In recruiting transmigration families, the Ministry gives priority to landless farmers, those cultivating plots too small to sustain their families, jobless city dwellers and people who have a special skill that would benefit the new community. Families living in areas that have suffered natural disasters such as earthquakes, floodings, or volcanic eruptions are also prime candidates for transmigration.

In February 1993, transmigration officials actively recruited candidates from the 300,000 people who were forced to flee floods that killed 85 people, injured more than 200, destroyed thousands of acres of crop land, and damaged houses, roads, bridges, and dams in Central Java.

One month earlier, some 1,000 survivors of a December 1992 earthquake, that killed more than 2,000 people on the island of Flores, appealed to the Transmigration Ministry to be relocated to Kalimantan.

Families accepted as volunteers in the government-sponsored program and there are more volunteers than the program has been able to accommodate are transported to the newly built settlements. They are allotted a package that includes a home and land, clothing, household utensils, farming implements, fertilizer, seed and sufficient food for their use until their first crop is harvested. Elements of the package vary for families who relocate, for example, to areas where the focus is on tree crops or aquaculture rather than rice farming.