Yvonne Tan

Thesis Title: Migration and labour organisation on Plantation in Southeast Asia

Plantation economies have historically driven and shaped migration patterns in Southeast Asia. During the colonial period, rubber plantations were the main feature of the agricultural production in British Malaya and Dutch East Indies (formerly Indonesia) making up the main share of world exports of rubber in the 1920s. From the 1960s onwards, this agro-industrial model was reconfigured around palm oil, which has since become a cornerstone of the region’s export economy. Today, according to UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (2025), 86% of total global production of oil palm fruit comes from Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. My study looks into how have migration infrastructures developed alongside the transformation of plantation economies in Southeast Asia. This study’s utilizes Everyday Political Economy to trace plantation migration modalities across countries in Southeast Asia tracing continuities and transformations from colonial labour regimes into the present. The analysis centres on two interconnected mechanisms: migration infrastructures that brings workers into plantations, and the regimes of mobility within the plantation itself.

Biography:

Yvonne Tan is a researcher and writer from Kuala Lumpur. Her research interests include labour and migration, health and socioeconomic equity, and political economy within the Southeast Asian region. She has previously worked on participatory research projects on community health with marginalised groups with Monash University and United Nations University-International Institute for Global Health. She graduated with a Masters in Southeast Asian Studies from Goethe University Frankfurt on the Goethe Graduation Scholarship 2021 where she researched on the moral economy of the Chinese Kongsi and its undoing in the Larut Wars and Mandor Rebellion. Some of her notable contributions include histories of resistance in Racial Difference and the Colonial Wars of 19th Century Southeast Asia (Amsterdam University Press, 2021) and Decolonial Narratives in Economics (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025). Beyond academic writing, she also experiments with myth, history and contemporary culture through creative non-fiction and digital collage at @sejarahmitoslaku.

Publications:

"National Epic and Origin Myth: The Spectre of Hang Tuah" in Pham, C.P., Sy, J.M.C., Nguyen, T.N.T. (eds) Decolonizing Comparative Literature. Asia in Transition, vol 30. Springer, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-95-0277-6_24

“Collaboration, coercion and counteraction: British Centralisation Policy and 19th century “tax revolts” in Malaysia” in Altuğ Yalçıntaş and Arne Heise (eds.) Decolonial Narratives in Economics: Alternative and Underrepresented Voices. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035329649.00023

”Piractical Headhunters yang semacam Melayu dan Cina: Creating the Native Other in the Mat Salleh Rebellions (1894-1905)“ in Farish Noor and Peter Carey (eds.). Race and Colonial Wars in 19th Century Southeast Asia. Amsterdam University Press, January 2021. https://doi.org/10.1515/9789048550371-004

Memberships:

Association for Asian Studies

Area Studies

2025 Cohort

Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick

Institutional Email:

Personal Website:

Yvonne TanLink opens in a new window

Supervisory Team:

Professor Juanita Elias

Professor Lena Rethel