Senior Assistant Professor Sin Yee Koh delivered a webinar entitled “Crisis Infrastructuring: Malaysia My Second Home” hosted by the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre (SSEAC) on 5 February 2024. The webinar was co-hosted with the Malaysia and Singapore Society of Australia (MASSA).

Dr Koh’s talk was based on her recent publication, “Crisis Infrastructuring: The Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) Programme, 2018–2022.”

The Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) visa program was introduced in 2002 and by the 2010s had become one the world’s most popular retirement and lifestyle migration programs. In recent years it has experienced a series of disruptions that dovetailed with the COVID-19 pandemic and Malaysia’s regime change and political crisis from 2018 to 2022.

Drawing on interviews with aspiring migrants, current migrants and members of the MM2H migration infrastructure program, Dr. Koh examines how various stakeholder groups respond to, defend, challenge and contest the program’s impending infrastructural breakdown and transformation. She explores the ways the (perceived) crisis shapes the kind of repair work undertaken by different stakeholders and what this tells us about migration infrastructures in crisis.

Please see the full webinar below: