Due to their dependence on a single crop, agricultural frontiers are often considered to be formed through phases of 'boom and bust'. These phases are closely related to fluctuations in world market prices of the commodity that constitutes the frontier's economic basis. This paper demonstrates how although migration patterns and economic growth are conditioned by world market dynamics, local socioeconomic outcomes within frontier regions are diverse. Frontier formation is far from a homogenous process that slowly incorporates all localities and communities in the same way. Dak Lak Province, in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, produces more than 50% of Vietnam's coffee. As Vietnam is the world's largest exporter of Robusta coffee, Dak Lak is highly embedded in the dynamics of the world coffee market. Planned settlement in Dak Lak started in the 1950s and has continued in phases orchestrated by the state's changing economic, social and political motives. Spontaneous immigration has dominated since the early 1990s when the coffee sector took off and regulations on population mobility were relaxed. This paper shows how household livelihoods differ substantially between four communes in Dak Lak Province due to different combinations of migrant and indigenous groups, the ease of transport to the main urban centres, and the timing of coffee planting in the settlements. These temporal and spatial variations in livelihoods both condition and are conditioned by the organisational set-up of the local coffee marketing chain.