From Land Occupation to Adverse Incorporation into the Palm Oil Global Value Chain: Livelihood Trajectories in Bajo Aguán, Honduras

This research examines the livelihoods of families who have participated in land occupations in the Bajo Aguán region in Honduras since the year 2000 or later. They claimed these lands for housing and to feed themselves, on the ground that the lands should have been redistributed to the land-poor and the landless as part of the country’s agrarian reform policy but had been rather grabbed by the local agrarian elite in the beginning of the 1990s. The objective of the research project is to understand the households' livelihoods portfolios of activities several years after the land occupation and, more specifically, to comprehend the role played by land in their livelihoods. The households’ current portfolios of activities are analysed as the outcome of their livelihoods trajectories, including their interactions with the main actors influencing their access to land: the landholders, the state, and civil society. The research mainly focuses on the contribution of farming to income but it also analyses the land's multiple uses and values in the households’ livelihoods.The main framework of the research is the rural livelihoods approach, which is combined with concepts from agricultural economics, political economy, and sociology. The research proposes a holistic and dynamic analysis of livelihoods formation. It aims to describe the households’ rationales: their objectives and priorities and how, over the years, they have made choices in a complex and constrained environment in order to come as close as possible to these objectives.The research is qualitative, based on eleven months of fieldwork. The data was essentially collected through semi-structured interviews and non-participant observation among families belonging to three land occupations: the MCA (Movimiento Campesino del Aguán), the MCR (Movimiento Campesino de Rigores) and UL (Unidos Lucharemos). Interviews were also conducted with other key stakeholders in the social field of land. The research shows that th
Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales
iiTSE
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished