Paper short abstract:

Across Melanesia cities and peri-urban areas are increasingly sites of contestation and negotiation between the power of the state, the idea of custom landownership and the need for other settlers to access land and services available in urban locales.

Paper long abstract:

Slowly we exit our truck and walk over to the ‘security guards’ blocking the entry to the large area of customary land at the edge of the village that is the site of an eviction. These security guards are young men, and they slowly stand up on the back of their truck. We watch as one of the young men raises a rifle and points it in our general direction. It is clear he does not want us here.

Across Melanesia cities and peri-urban areas are increasingly sites of contestation and negotiation between the power of the state, the idea of custom landownership and the need for other settlers to access land and services available in urban locales. Contemporary urban and peri-urban evictions that generate displacement offer insights into the violent expressions of force used to protect property rights and the long duree of colonial cadastral legacies. Using examples and experiences from Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands we ask: in whose interest does the state act or protect? Who is possessed or dispossessed by these processes? And what, in these processes, has happened to the aspirational ideas of Independence that Melanesian states would be post-colonial sovereign nations of landowners?