MIGMOBS Researcher Co-Convenes EuroSEAS 2026 Panel on Migration and Protection in Southeast Asia

21 Sep 2026

Pamungkas Ayudaning Dewanto, a post-doctoral researcher at Waseda University working under the MIGMOBS project, co-convened a panel at the 2026 EuroSEAS Conference held in Madrid from September 1–3, alongside fellow scholars Sverre Molland (Australian National University), Antje Missbach (University of Bielefeld), and Jonathan Krämer (Heidelberg University).

The panel, titled "Migration in Southeast Asia: Protection, Infrastructures and Aftereffects," brought together researchers examining how state and private actors shape migration through overlapping, and often contradictory, logics of protection. 

Also participated in-person as discussants, Johan Lindquist (Stockholm University), Annuska Derks (University of Zurich) and Seb Rumsby (University of Birmingham).

Held as a triple panel spanning three sessions at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, the panel featured twelve papers examining migration governance across Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, and Poland, alongside contributions on TITP returnees, medical clinics as border spaces, and refugee education policy.

As part of the panel, Dewanto presented a paper—co-authored with Ahmad M. Munir and Muh. Reyhan Firdiansyah—titled "The Humanitarian Adaptation of Migration Industries: Evidence from the Recruitment of Lombok-Based Palm Oil Workers." The research examines how global sustainability governance (GSG), including certification regimes like RSPO/MSPO and the Employer Pays Principle (EPP), has reshaped labor recruitment along the Lombok-to-Malaysia migration corridor that supplies workers to the palm oil industry. His EuroSEAS presentation extends this research agenda by examining how global inequality is reproduced not only at the point of migrant labor itself, but within the intermediary industries that broker it.

The findings speak directly to MIGMOBS's broader inquiry into how global inequality is ordered and bordered under late capitalism, showing how reforms meant to protect workers can instead multiply points of extraction within Indonesia's migration industry.