needs is apparent in the major works on it. McKenzie [26] and Griebler and Littig [27], for example, describe social sustainability as dependent upon economic stability as it is the basis for social and environmental sustainability [26], suggesting that justice and coherence in society and in nature are dependent upon the satisfaction of basic economic needs and the quality of the economic life of individuals [27]. Interestingly, the key concepts of social identity are not at all social but economic, particularly when they are defined in terms of equity in the redistribution of economic resources, the socio-economic safety of the people, the environmentally responsible production of urban spaces, and the physical outlook of the city [28]. Thus, to escape the economic trap, the current frameworks, according to [22], have failed to define the real notion of social sustainability.

A substantial number of social sustainability studies have actually looked at micro individual-to-individual perspectives. Social sustainability should be seen more at the social levels, where social capital, social cohesion, social inclusion, and social coherence are key issues of concern [29]. Because it is about ascertaining a better quality of life for people today and in the future, social sustainability projects should not only provide social amenities and structures but also supply rooms for people to voice their concerns and to influence others for a better social and cultural life [30]. In order to achieve this, according to [29], we need to look more at the non-physical dimensions of social sustainability (such as people’s participation in local democracy, quality of life and well-being, social inclusion, eradication of social exclusion, social networks, social cohesion, community coherence, and others) rather than at the physical sides of it (such as infrastructures, residential stability, community organizations, and others). In fact, as Woodcraft [30] argues, social sustainability is not a matter of community size or social infrastructures but, rather, mutual trust and engagement in social interactions. In the words of [31,32], when social interactions fail to form in communities with complete social infrastructures they cannot be understood as communities because the people are merely groups of individuals living their own separate lives without any sense of community or sense of attachment or pride in the place. One way of looking at these processes is by observing how social sustainability is established, enacted, constructed, or negotiated within individual-to-individual communicative interactions as a micro-symbolic representation of the macro-society, as shown in sociolinguistic works (for example, [33,34,35]) where languages and language use are the primary means of constructing social realities, including social sustainability, through communicative interactions. This is the core point that the article expects to contribute, but before the contribution is explicated, let us briefly illustrate the methodological aspects of the study.

2. Materials and Methods

This particular study is based on the ethnography of the Manggelewa community (see Figure 2). Al Zidjaly [36] maintains that it is a culture and context that is “under-represented” and recommends an urgent sociolinguistic study. The information used in the study was collected in at least two phases of data collection: informal and formal data collection.

The informal data collection was conducted by listening to local narratives about Manggelewa communities during social visits and during various ethnographic visits to transmigrant communities on the island of Sumbawa, including the Manggelewa communities. Frequent social and family visits to Lanci, Banggo, and Teka Sire provided us with historical and social information about the areas. Annual land travels home from the capital city of Mataram on Lombok to the city of origin in Bima and the usual long rest at the Nanga Tumpu or Soriutu rest areas enabled us to see the updated development of Manggelewa over time. Additionally, our ethnographic visits to all the transmigrant communities on the island of Sumbawa in 2009, 2010, and 2011 [37]; to Tolo Oi, a distant Manggelewa neighbor, in 2010 [38]; and to two of the Manggelewa communities, Kwangko [39] and Lanci in 2011 [40], supplied us with information about the socio-economic conditions of the Manggelewa communities at that period of time. In 2012 and 2013, we visited Lanci Jaya, Tanju, Nusa Jaya, Nusa Damai, Kampasi Meci, and Doromelo to explore the symbolic solidarity between the Balinese, Bima, and Sasak transmigrants [41], and in 2015 and 2016, we visited Kwangko and Nanga Tumpu again [42] and their neighbor, Matta, in 2016 [43] for ethnographic projects on ethnolinguistic identities and ethnolinguistic vitality. In 2017 and 2018, we visited Nisa, a community on a small island (i.e., nisa [Bima: small island]) offshore from Kwangko, where the Bajo language is spoken [44]. Research permits, ethical clearance, and consent forms for these studies were issued in the respective studies from the respective authorities and research respondents. Although the data from these studies were not used in the current study, the understanding of the communities has indirectly informed the current study.

However, the formal data collection for the current study was conducted in later ethnographic visits in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic and in 2020 and in 2021 with strict COVID-19 protocols. The samples were purposefully selected from social networks involving transmigrants of varied ethnic backgrounds (i.e., Bima, Samawa, Sasak, Balinese, and other ethnic groups), genders (involving male and female members), religious affiliations (Islam and its variations such as Muhammadiyah, Nahdlatul Ulama/NU, Nahdlatul Wathan/NW), Balinese Hindus, Protestants, or Catholics), and socio-economic backgrounds (farmers, fishermen, teachers, merchants, and others). The activities, interaction patterns, languages, and topics of conversation in these networks were ethnographically observed, and the ethnographic notes and recordings are treated as the main data of the study.

Thus, the data for the study were collected from (a) documents (e.g., statistics from regency and village offices); (b) questionnaires (distributed to examine the reasons for the transmigrants’ relocation from the surrounding transmigrant areas to the Manggelewa communities (Appendix A) and to general members of the Manggelewa communities to measure social sustainability (Appendix B)); and (c) interviews with key contributors in addition to the aforementioned ethnographic observations and recordings of communicative practices (see

Table 1. Data collected.

No	Method of Data Collection	Source	Quantity
1	Documents	Regency statistics	14 documents
		Village statistics	12 documents
2	Questionnaires	Relocated transmigrants	70 respondents
		Community members	70 respondents
3	Interviews	Community leaders	65 respondents
		Community members	75 respondents
		Youth group leaders	60 respondents
4	Recorded Interactions	Audio recordings	75 h
		Video recordings	80 h

). Of particular interest to the study were the recorded interactions wherein translanguaging practices were used to represent sociolinguistic diversity and social sustainability within the communities. Research permits and ethical clearance were acquired from the university while consent was orally obtained from the respondents during the data collection sessions. These triangulated sources and methods of data collection are expected to meet the methodological challenges in objectively teasing out the vast number of factors affecting mobility, diversity, and sustainability.

