Yoga Prasetyo

Infrastructuring irregular children in urban Malaysia

Yoga Prasetyo is a DPhil student at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. His work broadly examines how the state governs the lives of migrants through the material, temporal, and spatial arrangements of urban infrastructure, and the strategies migrants use to work around such arrangements and stake a claim on the city. In his doctoral project, Yoga looks at ‘alternative schools’ for undocumented children of migrant workers in Sabah (Malaysia) as a site where immigration, education, and humanitarian regimes converge. He asks how this convergence produces both legality and illegality for undocumented children, and how they navigate this paradox as they transition to adulthood. 

Yoga holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Indonesia and an MA in Migration Studies from the University of Sussex. Prior to Oxford, he was a member of the Migration and Mobilities cluster at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, where he worked on the CHAMPSEA (Child Health and Migrant Parents in Southeast Asia) project, the institute’s longest-running longitudinal study of the impacts of parental absence on left-behind children. Yoga’s work is largely inspired by the 25 years his mother spent working as a migrant domestic worker in Singapore, as well as his own experience of growing up as a 'left-behind' child.

Awards and scholarships

• 2026 - Clarendon Fund | University of Oxford
• 2025 - Human Rights Essay Prize Shortlistee | Portside Review (Australia)
• 2025 - Bob Woods Postgraduate Dissertation Prize 2025 | Population Geography Research Group, UK Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
• 2025 - Development Studies Association (DSA) Master’s Dissertation Prize (Highly Commended) | UK Development Studies Association
• 2024 - Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (JEMS) Prize for Best Dissertation in Migration and Refugee Studies | Sussex Centre for Migration Research & Sussex Department of Geography
• 2024 - Mixed Migration Review 2024 Prize | Danish Refugee Council & Mixed Migration Centre
• 2024 - Turing Scheme Award for Research Placement | Sussex School of Global Studies
• 2024 - Andrew Pickup Global Citizens Award for Master’s Dissertation Fieldwork | Sussex School of Global Studies
• 2023 - Chevening Scholarship | UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office

•  Prasetyo, Y. (2026) Integration as segregation: Managing temporary migrant construction workers in Singapore. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 52(10): 2654-2672.
• Prasetyo, Y. (2025) Integration-transnationalism in the context of enforced transience: Managing racial harmony and temporary labor migration in Singapore. SCMR Working Paper Series, No. 105.
• Prasetyo, Y. (2024) Accessibility of protection systems for children in the context of migration in Southeast Asia. Geneva: International Organization for Migration.
• Prasetyo, Y. (2024) How do we study the social integration of temporary migrants. In, Horwood, C. and Frouws, B. (eds.) Mixed Migration Review 2024. Geneva: Mixed Migration Centre.
• Sutrisno, A. and Prasetyo, Y. (2022) Education and the lack therefore: Indonesian transnational identity and migration journey. In, Sahoo, A.K. (ed.) Routledge Handbook of Asian Transnationalism. 1st edition. London: Routledge, pp. 157–170.