Chrisyl Wong-Hang-Sun

About Chrisyl’s Research:

Agaleens are the descendants of East African people who were forcibly displaced and enslaved to the coconut plantations of Agalega. Agalega is a small, remote atoll of two islands in the Indian Ocean, and exists as a dependency of the Republic of Mauritius today. The islands’ first populations were established in the early 1800s, through French coconut plantations, and labour on the coconut plantations is the main source of income. This project will investigate the conditions of labour for producing coconut oil in Agalega, to understand how Agaleens conceive plantations. Coconut trees centre Agaleen livelihood, ways of being, and their cultural heritage. In utilising a multisited, multimodal and creative, and multispecies ethnographic method, this project aims to understand the human/nonhuman relationship between Agaleens and the coconut plantations of these islands. The location, frail ecosystems, heavy dependence on Mauritian imports, and worsening effects of climate change have resulted in migration of Agaleens to Mauritius. Subsequently, this project aims to also shed light on the experiences of migration of Agaleens to mainland Mauritius.