Asian labour migrations to Southeast Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries correlated with the growth of world trade, European territorial expansion in Asia, and the development of global commercial and trading networks. Imperial managerial structures also enmeshed colonial territories within Empire and facilitated an empire-wide sourcing of labour. Faster and more efficient shipping and colonial trade policies further enhanced trans-regional connections and generated migration. The labour migrations comprised mostly Chinese and Indian male migrants who were recruited for mining and plantation enterprises and public works construction in the colonies. Few Asian women migrated of their own accord, although sugar planters in Malaya hired a number of Indian women in the late nineteenth century. Indian women's participation in the Malayan economy increased after the development of the rubber industry, largely due to the gendering of tasks on rubber plantations, the need for a settled proletariat and the activities of Indian nationalists. The Second World War and decolonization processes in Southeast Asia and the emergence of independent nation states afterward foreshadowed the ending of open immigration policies.

Research on labour migration up to the 1980s focused primarily on emigration of Europeans to the New World, corresponding with nineteenth-century industrialization, and on Asian indentured migration to colonial plantation and mining economies. In both sectors, scholars assumed, jobs were for men and thus migration was "a men's thing". In the frame of this assumption, a feminization of migration has been identified since the 1990s with the near collapse of industrial production in Europe and North America and the shift to service economies in western advanced countries with fast aging populations. The demand for domestic workers, nurses, and caregivers suddenly began to be highlighted and thus migration became "a women's thing". In the curiously gendered academic world, most male researchers continue to work on male proletarians of the past, while women scholars analyze female working migrants of the present. Thus, two parallel research agendas and discourses co-exist with porous, but not often crossed, borders between fields. In addition to the problem a majority of researchers had with gender, most also uncritically used the free versus forced dichotomy of labour and labour migrations. They treated slaves and indentured workers of colour (i.e.other than white) separately from European, white and "free" migrants. However, the "free" migrants were 'forced' to leave unacceptable living conditions and those labelled 'coolies' were, according to the data, mostly free or, more cautiously, 'self-willed' migrants. Only some 10 per cent of the Indian Ocean migrants were indentured servants.

In the past five decades, Malaysia has seen significant influxes in migration from neighbouring countries in Asia. The country relies on mostly cheap and temporary foreign workers for labour force growth and has signed intergovernmental labour accords to fill gaps in the manufacturing, construction, agriculture and service sectors. In constructing its foreign labour policy, the government has also problematized immigration, and migrants are classified either as authorized or unauthorized migrants. This policy has resulted in a hostile environment for all migrants, particularly refugees and asylum seekers. The government has also empowered an armed civilian corps in its campaign against irregular migrants and established detention facilities to judicially detain irregular migrants, including refugees. An earlier task force set up to deal with Vietnamese boat people in the 1970s is presently used for all irregular migrant groups. Both the detention camps and the task force have major implications for the human rights of migrant workers and refugees. This chapter contextualizes these developments within Malaysia's overall immigration policy processes, their impact on the refugee regime in the country and implications for a regional solution.