Mathilde Gingembre

Université La Catholique de Lille · European School of Political and Social Sciences

This research explores the agrarian livelihoods of Syrian pastoralists who settled in Jordan after fleeing the war in Syria. The adaptation pathways of these "pastoral refugees" are studied in the light of the socio-economic, ecological and labour migration dynamics that have shaped the agricultural sectors and pastoral systems of Jordan and Syria in the past five decades. My findings highlight the land use changes and community support mechanisms that underpin the resilience of small-scale livestock owners to the pressures of neoliberalism and rangeland fragmentation in northern arabia. They also bring light to the dynamic norms of reciprocity and social justice that operate within spaces of refugee pastoralism. See these 2 blog posts for more details: https://pastres.org/2019/05/24/pastoralism-in-the-uncertainty-of-war-and-exile-insights-from-jordan/ https://pastres.org/2020/05/15/herding-in-confined-spring-pastoralists-in-jordan-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/

My PhD research looks at negotiation processes for corporate land acquisition within agrarian societies, with a focus on political, power and class dynamics. It draws on the case study ethnography of a biofuel project seeking to access 100,000 hectares of land in southern Madagascar, chosen for its initial efforts at trying to include land users in the decisions over land transfers. The research explores the variety of perspectives that can develop towards the consultation process within peasant populations experiencing varying degrees of vulnerability. It also documents the contrasting ways local populations invest both formal and informal spaces of negotiations, from silence to active engagement with the official consultation process through the lobbying of decision-makers and different forms of overt and covert resistance. It scrutinises the power relations that inform these engagements and how these intersect with endogenous understandings of rights and obligations embedded within a specific moral economy. It finally explores the differentiated outcomes of these responses on the terms and conditions of the land acquisition, relating them to the contested politics of land deals within states and within agrarian societies.