The government of (post)socialist Laos has conceded more than 1 million hectares of land—5 percent of the national territory—to resource investors, threatening rural community access to customary lands and forests.

Statutory recognition of rural communities as collective owners of their lands is substantial, expanding, and an increasingly accepted element of property relations.

This study investigated the implications of large-scale land concessions in the Red River Delta, Vietnam, and Northeast Cambodia with regard to urban and agricultural frontiers, agrarian transitions, migration, and places from which the migrant workers originated.

Increasing global demand for natural rubber began in the mid-2000s and led to large-scale expansion of plantations in Laos until rubber latex prices declined greatly beginning in 2011. The expansion of rubber did not, however, occur uniformly across the country.

As Chinese investment in foreign land and agriculture expands dramatically worldwide, a growing body of research has emerged on the prevalence of land deals in Latin America and Africa. Southeast Asia, however, has only recently begun to receive significant attention in these discussions.