The data were analyzed at the macro-community level with quantitative and qualitative analyses and at the micro-instructional level with ethnography of communication and interaction analyses. Combined with the content analysis of the document and the interview data, these analyses were expected to illustrate the human mobility, sociolinguistic diversity, and symbolic social sustainability of the Manggelewa communities.

3. Results

Unlike human mobility in urban settings where the choice of migration is made based on personal preferences, the transmigrants in rural Indonesian transmigrant communities had no choices at all with regard to the targets and means of migration because everything had been arranged by the governments. Thus, the factors contributing to and the effects of sociolinguistic diversity on the community are quite apparent, and there is no need, at least at the current level, for the forming and testing of any diversity- and sustainability-related hypotheses. As the title implied, the article will elaborate on how human mobility has shaped the current sociolinguistic diversity of the Manggelewa community and how this diversity has led to its symbolic social sustainability. As is it is concerned with symbolic sustainability, the factors pushing and pulling for local voluntary relocation migration and their impact on local social sustainability in socio-economic terms should be left for later follow-up works.

3.1. Human Mobility and Sociolinguistic Diversity

The sociolinguistic diversity of the Manggelewa community is inseparable from its beginning as a Dutch colonial park, which comprised a river covered with a roof. Subsequently, the area is referred to in the local narrative as Soriutu [Sori ‘river’ Utu ‘roof’, Roofed River]. In November 1945, the area was a battleground between Indonesian freedom fighters and Dutch colonial soldiers, following the declaration of Indonesia’s independence and the declaration of support for Bima and Dompu and the subsequent integration into the Republic of Indonesia by the then King of Bima and Dompu, Muhammad Salahuddin. The Dutch colonial power in Sumbawa recruited military support from Lombok and Bali and sent it to subdue the kingdom. Realizing this, the king recruited soldiers from across Bima and Dompu and ambushed the enemies by hiding under a tamarind tree in the middle of the Soriutu plain. The area is presently occupied by a hamlet known as Manggelewa [Mangge ‘tamarind’ Lewa ‘war’, Tamarind War]. After the 1998 Reformation, the rural community called Manggelewa became a much larger area known as the district of Manggelewa. Thus, unlike the sociolinguistic diversity reported in most studies, the sociolinguistic diversity, as well as the social sustainability in this article, is still in the process of construction, and its explication in this article is expected to spark interest for more detailed and in-depth studies with data collection and instruments that can enable inferential statistics and hypothesis testing.

The sociolinguistic diversity of the Manggelewa community is not only represented in what Vertovec [5] refers to as superdiversity through historical development, but also through the immigration of people from several areas, with numerous languages, religions, and nationalities. Traditionally, Manggelewa is a combination of Soriutu with other small villages, such as Teka Sire, Banggo, Soriutu, and Lanci. In the 1960s, the government of Dompu moved some of its people to Tanju and Lanci. In the 1970s, the neighboring government of Bima also transported its people to Lanci 1. In the 1980s, the provincial and national government embarked on massive transmigration programs, sending people from the islands of Lombok, Bali, and Java to the area. Simultaneously, the Dompu government relocated its people from the city of Dompu to Lanci 2. At the same time, more transmigrants from Lombok were also moved to Lanci 3 and 4; to SPT 1, 2, and 3; and to Nusa 1, 2 and 3. These areas are currently known, respectively, as Lanci Jaya, Nusa Damai, and Suka Jaya. Additionally, the national government relocated people from the island of Bali to transmigrant locations in Anamina, Nanga Tumpu, Doromelo, and Kampasi Meci. The areas of domicile for these government-transported people were geographically separated and not yet connected with roads and communication lines. Thus, such geographical separation and a lack of communicative contact established in the beginning what Piller [45] described as segregation rather than diversity. The ethnic composition of the Manggelewa community is currently 63% Bima, 29% Sasak, 5% Samawa, 2% Balinese, and 1% others (see Figure 3).

Note, however, that the characteristics of the community are more complex than the demographic figures can illustrate. Though geographically segregated, the area is easily interconnected through the development of better roads, affordable transport, and mobile communication that help to maintain cooperative relationships, whilst creating social homogeneity [45]. Kwangko, on the border of Dompu and Sumbawa, is dominated by the Samawa ethnic group (60%). Locally, this group is called Orang Aida [Indonesian: orang ’person’ ‘aida’ ‘oh’, the Aida Person] or Orang Dengan [Samawa: orang ‘person’ dengan ‘fellow’, the Dengan People]. With regard to Lanci Jaya, Nusa Jaya, and Suka Damai, the Sasaks are the dominant ethnic group (80%), although their number is less than 30% of the population of Manggelewa. Internally, they are referred to as Orang Batur or Orang Semeton [Sasak: batur ‘fellow’ semeton ‘sibling’, the Batur People]. Similarly, though fewer in number (less than 3% of the total population), the Balinese ethnic group occupy a separate settlement in Depa [Bima: scattered] in Anamina; Mekarsari [Indonesia: mekar ‘blosom’ sari ‘flower’ Blossomed Flower] in Nanga Tumpu; Mada Jumba [Bima: mada ‘spring’ jumba ‘coat’ Coat-like Spring] in Banggo; and Puncak Sari [Indonesia: puncak ‘top’ sari ‘flower’ Flowery Hilltop] in Doromelo. Within the area, they are known as Orang Beli [Bali: beli ‘brother’, the Beli People]. In other communities, it is the Bima ethnic group who constitute most of the population (90%). Nevertheless, the notion of ‘Bima’ as a term for ethnicity and language is bitterly contested by the Dompu people who perceive ‘Dompu’ to be a label for ethnicity and language. There is, however, no significant difference between the Bima variety spoken by both groups. In this article, ‘Bima’ [Indonesian: Bima] or ‘Mbojo’ [Bima: Bima], is the commonly accepted name for the ethnicity and language used to cover what is locally termed ‘Dompu’ [Indonesian: Dompu] or ‘Dompu’/’dompu/ [Bima: Dompu]. Note that /‘/ before a consonant is meant to be a symbol of an implosive sound). Domestically, they are called Orang Lenga [Bima: lenga ‘fellow’ the Lenga People] or Orang Kalembo Ade [Bima: kalembo ade ‘be patient’ the Kalembo Ade People].

The Samawa, Sasak, and Balinese might be the minority in Manggelewa, but they are the majority in their respective settlements. The ethnic labels above may possibly represent what Al Zidjaly [36] attributed to the languages in society and that these circumstances highlight the correct use of the ethnic languages in their linguistic landscape. Following the ideas established by de Swaan [46], we can recognize that Bahasa Campuran [Indonesian: mixed language] is the supervernacular [17] used for the oral and written interethnic communication together with the ethnic languages which are employed peripherally in the oral intra-ethnic interaction. The Indonesian language, Bahasa, is used as the super-central language in the oral and written, as well as the formal and informal, interethnic interactions. With a limited number of tourists, English is almost never used. In Kwangko, the Samawa language is prevalent among the people of Samawa, whereas Bima is used among the Bima people. Being competent in both languages, the Kwangko people can interact in both languages, but the Samawa language is preferred, particularly in formal settings, such as in religious sermons, speeches, and meetings. In Nanga Tumpu, the same bilingual situation is observed, although the Bima language is preferred for formal and informal interactions. In Balinese areas, such as Mekarsari, Balinese is employed. In Banggo, the Bima language is the norm, but among the Balinese in Mada Jumba, the Balinese language is used. In Anamina and in Doromelo, the Bima language is dominant, but among the Balinese transmigrants in Depa and Puncak Sari, Balinese is the principal language of interaction. In Teka Sire, Soriutu, Tanju, and Kampasi Meci, Bima is spoken, while in Lanci Jaya, Nusa Jaya, and Suka Damai, Sasak is common, except in the clusters of Bima and Dompu transmigrants where Bima is the language of communication. To a great extent, this indicates the association between the languages and places, as highlighted in the depiction given by Piller [45] in relation to the socially segregated and geographically territorial nature of language use in a superdiverse society. However, for interethnic and formal communication the national language, Bahasa Indonesia, is the norm and people have learned by means of experience to make use of the practical expressions found in each ethnic language and to practice them in interethnic communication as a way of forming interethnic solidarity. Overall, the speakers of the languages are as follows: 63% Bima, 30% Sasak, 5% Samawa, and 2% Balinese and less than 1% speak other languages (see Figure 4).

Sociolinguistic diversity in the Manggelewa community can also be observed in the practices of multiple religions. The Bima, Sasak, and Samawa people are all Muslims. They constitute 98% of the population, and 114 mosques are established in the communities. While there are no religious restrictions as regards praying in the mosques, the Sasak Muslims prefer the NU or NW mosques and typically refrain from using the Muhammadiyah and NW Diniyah Islamiah (NWDI) mosques, which they assume to be inappropriate. Hence, division is created within the assumed religion-based solidarity. The Balinese practice Hinduism and constitute 2% of the population. Six prayer houses are found in their community. Note, however, that the Balinese places of worship, ‘pura’, belong to a social network known as ‘Banjar’. Only members of the Banjar can be involved in their places of worship, adding new complexities to the assumed religion- and ethnicity-based solidarity among the Balinese. The other religions are insignificant in number, and their prayer houses cannot be found in the area.

The relationship is not, however, as straightforward as it appears. Being Muslims, the Bima, Sasak, and Samawa ethnic groups share religious solidarity (see Figure 5). Unlike the Bima and Samawa people, who are mostly affiliated with the Muhammadiyah movement [Arabic: Followers of Muhammad SAW], the second largest Muslim group in Indonesia but the largest (more than 60%) in Manggelewa, the Sasak speakers are associated with Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) [Arabic: Revival of Islamic Scholars], the largest group of Muslims in Indonesia, or Nahdlatul Wathan (NW) [Arabic: Revival of the Country], the largest group of Muslims in Lombok. Consequently, new dimensions are added to the local sociolinguistic diversity. Organizational disputes within the latter in its headquarters in Lombok have led to the emergence of NWDI [Arabic: Islamic Education of Country Revival], with disputes spreading to the Sasak sections of the community in, for instance, Suka Damai, Lanci Jaya, and Nusa Jaya. Relations with Anjani’s Nahdlatul Wathan have prompted almost 90% of the Sasak people in Nusa Jaya to associate themselves with the NW type of Islamic practice and festivals. Similarly, association with Pancor’s NWDI has triggered 80% of the Sasak people in Lanci Jaya and 65% in Suka Damai to link up with the NWDI. With the establishment of local branches and the differences in religious practices, the organizational unease has further enhanced local multi-complexities. Claiming ownership of local schools and other social institutions, both groups have also extended the socio-cultural complexity to post-migration generations.

The sociolinguistic diversity of the Manggelewa community has also been strengthened via the local and transnational mobility of the people. The bus station in Teka Sire brings people daily to and from various parts of Bima, Dompu, and Sumbawa, while the night bus in Soriutu transports people to and from Lombok, Bali, and Java. Although it is problematic to establish data on the exact number of local and trans-island commuters, our observations of the bus station and the streets, in addition to the night bus agencies, suggest that more than a hundred passengers and bikers commute locally, and around three to five trans-island passengers travel in and out of the community on a daily basis. These new roles performed by these particular sections of the community have directly increased the economic significance of the areas. Thus, they have been transferred from small remote hamlets to the emerging interconnected city of Soriutu, the capital town of the Manggelewa district of Dompu. The transnational movement brings more and more people to the community, opening up new business opportunities. As Martiniello [47] and Vertovec [5] mentioned, the association with home countries, languages, and cultures can maintain the sociolinguistic diversity of a particular community. As a result, ‘[trans]migrant transnationalism’ is a common practice linking the migrants in the migrant countries with people and organizations in the homelands and elsewhere in a diaspora and enabling people to have dual or bi-focal transnational lives [48].

