Support to re-apply for ERC Advanced Grant REBELAND

Summary of the REBELAND application: The flip side of ongoing modernization in Africa is intensive changes in land governance, which again are associated with elite capture involving various forms of corruption and rent-extraction from the rural peasantry. This project will investigate the nature of the links between land governance and elite capture on the one hand and violent resistance to states (e.g. jihadism) as well as migration to urban areas and to Europe. The main hypothesis is that resistance and migration are linked to dispossession of smallholders from land combined with the rent seeking by elites. These hypothesized links will be investigated in case studies in the West African Sahel and in East Africa. Following this conceptual framework, the key questions directing the project will be: What is the nature of the links between on the one hand emergent forms of land governance and elite capture in Africa, and on the other hand i) non-violent resistance, ii) the rise of jihadism or other forms of violent resistance to the state, iii) urbanization and the growth of slums or informal settlements, and iv) increased migration flows within and beyond the African continent? With its pioneering engagement with these urgent political issues, the project will combine theoretical and empirical approaches from political ecology, critical agrarian studies and peace and conflict studies to generate novel insights about the rationalities and agency of smallholders confronted with emerging challenges to their livelihoods. This interdisciplinary research will generate new knowledge on the links between land governance, resistance, and migration, which will both push the research frontier and provide knowledge for policy formulation.