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Paper short abstract

This paper explores the strategies developed by local actors to oppose large-scale investment ventures in Madagascar. Most mobilisations will appear to have developed at the intersection between the formal and informal, the state and non-state and/or between the local and the global.

Paper long abstract

In Madagascar, local land rights are protected by the legal-institutional framework. However, legal routes are rarely followed by those whose rights are being adversely affected by large-scale land deals. Instead, their protest actions usually develop at the interface between the formal and the informal, the state and the non-state and between the local and the global.

Drawing on recent data from 5 agribusiness investments in Madagascar, this paper brings some answers to the following questions:

-Who are those who, locally, seek to resist the large-scale land transfers? What allows them, as opposed to other disgruntled groups/individuals who remain silent, to do so?

-What is presented as the main motivation of their protest action (dispossession, displacement, encroachment of cultural heritage, discrimination or lack of positive discrimination in job allocation, compensation mechanisms etc)?

- What means, contacts, networks do they mobilise?

-What repertoires of actions do they resort to?

-If violent action is taken, against whom is this violence addressed (the investor's team, other local groups or individuals, state or customary power-holders etc)?

-And finally do these mobilisations affect the outcome of formal negotiations (size and location of leased/sold land, conditions of the investment etc)?

In answering these questions, this paper seeks to outline the multi-scale, multi-normative dynamics at work in the resistance actions taken against large-scale land deals at the local level. It also aims to identify some of the conditions for mobilisations to be effective in a context of legal pluralism and neopatrimonial politics such as that of Madagascar.