Finally, sociolinguistic diversity in the locality can be witnessed in the socio-economic conditions as well as in the associated social inequality. Although the communities have no issues with power, influence, and migration status, the host and the migrants in the communities are constantly fighting for social equality. As Blackledge and Creese [49] argued, social inequality might deal with the trajectories of life, but it is deeply engrained in relation to access to economic income. With the local definition of poverty classified as earnings of less than IDR four hundred thousand to one million (or USD 30–70; USD 1 = IDR 15,000) per family member per month, the village councils were able to identify families living on average or above the poverty line (see Figure 6).

The socio-economic conditions vary: the majority of the people living around the city of Soriutu (from Banggo to Tanju) obtain an above-average income, while the people living further away from the city are on the poverty line. This condition deals with inequality with regard to access to irrigation water provided by various water reservoirs near the area. For instance, the reservoirs near Doromelo (Sanggu Pasante Reservoir), in Teka Sire (Tonda Reservoir), in Tanju (Tanju Reservoir), and in Nowa (Rababaka Reservoir) could not adequately reach farming areas in Kampasi Meci, let alone Nanga Tumpu and Kwangko.

Our data show that 409 people have decided to relocate to Manggelewa since 2009, including 68 relocation migrants within the local community. In order to examine the pushing and pulling factors of this local voluntary relocation migration to Manggelewa (particularly Soriutu and Doromelo), we distributed the questionnaire in Appendix A, asking 70 migrants to select, based on a ranking from 1 to 12, the reasons for leaving the previous transmigration units, as listed in the questionnaire. Ranking their choices, we gave the highest scoring point (12 points) to the first choice and the lowest scoring point (1 point) for the last choice in the list. We also distributed the questionnaire in Appendix B to the same respondents, asking them to rank from 1 to 19 the possible reasons for selecting Manggelewa as the target of relocation migration. Dividing them with the highest possible scores in each list (70 respondents × 12 points = 840 in push factors, and 70 respondents × 19 points = 1330 in pull factors), we identified an index of the importance of the pushing and pulling dimensions to the decision to relocate to Manggelewa. With such a procedure, we identified a point for each dimension and, dividing this point with the total sum of all the points, we identified the percentage. The ten best reasons of the investigations are presented in

Table 2. Pull and push factors for relocating to Manggelewa.

No	Push Factors	Points	%		Pull Factors	Points	%
1	Economic Failure	680	12.45	91.56	Interethnic Solidarity	1047	7.87	66.81
2	Farming Failure	652	11.94		Business Opportunities	928	6.98
3	Trading Failure	652	11.94		Better Farming	925	6.95
4	Farming Skill	489	8.96		Product Sale	922	6.93
5	Religion Conflict	483	8.85		Easy Transport	903	6.79
6	Ethnic Conflict	477	8.74		Religion Solidarity	886	6.66
7	Education Problem	448	8.21		Life Quality	820	6.17
8	Health Services	409	7.49		Cheap Labor	803	6.04
9	Family Problem	372	6.81		Good Education	779	5.86
10	Transportation Problem	337	6.17		Good Health	779	5.86
11	Others (2 factors)	461	8.44		Others (9 factors)	4508	33.89
	Total	5460	100		Total	13,300	100

.

As shown in Table 2, the decision to relocate to Manggelewa in general and to Soriutu and to Doromelo in particular was pushed and pulled by a number of factors. In general, the relocation was pushed by economic failures in previous transmigration units (12.45%), failure in farming industries (11.94%), failure in agricultural trading (11.94%), and failure in agriculture due to a lack of farming skills (8.96%), and these dimensions of economic failures contribute to around 45% of the relocation decision. Relocation was also associated with conflict with believers of other religions (8.85%) and ethnic groups (8.74%), contributing to around 18% of the decision. Next, the decision to leave was hard-pressed by poor access to better services in education (8.21%), health (7.49%), family (6.81%), and transportation, and these access dimensions contributed to almost 30% of the decision. There were also problems with lands which were not fertile enough or lacked irrigation for sustainable agriculture (4.54%); there was also the factor of being provoked by relocating friends (3.9%), and the contribution of these dimensions was minor, at around 8%. Though relocation was economically driven, the presence of other reasons indicates multi-complexity in internal migration motivation.

Table 2 also shows that relocation as internal migration to Manggelewa was motivated by better opportunities, better social life, and better access to infrastructures. The study reveals that Manggelewa has been assumed to offer better business opportunities (7%), better farming lands (7%), better sales of products (7%), and easier product transportation (7%), and altogether, these dimensions contribute around 34% to the location selection. Relocation was also affected by good quality of life in Manggelewa as it is assumed to offer more harmonious interethnic (8%) and inter-religion relations (7%), as well as better quality of social life (6%), and these life quality dimensions contribute around 21% to the decision to move to Manggelewa. Next, access to good education for children (6%) and health services (6%) contribute around 12% to the choice of Manggelewa as the target of residential migration. Finally, individual reasons exist, and they contribute to around 34% of the choice, but the reasons are not patterned according to social dimensions. Some individuals relocate for security reasons (5%) and for better agricultural lands for rent (5%) and due to marriage (5%), retirement (4%), family reunion (4%), obtaining new jobs (4%), and working with friends (4%) and for joining school-aged children (3%) and for new positions in government offices (2%). These findings imply that although the choice of relocating to Manggelewa was mainly to do with being intrigued by the promise of a better life, the close percentage and contribution above represents the multi-complexity of the expectations, which in essence exemplify the socio-cultural diversity of the migrants and their communities.

