Papers by Saturnino Borras
Land Use Policy, 2019
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Journal of Agrarian Change, 2011
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The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2021
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markdownabstractIn early research on land grabbing, the initial focus was on foreign companies in... more markdownabstractIn early research on land grabbing, the initial focus was on foreign companies investing abroad, with a particular focus on those based in countries such as China, Gulf States, South Korea, and India. In recent years, it has become evident that the range of countries land investors originate in is far broader, and includes both North Atlantic - and EU-based actors. In this study, we offer both quantitative and qualitative data illustrating the involvement of EU-based corporate and financial entities in land deals occurring outside of the EU. This study also analyses the global land rush within a human rights framework, examining the implications of particular land deals involving EU-based investors and their impact on communities living in areas where the investments are taking place. The research presented here builds partly on Cotula’s 2014 study on the drivers and human rights implications of land grabbing, but differs in that it focuses explicitly on particular c...
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Globalizations, 2019
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Globalizations, 2018
ABSTRACT The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries are emerging as key... more ABSTRACT The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries are emerging as key sites of agricultural commodity production, distribution, circulation, and consumption, contributing to major shifts in the character of regional and global agro-food systems. Their growing importance within the world food economy presents new challenges for scholars, activists, policy-makers, and development practitioners. The articles in this collection are located in their wider context, and the significance of their insights for a longer term research agenda within critical agrarian studies is explored. Four key themes are discussed: processes of agrarian change under way within BRICS countries; the role and impacts of BRICS countries in their respective regions; the rising importance of middle-income countries (MICs) within global and regional agro-food systems; and how the recent emergence of forms of populism, authoritarianism, and combinations of these two (i.e. ‘authoritarian populism’) is linked to the rise of the BRICS.
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Revista Campo-Território, 2016
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World Development, 2020
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Political reactions ‘from below’ to global land grabbing have been vastly more varied and complex... more Political reactions ‘from below’ to global land grabbing have been vastly more varied and complex than is usually assumed. This essay introduces a collection of ground- breaking studies that discuss responses that range from various types of organized and everyday resistance to demands for incorporation or for better terms of incorporation into land deals. Initiatives ‘from below’ in response to land deals have involved local and transnational alliances and the use of legal and extra-legal methods, and have brought victories and defeats. The relevance of political reactions to land grabbing is discussed in light of theories of social movements and critical agrarian studies. Future research on reactions ‘from below’ to land grabbing must include greater attention to gender and generational differences in both impacts and political agency.
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Globalizations
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Third World Quarterly
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Third World Quarterly
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Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'études du développement
Recent research has highlighted the conflict potential of both land deals and climate change miti... more Recent research has highlighted the conflict potential of both land deals and climate change mitigation projects, but generally the two phenomena are studied separately and the focus is limited to discrete cases of displacement or contested claims. We argue that research with a broader “landscape” perspective is needed to better understand the complex social, ecological and institutional interactions taking place in sites of land-based climate change projects (such as biofuel production or forest conservation) and large-scale investments (plantations or mines). Research that co-produces knowledge and capacity with local actors, and informs advocacy at multiple policy scales, will contribute better to preventing, resolving or transforming conflicts.
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The Journal of Peasant Studies
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Agriculture and Human Values
This paper examines the situation of rurally rooted cross-border migrant workers from Myanmar dur... more This paper examines the situation of rurally rooted cross-border migrant workers from Myanmar during the Covid-19 pandemic. It looks at the circumstances of the migrants prior to the global health emergency, before exploring possibilities for a post-pandemic future for this stratum of the working people by raising critical questions addressed to agrarian movements. It does this by focusing on the nature and dynamics of the nexus of land and labour in the context of production and social reproduction, a view that in the context of rurally rooted cross-border migrant workers necessarily requires interrelated perspectives on labour, agrarian, and food justice struggles. This requires a rethinking of the role of land, not as a factor in either production or social reproduction, but as a central component in both spheres simultaneously. The question is not ‘whether’ it is necessary and desirable to forge multi-class coalitions and struggles against external capital, while not losing sigh...
