Editor’s Note:

Oil palm plantation workers are highly marginalised. In Malaysia, they are undocumented, stateless, and excluded from formal labour protections. Since 2017, Abu Mufakhir, coordinator of Perkumpulan Sembada Bersama Indonesia, has been working in Sabah, Malaysia, where the palm oil industry intersects with some of the most complex and under-acknowledged issues of undocumented labour, statelessness, and border governance in Southeast Asia.

Since 2017, Abu and his team have been conducting participatory research on the conditions of palm oil migrant workers in Sabah. In 2020, Abu and several organisations established the Koalisi Buruh Migran Berdaulat (“The Coalition of Sovereign Migrant Workers”) to provide humanitarian support for thousands of undocumented migrants who were arrested and deported from Sabah to Nunukan Island, Indonesia. They have actively supported the organising efforts of undocumented migrants, both in the oil palm plantation sector and the informal urban sector, to build undocumented migrant organisations.

In this conversation between Abu and ALR contributing editor Kriangsak Teerakowitkajorn, Abu explains the dynamics of irregular migration in Sabah, critiques dominant discourses on trafficking and forced labour, and discusses his organisation’s efforts to combine humanitarian aid with deep organising among undocumented and stateless communities.

Rather than centring legal recognition or policy reform, Abu Mufakhir advances a bottom-up approach that views migration through the lived realities of workers themselves—not through the dominant frameworks of state governance or NGO-driven discourses on forced labour and anti-trafficking.

His analysis reveals how labour control, kinship networks, and everyday survival simultaneously constrain and enable collective action. By reframing the struggle around reproductive needs, organising tactics, and cross-border mobility, this interview disrupts conventional narratives and opens new pathways for understanding labour and migration from below.

Kriangsak Teerakowitkajorn (“Kriangsak”): Abu, thank you so much for making time. To start, could you tell me about your work in Sabah—when it began, what you focus on, and what changes you’ve observed over time?

Abu Mufakhir (“Abu”): We began working in Sabah in 2017. At the time, I was developing a program focused on the palm oil sector for the Asia Monitor Resource Center (AMRC). Since Malaysia and Indonesia produce around 86% of the world’s crude palm oil, it made sense to focus on these places.

But Sabah quickly stood out. It’s a uniquely complex place: it shares a porous border with Indonesia’s North Kalimantan—over 300 kilometres of rivers and jungle—and has the highest proportion of non-citizens in Malaysia. By some estimates, up to half the population are non-citizens, including undocumented migrants and stateless people, primarily from Indonesia and the southern Philippines.

Kriangsak: Why are so many palm oil workers undocumented?

Abu: First, oil palm plantations rely on family labour. There’s a saying: “Buy one, get three.” Companies issue documentation mostly to the male harvester, but his wife and children—who may work as sprayers, fertiliser, fruit pickers, or in other roles—remain undocumented.

Second, the labour quota system in Sabah allows companies to hire only one migrant for every eight hectares, which is entirely inadequate. You need at least two workers per eight hectare to cover the full range of tasks. So companies rely on undocumented labour—they’re available, already present, and easy to exploit.

Kriangsak: And yet the state still arrests and deports undocumented workers?

Abu: That’s the contradiction. On one hand, palm oil is central to the economy. Palm oil production in Indonesia started over 100 years ago in colonial-era East Sumatra. Still, massive expansion in both Indonesia and Sabah began in the 1980s, when the industry shifted from forestry and cacao to palm oil. Palm oil requires a large, stable workforce—it’s labour-intensive, and the fruits must be harvested quickly, or they rot. Sabah alone produces about 25% of Malaysia’s total crude palm oil, accounting for around 7–9% of global output.

Most of the major plantation companies in Sabah are government-linked—such as Felda, Sime Darby, and other state-owned enterprises. The industry is not only commercially important but it’s also tied to national and state-level power. Despite this, the government continues to arrest undocumented workers.