Thus, like the urban cosmopolitan cities, the rural transmigrant areas of Manggelewa are indeed superdiverse, strongly supporting the claim that “[super] diversity is a feature of all human societies”, resulting from their socio-political history [45]. Having established the sociolinguistic diversity of the locality, we can now examine how those dimensions are explained in languages and how these language practices are constituted by and for social sustainability among people of multi-complex social backgrounds, as seen through the lens of language use and other symbolic practices.

3.2. Sociolinguistic Diversity and Social Sustainability

The study has reframed social sustainability at the level of individual relations, social interactions, and social networks, escaping the trap of the predominantly economic definition of it by looking at language and language use as human resources for creating and maintaining sustainable social inclusion, cohesion, and coherence. With language and language use in communicative interactions, people can build mutual trust and sustain desirable social relationships. Though diverse, social sustainability in Manggelewa communities can be maintained, at least, through a shared sense of a common identity, mutual awareness of sociolinguistic diversity, and communal positive attitudes towards ethnic labels.

The communities of Manggelewa communally see themselves as members a newly created multilingual and multicultural society called Orang Manggelewa [the Manggelewa People]. They describe their community as a miniature Indonesia, a symbol of what Michele Gu et al. [51] termed ‘the flexible multiculturalism of geographical space’. This, at least to the eyes of one of its residents, is because the inhabitants come from across Indonesia.

The Manggelewa community is a mini-Indonesia. The people are not only from Dompu or Bima, they are also from Sumbawa, Lombok, and Bali, as well as Java. They are even from Sumatra, Batak and Aceh, Borneo, and Celebes. All gather in a small area here at Cabang Soriutu [the Soriutu Junction]. This area was previously known as Cabang Banggo [Banggo Junction], that is, a junction leading to a village called Banggo, west of the junction, as the end of the road. Later development of a road for land transportation to the city of Sumbawa and to other areas in Lombok, Bali, and Java islands has popularized Soriutu as the name (Adri Matarima, aged 28).

Though communally labeled as such, the people of Manggelewa are aware of the linguistic and ethnic differences among them. This awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity has also been applied in order to label people. The labels are based on prominent linguistic behaviors or forms, allowing us to comprehend what Al Zidjaly [36] recognized as society in language. The prominent linguistic behavior of the people of Sumbawa who were discovered to express surprise or sympathy with the ‘aida’ [Samawa: Oh My God], is labelled Orang Aida [Bahasa Indonesia: the Aida People], specifically the people of Aida. The Bima or Dompu people who were determined to frequently use kalembo ade [Bima: be patient] have been locally identified as Orang Kalembo Ade [Bahasa Indonesia: the Kalembo Ade People]. Other ethnic groups do not have labels based on prominent language behaviors but, rather, labels based on the words for ‘friends’ or ‘fellows’. The Aida people are also referred to as Orang Dengan [Bahasa Indonesia: The Dengan People], for the reason that ‘dengan’ is a word and a symbol of friendship in the Samawa language. The Kalembo Ade people were more frequently called Orang Lenga [Bahasa Indonesia: The Lenga People], and lenga [Bima: friend] is used to refer to an acquaintance. The Sasak people are called Orang Batur [Bahasa Indonesia: The Batur People], and batur [Sasak: friend] is also used for an acquaintance in the Sasak language. Finally, the people who are of Balinese extraction are known as Orang Beli [Bahasa Indonesia: The Beli People] and beli [Balinese: male big brother]. These chronotopic identities, which follow the ideas developed by Blommaert and de Fina [52], are co-constructed in complex interactive negotiations across contexts replacing traditionally dichotomic local, national, and global identities, such as ethnicity, nationality, and gender. These forms are used positively by people to greet each other on the streets or in neighborhood meetings. Unlike the terms applied for cultural culinary items, which are received as insulting, the use of these words of friendship is positively welcomed, and they socially sustain the communal identity as that of being co-members of the Manggelewa communities. The use of such forms is demonstrated in the following extract.

Extract 1: Buy My Cakes (C5: 87–95)

Yuningsih (aged 50, Bima), a cake seller, was driving a motorcycle around the town selling cakes to her neighbors. She arrived at a Kwangko street gazebo where her friends Muliani (aged 50, Samawa), Iluh (aged 45, Balinese), and Dianti (aged 48, Sasak) were spending time with their children.

(1) Yuningsih	:	Ayo	Beli	Jajan	Bu	Dul	dengan-ku a
		Come on	Buy	Cakes	Mrs	PN	Friend-POSS-1SG
		Come on, buy some cakes, Mrs Dul, my friend.
(2) Muliani	:	Aida	Nyaman	Tepung	Ne a
		Oh God	Delicious	Cakes	These
		Oh my God, how delicious these cakes are.
(3) Yuningsih	:	Iya	Dong	Siapa	Dulu	Yang	buat.
		Yes	Indeed	Who	Ago	REL	Make
		Yes of course, don’t you know who made it?
(4)		Aku	Buat	Pake	Gula	Asli	De	na e a
		1SG	Make	Use	Sugar	Pure	DET	LOC: proximal
		I made these cakes with pure sugar
(5) Iluh	:	Bikin	Sendiri	Bu	Edo
		Make	Self	Mrs	PN
		Did you make them yourself, Mrs. Edo?
(6) Yuningsih	:	Ayo	Bu	Baiq	“Dipilih	dipilih	Batur’ b
		Come on	Mrs	PN	PRE-select		Friend
		Come on Mrs Baiq Dianti. “Select, select, my friend”
(7)		Iya	Aku	Buat	Sendiri	Ina	Lu c
		Yes	1SG	Make	Sefl	Mother	PN
		Yes, I made them myself, Mrs. Luh
(8) Dianti	:	Kalembo	Ade	Lenga	E c
		PRE-large	Heart	Friend	EXC
		Be patient, my friend
		Ana c	Lagi	Narak	Kepeng	Ne b
		1SG	Again	NEG	Money	LOC: proximal
		I do not have money at the moment.
a Samawa, b Sasak, c Bima

