<![CDATA[The sustainability of hand-drawn batik is often treated as a question of heritage preservation. The Lasem case shows, however, that regeneration is also a matter of communication and labour. This article examines how women batik workers communicate, negotiate, and at times refuse the occupational succession of batik work to their daughters. The study uses a qualitative communication case study informed by the ethnography of communication, drawing on interviews with 15 adult women batik workers, field observations, community discussion transcripts, and local policy documents in Lasem, Rembang. Field data show that common daily wages are around IDR 45,000, well below the 2026 Rembang minimum wage, while less than 10% of approximately 1,000 batik workers were under 30 in 2022. Children continue to learn batik through domestic observation, but mothers describe batik as both culturally valuable and economically insecure. Village-based flexibility helps women combine paid work and caregiving, while also normalising low-wage informal labour. The article proposes “wage-locked regeneration”: skills continue to circulate, but occupational succession stalls because batik work is not yet sufficiently decent to be inherited. It argues for wage reform, social security for freelance artisans, and child-safe heritage education.]]>
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