Reshaping the politics of food, climate, labour and citizenship
- How do contemporary global commodity rushes (‘land grabs’) reshape the politics of food, climate, labour, citizenship and geopolitics in different contexts?
- What are the implications of such new regimes, in terms of structural, institutional and political shifts?
‘Commodity & land rushes and regimes: Reshaping five spheres of global social life’ (RRUSHES-5) sets out to answer these questions. It focuses on three countries which have been global hotspots of commodity and land rushes: Ethiopia, Myanmar and Colombia. In addition, it carries out complementary research work in Mozambique, Cambodia, Philippines, Thailand, and China.
Guided by a multi-disciplinary theoretical framework and grounded in empirical work, the project will engage in practical policy questions aimed at probing the potential for socially just and ecologically sustainable reforms.
This project – funded through the prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant – is led by Professor Jun Borras. The team furthermore comprises Dr Tsegaye Moreda, Dr Yunan Xu. 5 PhD researchers, several national research collaborators and researchers from the Transnational Institute (TNI).
Why is this research relevant?
Recent global commodity rushes have profoundly influenced societies across the globe. At least a quarter of a billion hectares of land have been affected, reshaping livelihoods and social and political relations. Contemporary commodity rushes are more complex and far-reaching than those we have seen before, requiring new thinking and practice in order to respond to such unprecedented challenges.
This project will change the way we study the recent commodity and land rushes, demonstrating why and how they concern not only the 3.5 billion people who live in rural areas, but the entire world population.
RRUSHES-5 research initiatives
The Commodity & land rushes and regimes (RRUSHES-5) research project has established three research initiatives looking more closely at specific aspects of land reform, land rushes and land access.
10 years of the Land Deal Politics Initiative
Latest publications and blog posts by RRUSHES-5 researchers
Outputs
Investigacion activista y luchas for la tierra
The Spanish translation of the previously published Scholar-activism and land struggles, this book is part of the Agrarian Change and Peasant Studies: Little Books on Big Issues. Authors Jun Borras and Jennifer Franco celebrate the contributions of scholar-activism in land struggles and scholarship exploring the contradictions and challenges facing scholar-activism.
Essential concepts of land politics: An A-Z guide
Edited by Jun Borras and Jeffifer Franco, this book takes a broad view on land, across the rural and urban corridor, and advocates for a holistic view of the politics of land, as an aggregation of land and global social life, that is, the politics of food, climate, labour, citizenship and geopolitics.
Climate change and critical agrarian studies
Edited by Jun Borras et al., this book explores how the relationship between capitalism and climate change plays out in the rural world and, in particular, the way agrarian struggles connect with the huge challenge of climate change.
Handbook of Global Land and Resource Grabbing
2023. Edited by Tsegaye Moreda, Andreas Neef, Chanrith Ngin and Sharlene Mollett, the compilation provides a cutting-edge, comprehensive overview of global land and resouce grabbing.
Scholar-activism and land struggles
Part of the Agrarian Change and Peasant Studies: Little Books on Big Issues, this book is about scholar-activism and political struggles for land. Authors Jun Borras and Jennifer Franco celebrate the contributions of scholar-activism in land struggles and scholarship exploring the contradictions and challenges facing scholar-activism.
A review of the book in The Journal of Peasant Studies describes it as 'essential reading for any critical academic with political concerns and activists interested in the debates and knowledge produced produced from the centre and periphery of academia, but also from the social movements themselves.'
Agrarian Change and Peasant Studies: Little Books on Big Issues
Available as Open Access ebooks, this book series by the Intitiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies (ICAS) publishes cientifically rigorous, accessible, politically relevant, policy-oriented, state-of the-art books for academics, development practitioners and social movement activists.
- Myanmar’s cross-border migrant workers and the Covid-19 pandemic: Their life stories and the social structures shaping them (English) - Report
- Myanmar's cross-border migrant workers and the Covid-19 pandemic: Their life stories and the social structures shaping them (Burmese) - Report
- Myanmar's cross-border migrant workers and the Covid-19 pandemic: Their life stories and the social structures shaping them (Mon) - Report
- Toward a just transition to a democratic new normal in Myanmar: Cross-border migrant workers and the Covid-19 pandemic (English) - Report
- Toward a just transition to a democratic new normal in Myanmar: Cross-border migrant workers and the Covid-19 pandemic (Burmese) - Report
- The 5Rs in Myanmar: Towards a future federal democratic system where working people can flourish - Primer
Dang, B-N 2025, 'Farmer-farmworkers: cross-border wage labor in northeastern Vietnam-southwestern China region' Agriculture and Human Values. July 2025.
