Contribution short abstract:

As less people farm the common grazing area, crofters are exchanging common grazing rights for enclosed land. Which politics underlie this property (use) transfer from commons to private use, and what could this indicate for other commoning projects?

Contribution long abstract:

In recent years, the common grazing areas of Shetland (UK) have been emptying of sheep. While previously they were grazed densely, now only a few crofters (small scale farmers) use their rights to graze animals on the commons, as most prefer keeping their animals in enclosed fields. In Scotland, use rights in the common grazing can be exchanged for an ‘apportionment’: A fenced off part of the commons that is used for only one’s own sheep. Most crofters trade in parts of their shares for the right of fence off the common land and privately use and improve it.

This property transfer from communal to private management, calls for closer attention to why Shetland crofters are trading access to common land for control over enclosed land. Is this a case of uncommoning from below? Or is further enclosure of the commons merely a strategy to cope with progressively abandoned commons?

Instead of displaying a forced expropriation of land, this is a case where the economic and social realities (e.g. of financing the croft through supplementary part-time or full-time work) leads many crofters to view enclosing the commons through apportionment as the only viable response. This case highlights the tensions that arise when working with commons in an economic system that benefits private property and leads to the questions: why is choosing to manage a commons increasingly challenging in this community? And how does partial enclosure affect the commons?