Why? Because Sabah and Sarawak together form the second-largest irregular migration corridor in the world after the U.S.-Mexico border. The deportations serve a political purpose: to maintain control, not actually to reduce the number of undocumented people.

Kriangsak: Has this intensified in recent years?

Abu: Yes. After the great mass deportation campaign in 2002—when 400,000 Indonesians were deported in only six months—the regime became more entrenched. Officially, 77 people died on Nunukan Island after being deported from Sabah. The actual number was likely much higher. Today, around 10,000 people are deported annually from Sabah, mostly to the Philippines and some to Indonesia.

But the demand for labour hasn’t changed. With a total of 1,5 million hectares of oil palm plantation, there are an estimated 700,000 palm oil workers, including their families, in Sabah alone. The deportations don’t reduce their numbers. They simply create conditions of precarity and terror. Arrests are a daily reality—but rarely make the news.

Kriangsak: In that kind of environment, what forms of power are available to workers?

Abu: The most common form of worker agency is strategic mobility—workers leave one plantation and move to another for slightly better wages or housing. This is a form of power, but it’s not associational power. They can’t form unions or even informal worker groups. Organising is legally impossible, and the threat of arrest is always present.

That said, some leverage still exists—especially during labour shortages. Palm oil harvesting is time-sensitive. If fruit isn’t collected in time, it rots. Delays mean financial losses. If enough workers leave or a strike happens during the peak harvest season, companies feel the impact.

So spontaneous strikes do occur, often led by documented workers. Undocumented workers—primarily women and children—usually hide during these strikes to avoid arrest. But even then, timing matters. A strike during a harvest can inflict real economic pressure.

Kriangsak: Are there any community-based structures for organising?

Abu: Yes, but it’s different from factory-based organising. In plantations, you can’t separate the workplace from the home—workers live and work in the same space. Their housing compounds are located within the plantation; their neighbours are also their coworkers. Often, the housing officer is also the foreman or even the local church leader. These overlapping roles can foster solidarity but also enable intimate forms of surveillance and control.

Kinship networks also play a crucial role. Many workers come from the same villages in Indonesia, and those ties can reinforce both community and hierarchy. In some cases, they serve as the foundation for mutual aid and, occasionally, collective action. Sometimes, an estate functions almost like a village in exile.

Kriangsak: What do workers see as their most urgent concerns?

Abu: Access to healthcare. Undocumented people can’t access affordable healthcare. Giving birth in a hospital costs around RM 5,000 (USD 1,200)—about five months of wages. This leads to tragic consequences: maternal mortality rates among undocumented women in Sabah are higher than in Laos or Myanmar. Children often miss basic immunisations. The state, through the Indonesian consulate in Malaysia, provides limited educational opportunities through Community Learning Centres, but that’s about it.

Kriangsak: When you ask workers what they need most, what do they say?

Abu: In one discussion, several male workers said their top demand was a health clinic—not better wages. When we asked why, one said his sister died giving birth. Another said his daughter died. These were men speaking about reproductive healthcare as their top concern.

That shows how deeply intertwined production and reproduction are. In plantations, living and working spaces are the same. So are the struggles. We cannot discuss production without also discussing reproduction.

Kriangsak: Much of the international focus has been on trafficking and forced labour. What’s your take?

Abu: I’m critical of that framing. The anti-trafficking discourse—often led by NGOs—tends to criminalise smugglers. But smugglers aren’t traffickers. In border regions like Nunukan, they’re essential. People rely on them to survive. By focusing only on trafficking, we miss the larger structures that produce irregular migration.

Most of the migration in Sabah is irregular and kinship-based—not organised by states or formal agencies. NGOs often focus only on regular migration—the kind facilitated by bilateral agreements. That bias leads to policies that further criminalise irregular migrants.

Kriangsak: Can you say more about that? What’s your take on how this discourse shapes intervention?

Abu: We’ve had a lot of debate on this. In recent years, the migration discourse—especially that driven by NGOs and international funders—has become dominated by the frameworks of forced labour and trafficking.