Extract 1 illustrates how the supervernacular comprises several languages and ethnic forms to represent the ethnic identities of the community members. In line 1, Yuningsih presented the cakes for sale to her friends who sat in the gazebo. She offered them to Muliani, the wife of Dul, in the Indonesian language, the language used for interethnic communication. She made the offer in Samawa whilst increasing her intonation and by way of using the Sawawa language as a form of address ‘dengan-ku’ (my friend) to develop solidarity with the addressee. In line 2, Muliani, a regular costumer, teased her friend by praising the cakes, while at the same time selecting the ones that she wanted to purchase. In line 3, Yuningsih, the seller, responded to the praise and, in line 4, she emphasized the special quality of ‘the cakes’ as they were made with real and not artificial sugar. In line 5, Iluh, a Balinese mother, questioned whether the cakes were in fact self-made, and she demonstrated her familiarity with the seller by employing a public name that refers to solidarity, Bu Edo, the wife of Edo. The latter, however, was not listening to her, and instead, as can be seen in line 6, she talked to Baiq Dianti, a Sasak noble woman, as indicated by her name ‘Baiq’, who is also a friend of hers, as she called her friend, batur [Sasak: friend]. In line 7, she answered Iluh’s question. However, she again referred to her using public solidarity as a form of address, inaq luh [Balinese: Madame Iluh], by using Bima as a form of communication and deleting consonant endings. In line 8, Dianti, a Sasak, responded to Yuningsih’s offer in the Bima language, informing her that she was not buying. Subsequently, using the Sasak language, she explained to ‘her friend’ (Bima: lenga) that she did not have any money with her at that moment.

The frequent use of such forms to reference particular ethnic backgrounds has prompted them to be applied as new linguistic labels for ethnic identities in the locality, rather than the traditional, national ethnicity labels: Orang Bima [Bahasa Indonesia: a Bima person], Orang Sumbawa [Bahasa Indonesia: Samawa people], Orang Sasak [Bahasa Indonesia: Sasak people], and Orang Bali [Bahasa Indonesia: the Balinese people]. The new emergent linguistic identities above, which are also employed among male members of the community, are indicators of an emergent solidarity among the members of the community [36]. These ethnolinguistic labels are more important than other identifies such as religious denominations which are relevant only in socio-religious affiliations and not in religious practices, and consequently, the differences do not impede social cohesion.

Finally, the social sustainability of Manggelewa communities can be seen in the positive attitudes of its members towards sociolinguistic diversity, and these attitudes enable them to sustain a better social life. With the sustainability questionnaire (Appendix B) distributed to the 70 respondents above, we examined how the people viewed the dimensions essential for the social sustainability of their communities, and these perceptions are presented in Figure 7.

Figure 7 reveals the dimensions of social sustainability as both positively and negatively viewed by the 70 community members sampled for the questionnaire in Appendix B. It shows that the majority of these dimensions are agreed upon and have been assumed to be essential for social sustainability in Manggelewa communities: economic perspectives (89%), seasonal Tambora festivals (87%), interethnic tolerance (84%), business opportunities (77%), inter-religion tolerance (77%), ethno-cultural festivals (75%), socio-economic conditions (76%), social interactions (74%), relative interethnic peace (74%), having communal ethnic names (73%), migration experiences (71%), multi-ethnicity and multi-culture (70%), health services (70%), communal identity (66%), local language (63%), and ethnic agricultural skills (57%). Four dimensions were negatively responded to: common historical background (10%), local agricultural products (10%), transportation (13%), and current quality of health services (23%). In further analyses, however, not all of these dimensions contribute significantly to social sustainability. With chi-square, we found that the difference was significant (p < 0.01) only for the following dimensions: multi-ethnicity, common identity, common language, and ethno-cultural agricultural skills. The study found that the majority of the people perceive multi-ethnicity but see having a common identity as the Manggelewa community, a common language called Bahasa Campuran [mixed language], and the sharing of agricultural skills brought from the agricultural practices of each ethnic group as essential resources for socially sustaining the communities’ future. Other dimensions are presumed to be important for social sustainability but only in a one-tailed test (p < 0.05): migration experiences, current practice of ethnic identification, ethno-cultural festivals, promised quality of health services, current business opportunities, socio-economic conditions, social interactions, and the relative peace in interethnic relations, at least in the last ten years. Other dimensions are theoretically assumed to be beneficial for social sustainability, but our analysis proved that these dimensions are statistically not significant: common historical background, specification of agricultural produces, current quality of public and product transportation, current quality of health services, and communal tolerance in ethnic and religious differences. These dimensions, as well as others, need to be carefully examined further with more detailed theoretical and analytical perspectives. Similarly, the real impacts of these dimensions on the socio-economic sustainability of the Manggelewa communities require more follow-up studies, where the hypotheses might be statistically tested for more valid, reliable, and generalizable results.

4. Discussion

In a substantial number of studies, human mobility is primarily described as the geographical displacement of people and resources from the Global South to the Global North for economic or security reasons. However, the current study has proven that mobility as the movement of people and resources cannot be confined to cross-border movement alone. It also needs to cover within-border displacement too. In fact, as Merriman [18] and Juffermans et al. [19] argued, mobility can also be discussed in terms of linguistic mobility in digital practices. Comprehensive or not, the mobility explicated in the current study has fulfilled what Merriman [18] described as the characteristics of mobility.

