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In recent years, rapid urbanization in China has led to land transformation and unequal social and economic development among rural collective land in different regions. Although there has been considerable research on land development in China, there is a lack of studies on the socioeconomic impacts of unequal collective land development on rural elders. This research investigates collective land support, family support, and social support among the elderly in three types of villages—urban, suburban, and remote—in China’s Pearl River Delta. The findings show that land support retains an important factor for supporting the rural elderly, while family support is in steep decline, and social elderly support offers low coverage. However, land support differs greatly with location, and only urban villages in central locations with high land values are found to provide adequate land support for the rural elderly. The key influential factor of land income has shifted from land quantity to land location, and there now appears to be a need to adjust relevant land, fiscal, and taxation policies for collective land in different locations.

The following article analyzes how different actors involved in the process of collective land titling of afro-Colombian territories in Antioquia construct discourses about the ancestral occupation of the land. The article describes the variety of migratory processes that have configured black rural communities in Antioquia over the past four decades, as registered in land titling records and as observed in two case studies. Contrasting with this variety of experiences, the process of land titling has consolidated a homogenizing official discourse that professes continuity between the back rural territories of today and those occupied by cimarrones in the eighteenth century. The article argues that processes of reception, learning, re-signification and appropriation of discourses of ancestrality occur within communities as well as amongst State functionaries. RESUMEN: Este artículo analiza cómo diferentes actores del proceso de titulación colectiva de tierras de comunidades negras de Antioquia aportan a la construcción de discursos sobre la ancestralidad de estos territorios. Tomando como fuente expedientes de titulación y dos estudios de caso de corte etnográfico, se describe la variedad de procesos de poblamiento de las comunidades negras de Antioquia. En contraste con esta variedad, el proceso de titulación ha consolidado un discurso oficial homogéneo, que profesa la continuidad entre territorios actuales y los ocupados por cimarrones desde el siglo xviii. Lejos de asumir que esta homogenización limita las posibilidades de los afrodescendientes a materializar sus derechos territoriales, este artículo se centra en analizar los procesos de recepción, aprendizaje y resignificación de “la ancestralidad” que ocurren tanto en las comunidades que titulan como en los funcionarios del Estado.