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

par Schur, Claudia
Président du jury Louault, Frédéric
Promoteur Roudart, Laurence
Publication Non publié, 2022-05-24

Thèse de doctorat

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Résumé :

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 the households have been combining farm, non-farm and/or off-farm activities so as to make ends meet. Farming has been complementary to non- and off-farm activities, commonly generating less than half of the income, and it has been carried out with the capital and labour left over from these non- and off-farm activities. However, the research shows that beyond agricultural production, land plays other important roles in the households’ livelihoods: it is a living space, it makes it possible to build social assets and centralise income flows, and it is an important dimension of the campesino (peasant) identity and a key element of advocacy in the social struggle for emancipation. Over the last years, the share of farm income in total income has been increasing for those households that started to cultivate oil palm trees after obtaining a provisional land title. Oil palm plantations contribute to the process of upward social mobility, which started with the development of independent non-farm activities in and around the land occupation settlements, especially trade and services. Meanwhile, oil palm plantations enhance social differentiation as only some of the households are in a position to accumulate assets and plant and expand palm plantations. Nonetheless, the research also reveals that this upward social mobility for palm producing households is limited as the income from palm remains low and unstable. In fact, the incorporation of households into the palm oil global value chain is adverse. In spite of this, the households strive to expand palm plantations as the structural features of their ecological and social environment make it objectively and subjectively their only viable farming option.