Borras, J. et al. 2025, 'Death of agrarian societies by a thousand cuts: non-corporate "pin prick" and medium-scale land grabs' Globalizations, July 2025.
Belay, M. 2025, 'The spectacular land rush and its consequences in Ethiopia' Globalizations, July 2025.
Doi Ra 2025, 'Global land rush and local resistance: Political struggles in 'failed' land deals' Globalizations, May 2025.
Arango, L. 2025, 'Spectacularization and the land rush in the Colombian Altillanura' Globalizations, April 2025.
Belay, M. 2025, 'Emerging migrant workers and aspiring capitalist farmers in the aftermath of the land rush in Ethiopia' Agriculture and Human Values, April 2025.
Doi Ra 2025, 'Peasants and migrant workers in the farms and the mines: synergies and contradictions' Agriculture and Human Values, March 2025.
Wang, C. et al 2025 'Migrant (farm)workers and farmers in China and Myanmar: a perspective from the sugarcane sector' Agriculture and Human Values, March 2025.
Moreda, T. 2025 'Cross-border seasonal migrant labour and agricultural commodity production in the Ethiopia–Sudan borderlands'Opens external Agriculture and Human Values, February 2025.
Arango, L. 2025 'Indigenous migrant labourers and land: towards an exploration of indigenous’ socio-cultural reproduction in the Colombian Altillanura' Agriculture and Human Values, January 2025
Xu, Y., et al. 2025 'Migrant labour flows and interconnected agrarian transformations in Southern China' Agriculture and Human Values, February 2025
Rojas Herrera, I. 2025 'Limits and possibilities of contemporary land struggles by Indigenous Peoples, Black Communities and Campesinxs in the Colombian Amazon' The Journal of Peasant Studies, January 2025.
Arango Vasquez, L. 2024 'Indigenous peoples, commons and the challenge of sustaining life amid capitalist land grabs' The Journal of Peasant Studies, December 2024.
Wolford, W. et al 2024 'Global land deals: What has been done, what has changed and what's next?' The Journal of Peasant Studies, March 2024.
Borras, S.M. and Franco, J. 2024 'Land rush', The Journal of Peasant Studies, March 2024
Borras, S.M. 2023 'Transformando la política agraria y del conocimiento, y co-construyendo un campo de estudio', Cuestión Agraria, November 2023
Borras, S.M. and Franco, J. 2023 'Plantationocene and contemporary agrarian struggles', Annals of the American Association of Geographers, July 2023
Borras, S.M. 2023 'Contemporary agrarian, rural and rural–urban movements and alliances' Journal of Agrarian Change, May 2023
Rojas Herrera, I and Dessein, J. 2023 ‘'We are not Drug Traffickers, We are Colombian Peasants": The voices and history of cocaleros in the substitution programme of illicit crops in Colombia', Geoforum, Vol. 141 May 2023
Nicholson, P. and Borras, S.M. 2023 'It wasn't an intellectual construction: The founding of La Via Campesina, achievements and challenges - a conversaton', The Journal of Peasant Studies, March 2023
Moreda, T 2023 'The social dynamics of access to land, livelihoods and the rural youth in an era of rapid rural change: Evidence from Ethiopia', Land Use Policy, May 2023
Borras, S.M. 2023 'La Via Campesina - transforming agrarian and knowledge politics, and co-constructing a field: a laudatio', The Journal of Peasant Studies, March 2023
Borras, S.M. 2023 'Politically engaged, pluralist and internationalist: Critical agrarian studies today' , The Journal of Peasant Studies, January 2023
Xu, Y 2023 '“Taken-left” dynamics? Rethink the livelihood changes of affected villagers in the era of the global land rush', Agriculture and Human Values, January 2023
Moreda, T 2022 'Beyond land rights registration: Understanding the mundane elements of land conflict in Ethiopia, The Journal of Peasant Studies, October 2022
Wang, C and Xu, Y 2022 'Reflecting on the Plantationocene: The political economy of sugarcane plantations in Guangxi, China', The Journal of Peasant Studies, June 2022
Borras, S.M., et al 2022 'The value of so-called "failed" large-scale acquisitions' Land Use Policy, Volume 119, August 2022
Ofstehage, A, Wolford, W, Borras, S.M. 2022 'Contemporary populism and the environment' Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Volume 47
Borras, S.M. et al 2021 'Climate change and agrarian struggles: An invitation to contribute to a JPS Forum' The Journal of Peasant Studies, Volume 49, Issue 1
Franco, J.C., Borras, S.M. 2021 'The global climate of land politics' Globalizations
Doi Ra, Sai Sam Khan, Barbersgaard, M., Franco, J.C., Vervest, P. 2021 'The politics of Myanmar's agrarian transformation' The Journal of Peasant Studies, Volume 48, Issue 3
Borras, S.M., Franco, J.C., Ra, D. et al. 2021 'Rurally rooted cross-border migrant workers from Myanmar, Covid-19, and agrarian movements' Agriculture and Human Values (2021).
