Annisa Dina Amalia, Monika Winarnita and Charlotte Setijadi – In March 2026, we wrote an article on this site about whether Indonesia would ever fully embrace its 'cultural citizens' worldwide.
At the time, the Global Citizenship of Indonesia (GCI) scheme, a visa-based stand-in for dual nationality, had drawn only a handful of applicants since its January 2026 launch.
We described how diasporic Indonesians were left wondering whether the state saw them as anything more than a source of remittances and goodwill.
Dual citizenship for a select few
Five months on, the government has made a surprising move. It is now proposing to revise Law 12 of 2006 to permit limited dual citizenship.
Unlike GCI, this would grant actual dual nationality. Nevertheless, it would be limited to 'selected individuals whose expertise is considered important to national development,' described as 'researchers, nuclear scientists, medical specialists, or athletes nominated by ministries or state agencies'.
In the same period, the government also raised the fee to renounce Indonesian citizenship fivefold, from Rp1 million (US$55.3) to Rp5 million, under Government Regulation 30 of 2026, which took effect on 1 August.
These new policies seem to be a response to data from Indonesia's Ministry of Law showing that nearly 8,000 Indonesians have renounced their citizenship over the past five years. This trend has raised concerns among Indonesian scholars and policymakers about the country's potential brain drain.
The proposal's timing also coincides with a wave of public enthusiasm for naturalised footballers pursuing Indonesia's first World Cup berth since 1938. Close to nine in ten players in recent national squads were naturalised, most through ancestry links. The trend shows no sign of slowing, with Australian-born Mitchell Baker and Luke Vickery naturalised as Indonesian citizens within three days of each other in July ahead of the 2027 AFC Asian Cup and 2030 World Cup qualifiers.
Together, these new policies give fresh urgency to the question we raised earlier this year: not simply whether Indonesia will embrace its diaspora, but which parts of it. They also raise a further question: under what circumstances, if any, Indonesia might revisit its longstanding equation of loyalty with singular nationality?
The Indonesian public's enthusiasm for the naturalisation of foreign soccer players offers a vivid illustration of what sociologist Gerard Oonk calls 'thick' and 'thin' forms of citizenship: athletes who hold only a genealogical, often thin, tie to the nation are embraced, while the same state remains reluctant to extend comparable flexibility to millions of overseas Indonesians with lifelong, thick attachments.
The contrast is instructive. It is not multiple belonging as such that unsettles the Indonesian state, but whose multiple belonging is deemed valuable enough to formalise.
This selectivity runs through the limited dual citizenship proposal itself.
As we noted previously in March 2026, the popular idea of 'diaspora' in Indonesian policy discourse remains highly classed, prioritising scientists and engineers rather than the millions of Indonesian migrant workers in domestic, construction, agricultural and care sectors whose remittances have long sustained the national economy.
A scheme that extends dual nationality only to state-recommended experts formalises this hierarchy rather than correcting it.
It also raises an evidentiary problem: Indonesia lacks systematic data on the scale and impact of brain drain, so it is difficult to know whether the policy answers a demonstrated national need or simply reflects assumptions about which migrants are worth retaining.
This is where initiatives such as an independent diasporic think tank called the Diaspora Indonesia Institute (DII), with members that include Indonesian academics from around the world, could make a difference. It is due to launch soon, to coincide with Independence Day on 17 August 2026.
Testing the water?
On 25 July, the Diaspora Indonesia Institute was introduced to the Gerakan Diaspora Indonesia (Indonesian Diaspora Movement) community as part of the movement's 14th anniversary celebrations in Jakarta. These were held as a symposium ' Diaspora Indonesia: Hari Ini, Esok, dan Kemarin' (Diaspora Symposium: Today, Tomorrow and Yesterday).
Frans Simarmata, Co-Founder of the Indonesian Diaspora Network (IDN) based in Australia, and Chairman of the new Diaspora Indonesia Institute, bills it as a vehicle for generating precisely the kind of evidence base currently missing, particularly on brain drain.
