Long-standing labour migration, new plantation enclosures, and social reproduction in Indonesian Borneo’s borderlands

Abstract

Where people in the rural tropics have long participated in labour migration, plantation expansion may generate new employment and market opportunities that disrupt mobility. Drawing on a household survey and in-depth interviews, we explore such dynamics in two Indonesian villages along the Malaysian border in Borneo. Here, Indigenous Dayak and Malay households had enduring traditions of work in Sarawak, Malaysia. After circa-2000 oil palm plantation development, rather than taking up sustained plantation work, many of these households continued labour migration and/or planted oil palm on their lands. In-migrants sponsored by Indonesia’s transmigration programme who settled along the border in the late 1990s tried work in Malaysia but turned to plantation labour when it became available. We interpreted these differences through the lens of social reproduction. The ability to sustain secure and remunerative labour migration, which depended on social relationships reproduced across the border and sending site care availability, shaped cross-group disparities.