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Globalizations, 2013
Land grabbing has emerged as a significant issue in contemporary global governance that cuts acro... more Land grabbing has emerged as a significant issue in contemporary global governance that cuts across the fields of development, investment, food security, among others. Whereas land grabbing per se is not a new phenomenon, having historical precedents in the era of imperialism, the character, scale, pace, orientation, and key drivers of the recent wave of land grabs is a distinct historical phenomenon closely tied to major shifts in power and production in the global political economy. Land grabbing is facilitated by ever greater flows of capital, goods, and ideas across borders, and these flows occur through axes of power that are far more polycentric than the North–South imperialist tradition. In this introduction we argue that land grabbing speaks to many of the core questions of globalization studies. However, we note scholars of globalization have yet to deeply engage with this new field. We situate land grabbing in an era of advanced capitalism, multiple global crises, and the role of new configurations of power and resistance in global governance institutions. The essays in this collection contribute to identifying land grabbing as an important and urgent topic for theoretical and empirical investigations to deepen our understanding of contemporary globalization and governance.
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Third World Quarterly, 2013
Scholars, practitioners and activists generally agree that investor interest in land has climbed ... more Scholars, practitioners and activists generally agree that investor interest in land has climbed sharply, although they differ about what to call this phenomenon and how to analyse it. This introduction discusses several contested definitional, conceptual, methodological and political issues in the land grab debate. The initial ‘making sense’ period drew sweeping conclusions from large databases, rapid-appraisal fieldwork and local case studies. Today research examines financialisation of land, ‘water grabbing’, ‘green grabbing’ and grabbing for industrial and urbanisation projects, and a substantial literature challenges key assumptions of the early discussion (the emphasis on foreign actors in Africa and on food and biofuels production, the claim that local populations are inevitably displaced or negatively affected). The authors in this collection, representing a diversity of approaches and backgrounds, argue the need to move beyond the basic questions of the ‘making sense’ period of the debate and share a common commitment to connecting analyses of contemporary land grabbing to its historical antecedents and legal contexts and to longstanding agrarian political economy questions concerning forms of dispossession and accumulation, the role of labour and the impediments to the development of capitalism in agriculture. They call for more rigorous grounding of claims about impacts, for scrutiny of failed projects and for (re)examination of the longue durée, social differentiation, the agency of contending social classes and forms of grassroots resistance as key elements shaping agrarian outcomes.
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Journal of Agrarian Change, 2006
Using empirical evidence from the Philippine land reform (1972-2005), this paper examines land re... more Using empirical evidence from the Philippine land reform (1972-2005), this paper examines land reform theory and practice, and argues that convention has a priori excluded a significant portion of actually existing land-based production and distribution relationships, while it has inadvertently included in its definition and analysis land transfers that do not constitute real redistributive reform. This problematic framing of 'exclusion-inclusion' has led to incorrect accounting and analysis of the nature, scope, pace and direction of change/reform that have occurred (or not) in the agrarian structure of a particular setting. This problem has prevented the emergence of nuanced comparative land reform studies, with possible further implications for studies that attempt to trace causal relationships between land redistribution and agrarian transformation.
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Progress in Development Studies, 2006
The conventional view in the land reform literature does not consider distribution of ‘public’ la... more The conventional view in the land reform literature does not consider distribution of ‘public’ lands to landless and near-landless peasants as redistributive land reform. Questioning the (formal) private property bias in land reform theory and practice, this paper rethinks some fundamental concepts and re-examines actual distribution in public lands in the Philippines. It concludes that redistributive reform can, in fact, occur in this type of land and the political process through which this outcome can be achieved could be highly contentious.
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Globalizations, 2013
The emergence of ‘flex crops and commodities’ within a fluid international food regime transition... more The emergence of ‘flex crops and commodities’ within a fluid international food regime transition, the rise of BRICS and middle-income countries, and the revalued role of nation-states are critical context for land grabbing. These global transformations that shape and are reshaped by contemporary land grabbing have resulted in the emergence of competing interpretations of the meaning of such changes, making the already complex governance terrain even more complicated. We are witnessing a three-way political contestation at the global level to control the character, pace, and trajectory of discourse, and the instruments in and practice of land governance. These are ‘regulate to facilitate’, ‘regulate to mitigate negative impacts and maximize opportunities’, and ‘regulate to block and rollback’ land grabbing. Future trajectories in land grabbing and its governance will be shaped partly by the balance of state and social forces within and between these three political tendencies. Given this an unfolding global development, this article offers a preliminary analysis by mapping under-explored areas of inquiry and puts forward initial ways of questioning, rather than firm arguments based on complete empirical material.
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Papers by Saturnino Borras