Of course, there are cases of trafficking. Forced labour still exists. But when this becomes the only lens, it distorts the reality on the ground. Most of these organisations end up criminalising the smugglers, conflating them with traffickers.

But smugglers are not traffickers. Smuggling is often a subversive act—it enables people to move across borders that are designed to exclude them. For many communities at the border, smugglers are lifelines.

You cannot imagine life in Nunukan or parts of Sabah without smuggling. Food, gas, and cigarettes—basic necessities cross our paths informally every day. Labour too. This is how life works in the borderlands. But the anti-trafficking discourse turns these everyday practices into crimes. It justifies surveillance and repression under the banner of “protection.” And it silences the actual voices of migrant communities.

Kriangsak: So the response ends up strengthening state control instead of empowering the people most affected.

Abu: Exactly. NGOs and many well-meaning experts are also biased toward regular migration—migration that is organised and sanctioned by the state. They focus on bilateral agreements, legal procedures, and recruitment and placement agencies.

However, irregular migration accounts for a significant portion of cross-border mobility, and it’s often organised by migrants themselves through networks of kin, community, and shared experiences. By ignoring this, they not only render invisible the infrastructure migrants already build, but they also end up supporting policies that criminalise irregular routes and violate people’s right to mobility.

Kriangsak: And yet many people continue to return to Sabah, even after deportation.

Abu: Yes. Our survey showed that 46% of deportees were born in Sabah to Indonesian parents. Sabah is their home. Many have never set foot in Indonesia. So what do they do? They return through informal routes because their lives—homes, jobs, families—are in Sabah. We estimate that around 70% of deportees return within a short time.

The deportation regime is irrational if the aim is to reduce undocumented migration. But it makes sense as a way to maintain a regime of control—a “politics of illegality” that justifies state control. Without raids and deportations, immigration authorities lose legitimacy. The fear has to be constant. It’s a performance of sovereignty. But in practice, it’s irrational. It doesn’t stop migration. It just produces more precarity.

Kriangsak: So, what alternatives do you propose?

Abu: Two things. First, shift from irregular to commuting migration. Build infrastructure along the border so people can work in Sabah during the week and return home on weekends, similar to the Johor-Singapore border. That would reduce dependence on smugglers and long-term undocumented status.

Instead of criminalising mobility, let’s support the systems migrants already rely on—kinship ties, housing arrangements, and informal transport. We advocate for shifting from irregular migration to commuting migration. Build housing and services along the border to enable people to cross more frequently and safely. This reduces the need for long-term permits and avoids the traps of formal documentation, which is often inaccessible anyway.

At the core of this is kinship. Migration here is not an individual act. People move with and through families, neighbours, and villages. One plantation estate may be filled with cousins and neighbours from the same hometown. That’s why deportation often doesn’t work—it’s not just people being displaced; it’s entire webs of relationships that remain rooted. These networks also serve as the foundation for mutual aid, daily survival, and sometimes collective action—even under repression.

If you want to understand migrant labour in Sabah, don’t start with the state. Start with the infrastructure built from below.

Second, focus on organising. Legal status doesn’t guarantee better conditions. But organised workers—documented or not—can collectively demand better wages, housing, and healthcare. That’s our approach now: organising comes first, and documentation follows.

Kriangsak: Can you share more about your current work?

Abu: We combine humanitarian aid with organising. We provide reproductive health services and vaccinations—especially for undocumented women and children. We run safe houses in Sabah and Nunukan, managed by a women-only organisation of former deportees. Many of these women now lead advocacy efforts, speaking out about detention centre conditions and pushing for systemic change.

Kriangsak: That’s powerful. Have you noticed a shift in your own thinking?

Abu: Yes, there has been a major shift. I come from a labour movement background. But working in Sabah forced me to study migration—and from the bottom up. Many migration scholars approach the issue from the state’s perspective. I see it from the workplace. That means focusing on labour control, exploitation, and how borders function to discipline workers.

Before, I worked with factory and seaport unions—where people had the right to organise. In Sabah’s plantations, those rights don’t exist. That changes everything.