He hopes the Diaspora Indonesia Institute will operate as an independent research body and not as a legitimising arm for existing Indonesian government diaspora engagement policy. This will shape how much the Institute can actually inform government thinking, and not simply be used to justify it.
In fact, the main dilemma for global diasporic organisations like the Indonesian Diaspora Network is in navigating its relation to Indonesian government's approach to its diaspora.
Political scientist Alan Gamlen described a threefold logic of states' engagement with their diaspora: identifying and capturing diasporic populations, extending selective rights to them, and the obligation to contribute back to the homeland.
Limited dual citizenship, restricted to state-endorsed talent, sits squarely within this 'capture and obligate' logic rather than the more expansive rights-extension seen in schemes like India's Overseas Citizen of India programme.
Frans Simarmata, however, believes the limited dual citizenship initiative is a way for government to 'test the water'. He takes a 'wait and see' position on whether the proposal will proceed, but laments that there has been little discussion with diasporic stakeholders, despite July meetings between the Indonesian Diaspora Network members and the Directorate of Diaspora Affairs at Indonesia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Frans notes that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is currently finalising the current categorisation of 'Indonesian diaspora' as 'foreign worker' ahead of the new Workforce Law (RUU Ketenagakerjaan), which the Constitutional Court has mandated be passed by October 2026.
The Indonesian Diaspora Network's official statement on the matter that was prepared ahead of the People's Consultative Assembly's (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat or DPR) deliberation on the pending Workforce Law, echoes this frustration from a different angle.
It argues that, so long as ex-Indonesian citizens (Eks-WNI) and their descendants are regulated as ordinary foreign workers, a returning former citizen will face the same requirements as an expatriate with no prior ties to Indonesia.
This sits awkwardly alongside the government's other recent overtures to the diaspora to return. Both the Golden Visa, launched in 2024, and the GCI have been promoted as ways to draw former citizens and their descendants back toward the homeland. Yet both only grant residency or mobility rather than a legal right to work.
The Indonesian Diaspora Network therefore proposes reclassifying foreign labour into three tiers: expatriates, diaspora Eks-WNI to the third generation, and foreign spouses. It also calls for formally defining 'diaspora' in law.
Mixed signals
Amid this uncertainty over who officially counts as diaspora and on what terms, individual Indonesians abroad are left to weigh the proposal on their own terms.
For Lana (pseudonym), an Indonesian technology professional in Australia, the dual citizenship proposal is appealing precisely because it resolves a long-standing dilemma between opportunity abroad and formal belonging at home.
Yet she is also wary that it substitutes a shortcut for the harder work of addressing why people leave in the first place. She says that the Indonesian government should instead improve education, employment and quality of life domestically, rather than just courting Indonesian diasporic members abroad.
The proposal for limited dual citizenship also appears ironic.
It seeks to persuade highly skilled Indonesians overseas to return, yet President Prabowo has repeatedly urged those who are dissatisfied with the government to 'look for another country'. Such mixed signals help explain why many members of the diaspora remain reluctant to formalise their ties to a state that seems ambivalent about their belonging.
That reluctance points to something else. For many Indonesians, nationality is not merely a legal-instrumental status. As Lana put it, nationality is a moral and emotional commitment, bound up with loyalty and belonging, and that makes even limited dual citizenship feel fraught for those who might qualify.
Practical incentives are also a concern, although it is often a secondary one. These include easier property ownership, travel and asset management. Ronald and Rita (pseudonyms), who have lived in Sydney since the 1980s, illustrate why practicality alone rarely settles the matter. Their hesitation to change citizenship has stemmed from emotional attachment, not any legal obstacle.
If the state continues to signal that it values overseas Indonesians chiefly for their expertise, investment and remittances, that attachment may erode further, leaving limited dual citizenship as a transactional offer rather than the recognition of belonging that so many in the diaspora are still waiting for.