States and corporate land acquisition: comparing regimes of dispossession across the global south
Berenschot, W. 
ORCID: 0000-0002-5459-0785 & Loughlin, N. (2025).
States and corporate land acquisition: comparing regimes of dispossession across the global south.
Globalizations,
pp. 1-14.
doi: 10.1080/14747731.2025.2555139
Abstract
How do processes of land dispossession vary across countries and sectors, and how could these differences be studied comparatively? In this introductory essay to the special issue Comparing Regimes of Dispossession, we address these questions by analysing a range of cases of corporate land dispossession from Brazil, East Timor, Thailand, India, Indonesia, and Cambodia. We compare these cases by analysing five aspects of dispossessionary processes: actors, legal mechanisms, degree of regulatory evasion, coercion and remuneration. Building on this framework, we argue that these dimensions align in ways that reveal three distinct forms that processes of land dispossession may take: eminent domain-based, curtailed land rights-based, and decentralized coercion-based dispossession. We propose that a comparative approach is crucial for understanding the conditions that facilitate land dispossession, as well as the opportunities for affected communities to effectively resist the corporate acquisition of their land.
| Publication Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Publisher Keywords: | Dispossession; land grabbing and conflict; large-scale land acquisition; resistance; landuse change; comparative analysis |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor J Political Science > JF Political institutions (General) |
| Departments: | School of Policy & Global Affairs School of Policy & Global Affairs > Department of International Politics |
| SWORD Depositor: |
Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution International Public License 4.0.
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