Similar to findings in studies observing European cities, those in this study support the argument that the mobility of people, goods, and information results from unavoidable socio-historical and political situations [53]. Each of the geographical displacements above has been driven by the economic insecurity people are experiencing in their home islands. The decision to transmigrate to Sumbawa Island, as in the case of other types of migration, is not at all related to free choice, and the choice of the country of destination is not purposefully and rationally selected as a result of personal preference [54]. In the same vein as the transnational urban movement [7], rural mobility as revealed in the findings above is prompted by economic failures due to lack of farming and trading skills, by social conflicts, or by problems in family education, health care, and transport, but it is also motivated by the promise of better farming, trading, transport, education, labor, and health services. Nonetheless, the promises are often false [55,56], and the migrants fail to obtain what they expect [56,57], and they have to relocate other areas [13]. This also transpires with regard to the local mobility, where Balinese transmigrants in the part of the island known as Sumbawa had to be moved to Manggelewa after conflict with the host community. Similarly, transmigrants in the neighboring areas voluntarily relocated to and began trading in the town of Soriutu after encountering frequent failures in the farming industry. In urban societies, geographical mobility is also influenced by marriage, family reunion, work, business, and retirement [58,59]. Moreover, numerous local people from Dompu, Kempo, and Bima have also relocated to the Manggelewa community for either of those reasons. These migrations as well as others have led to the contemporary sociolinguistic diversity of the Manggelewa communities.

The study has also shown that human mobility, external or internal, is pushed by an economically insecure life in the places of origin and is pulled by promises of a better life in the target places. Like global migration, mobility is rational and part of looking for a better life. The study has proven that the same is true for local transmigrants. As Geist and McManus [14] demonstrated, global mobility is considered to be based on an improvement in family status post-migration. The same is true of the local transmigrants that we interviewed: the decisions made regarding residential mobility and local migration are connected with the hope of increasing employment and business opportunities following a move. The lure of economic rewards and improvements in status and financial earnings, which are reminiscent of global mobility, have been a significant driving force with regard to the local mobility [60,61]. As regards the local mobility, economic drivers have been the primary reason for the transmigrants leaving their home countries in Java, Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa, Dompu, and Bima for their second homes in government-sponsored agricultural locations in Tambora, Kempo, Sanggar, and Kilo. However, the increase in economic opportunities in Manggelewa has prompted people to voluntarily migrate to run businesses in Manggelewa. Although facing what Geist and McManus [14] call income instability after two years of migration, local transmigrants have been strongly encouraged by the hope of economic success in the new location.

The study has also shown, in line with [62], that urban mobility is purposefully performed for better social capital. Migrants move to metropolitan cities to gain better social roles and responsibilities. In urban migration, individual roles in a particular society might change over time, and when not maintained, the roles might decrease, impacting the individual’s social capital, which is also reduced. Social capital should also be provided along with the provision of reliable information to fellow countrymen. Failure to do so will also reduce the individual’s social capital. Individuals might also lose their social capital for failing to follow cultural norms, but others, on the contrary, might gain social capital as a result of fulfilling the norms. Those people who fail to adhere to the local norms might have to move out of an area, although they can return with new roles, such as a preacher or as a rich man and regain their social capital. Similarly, in rural mobility, transmigrants with knowledge of business and networks from neighboring transmigration areas have been moving to Manggelewa since the beginning of the 21st century, changing it from an arid agricultural field to an emerging city where new social capital is awaiting its inhabitants.

The study has also shown that human mobility in urban and rural areas is equally functional. In urban societies, mobility is perceived as a functional response to changes in the trajectories of both life cycles and the course of life. In rural communities, mobility is also a functional cycle of human life from the completion of education, entry into the labor market, marriage, the formation of a nuclear household, parenthood, as well as child-rearing, to retirement, which are also common in urban mobility (see [58,59]). In urban mobility, functional mobility is common among youth under 30 [3], and in the rural mobility above, the onset age of the transmigrants is roughly 25. In urban mobility, timing and sequencing in migration are affected by age, economic circumstances, and the status of parents and partners [63]. However, with respect to rural geographical mobility, timing and sequencing have frequently been depicted as instruments to increase social mobility [6,64] and also as the means through which migrants gradually move up the social ladder and improve their living conditions. In Manggelewa, functional migration for marriage or economic gain is common among second-generation migrants who primarily see business, not agriculture, as an instrument for better economic incentives. Geist and McManus [14] have revealed that a better quality of life, such as with better housing, neighborhoods, the benefits of commuting, or health services, is the dominant motivating factor for local and long-distance moves. For these reasons, married couples with or without children are determined to be to the prevailing movers.

The study has also established that in urban and rural human mobility, sharing identities with the host community is one of the keys to the migrants’ success. Thus, the non-sharing of common identities is problematic as it threatens the integrity of the host communities. As Stock and Duhamel [53] suggested, the massive movement of people for leisure might not disrupt the good relationships with the host-migrants, although the vast overnight movement of people to transmigrant settlements, such as Manggelewa, will create disputes between people with regard to space. This overnight human mobility might define the traditional ownership of lands, and without proper care and intensive interaction, this might generate conflict between the migrant and host communities. Unlike human mobility for work and holidays, the overnight arrival of land-seeking transmigrants might deconstruct the socio-cultural structures of the host communities who might not have prepared themselves in being able to deal with the new sociolinguistic diversity, in addition to the already multi-complex and superdiverse socio-cultural structures of the host communities. In the Manggelewa community, land ownership, grazing rights, water use, and animal farming systems have been the main sources of interethnic dispute as each ethnic group has its own methods.

The study has also exposed that, like urban mobility, the rural human mobility of people and resources creates diversity within the already diverse host communities. Vertovec [5] attributes this phenomenon to sociolinguistic diversity and, specifically, a level of complication exceeding any complexity that the host community has attained throughout its historical development. In urban society, this multi-complexity, at least in the last decade, results from the interactions between the social variables and the sub-variables carried by an increasing number of new migrants who are small in number and scattered in size, multiple and transnationally connected with origin, differentiated in socio-economic status, and stratified with respect to legal status. The same is also true with regard to the rural human mobility under study. As well as the net inflow of job-seeking transmigrants, rural sociolinguistic diversity, as witnessed in urban human mobility, is also associated with these factors: migrants from numerous countries; the use of a number of languages; several religions; multiple transmigration channels, such as workers, spouses, family members, asylum-seekers, refugees and different statuses, such as irregular, illegal, or undocumented migrants or new citizens; gender; age; income; occupational types; space/place of movement, such as migrating in or settling outside of the host community; and transnationalism, such as maintaining contact with the home country and culture. Martiniello [47] and Vertovec [5] asserted that the following urban migrant factors are essential for the sociolinguistic diversity of a rural host community: the country of origin, specific ethnicity, language, religion, tradition, regional and local identities, cultural values and practices, migration channel, legal status, human capital, and transnational connection with the home culture. These particular factors have been presented in the findings above.

The study has also discovered that the various dimensions of sociolinguistic diversity above have been directed towards the socially sustainable nature of the community. Blackledge and Creese [65] have associated these with emergence or current social conditions. Sociolinguistic diversity represents an on-going struggle against social inequality, and it has been selected as a cover term for documented and undocumented, as well as forced or voluntary, migrants, minority working class ethnic groups, and families, although diversity involves other social dimensions such as ethnicity, race, education, income, lived values, or belief systems. Sociolinguistic diversity is a substitute for familiar concepts, such as multilingualism and multiculturalism, which lack the power to explain the multi-complexity of social dimensions in urban societies [66] and extremely rapid demographic changes in contemporary urban societies [5] coming into contact or proximity owing to migration, invasion, colonization, slavery, religious missions, persecution, trade, conflict, famine, drought, war, urbanization, economic aspiration, family reunion, global commerce, and technological progress. These changes also occur in rural areas, producing increased complexities [65] pertaining to traditional concepts such as age, gender, ethnicity, race, nationality, host versus immigrant communities, in addition to majority versus minority cultures, socio-economic statuses [67], and neoliberal concepts, such as inequality, power, solidarity, and others. Hence, they need to be located, adapted, and applied to different global contexts and temporal scales so that sociolinguistic diversity can be exploited to improve people’s lives. Sociolinguistic diversity similarly describes the combinations and the interactions in urban and rural communities in terms of demographic composition, trajectories, and public services, in addition to the linguistic repertoires and lived experiences [68]. Furthermore, sociolinguistic diversity has been delineated from the histories of migration and how they make up the social trajectories of a community [69], enabling researchers to understand what constitutes its sociolinguistic diversity [70].

The study has also uncovered the fact that the emergent social condition is also a rural phenomenon. All dimensions might be assumed by local transmigrants as necessary for socially sustainable life in the new places of migrations, but only four dimensions are proven to be highly significant, while the others are partially significant or not significant at all. Changing social conditions in urban societies can be associated with the use of languages beyond normative assumptions about language and social categories. In a rural society such as that of the Manggelewa community, the supervernacular language and the social categorizations are redefined as the social standings of self and others, as the developing positions produced and reproduced throughout the histories of social interactions between individuals and societies at the micro- and macro-levels. In relation to urban societies, Blackledge and Creese [65] claim that linguistic practices and social categories are “socio-political emergences”, created through social interactions, and that the interactions are constructed by historical and contemporary socio-political processes. In a rural community such as that of Manggelewa, the linguistically defined ethnic categories within the super-category of the ethnically mixed people of the Manggelewa community are also produced and reproduced within linguistic practices. As Jaffe [71] argued, as regards the transmigrant context, sociolinguistic diversity needs to be seen as an emergent quality of social and communicative practices, where engagement and interaction are oriented towards the local ideologies of communication and difference. People in urban or rural encounters are equally in the process of taking a stance in a superdiverse context with a variety of places [71], and the stance emerges from less enduring categories and mediates the construction of more enduring ones [72]. These processes are emergent and never-ending, and maintaining social sustainability in contexts where ethnic, religious, and class conflicts are common is also a limitless endeavor.

5. Conclusions

The article has detailed how Manggelewa has evolved from a small hamlet into an emergent superdiverse community within the cosmopolitan city of Soriutu. Dominated by the Bima, the region has now become multilingual and multicultural with a continuous incoming migration of inter-island transmigrants from Java, Bali, and Lombok and inland transmigrants from Bima and Dompu, as well as voluntarily economic migrants from transmigration areas surrounding the communities. Explaining the history of migration, ethnicity, languages, religions, and socio-economic conditions, the study has provided evidence that the human mobility and sociolinguistic diversity in rural transmigrant communities such as that of Manggelewa is as complex as that observed in urban societies. Thus, rather than being an urban phenomenon, human mobility and sociolinguistic diversity are the norms in contemporary modern societies.

The article has also illustrated that sociolinguistic diversity has added to the social sustainability of the Manggelewa communities. Redirecting the notion of social sustainability to symbolic social relations, the article has expounded four key factors for interethnic social sustainability, eight dimensions less determinant to symbolic social sustainability, and five aspects assumed to be essential for social sustainability but proven to be statistically insignificant. More detailed studies on the effects of these factors on social sustainability in the socio-economic sense need to be further examined, where the hypotheses might be statistically tested. The applicability of this generalization, however, needs to be attested in other contexts with a more varied nature of transmigrant respondents.

While the study has clarified the human mobility, sociolinguistic diversity, and social sustainability in rural communities, it is not yet established how transmigrants in the superdiverse community symbolically construct and negotiate the opposing socio-cultural stances and what roles a common supervernacular language such as the ‘Manggelewa language’ actually play in bridging the superdiversity gap. This might be a concern of another study.