Doi Ra, Khu Khu Ju 2021 ‘Nothing about us, without us’: Rkeflections on the challenges of building Land in Our Hands, a national land network in Myanmar/Burma' The Journal of Peasant Studies, Special Forum: Politics of Myanmar's Agrarian Transformation
Borras, S.M., J.C. Franco, Z. Nam 2020 'Climate change and land: Insights from Myanmar' World Development, Vol. 129 May 2020
- 'Power and politics through keywords in everyday life' - Jun Borras and Jennifer Franco. 17 June 2025. This blog post has also been translated into Arabic.
- 'Scholars of and for land and life – an inspiration from Colombia to the world' - Sebastian Reyes-Bejarano, Julio Arias, Lorenza Arango and Jun Borras. 19 May 2025
- 'A revolution for land and life in Colombia – and the world', Saturnino M. Borras Jr. and Itayosara Rojas Herrera. 3 April 2025
- 'Scholar-activist research method – challenging but indispensable', Lorenza Arango
- 'A new and silent land grab is underway - we must stop it', Ian Scoones and Angela Serrano
- 'Está en marcha una nueva y silenciosa apropiación de tierras – y hay que pararla', Ian Scoones y Angela Serrano
- 'Can a new global wave of land redistibution emerge?' Ian Scoones on the Land Deal Politics Initiative (LDPI)International Conference on Land Grabbing.
- 'We all have to become better economists', Caroline Cornier on the Land Deal Politics Initiative (LDPI)International Conference on Land Grabbing.
- '5 things to know about the global land rush and how to stop it', Salema Tramel
- 'From Academia to Action: My journey with engaged research on Land Grabbing in Colombia', Jovana Paredes on the Land Deal Politics Initiative (LDPI) International Conference on Global Land Grabbing.
- 'How to resist the expanding global land grab', Salena Tramel on strengthening alliances across social justice movements.
- 'Global summit in Bogota', a review of the International Conference on Global Land Grabbing.
Episode 1 - 27 January 2021
- What can we learn from the world of pastoralism for wider agrarian struggles? (English)
- What can we learn from the world of pastoralism for wider agrarian struggles? (Arabic)
Episode 2 - 28 April 2021
- Global food regimes and China (English)
- Global food regimes and China (Spanish)
- Global food regimes and China (French)
Episode 3 - 16 February 2022
'Digging deeper: Conversatoins on mining and just transitions' - A conversation with Sai Sam Kham and Itayosara Rojas (ISS PhD graduates) on the meaning of land, policies for justice and the struggle for sustainable, equitable mining tied to the renewable energy revolution.
'Peasants fight for land access to acquire food sovereignty worldwide' - Natalia Torres Garzon writes about the 8th International Conference of La Via Campesina in Bogota, Colomvia in December 2023.
'Young researcher awarded grants for empirical research into land grabs' - 27 young researchers awarded a grant to undertake original empirical research into land grabs. 25 September 2023
From a divided Myanmar to a divided world - Keynote lecture by PhD researcher Sai Sam Kham at the annual conference of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists. 23 November 2022
Research team and academic and civil society collaborations
Jun Borras, Principal Investigator and Project Coordinator
Tsegaye Moreda, researcher and Project Deputy Coordinator
Yunan Xu, researcher
Moges Bantie (Ethiopia)
Itayosara Rojas Herrera (Colombia)
Lorenza Arango (Colombia)
Doi Ra (Myanmar)
Sai Sam Kham (Myanmar)
Yin Nyein
Pa Pa Phyo
Myat Thet Thitsar
Gum Sha
Phwe Yu Mon
Dessalegn Rahmato (Ethiopia)
Dario Fajardo (Colombia)
Chunyu Wang (China)
Danilo Carranza (Philippines)
Jennifer C. Franco (Global)
Myint Zaw (Myanmar)
Getnet Alemu (Ethiopia)
Chayan Vaddhanaphuti (Myanmar)
Diana Ojeda, Hector Santaella (Colombia)
Shapan Adnan (Myanmar/Rohingya)
Sergio Coronado (Colombia)
Natacha Bruna (Mozambique)
Cynthia Embido Bejeno
Eva Broer (RRUSHES-5 Research Project Manager)
Adinda Ceelen (Knowledge Broker & Research Communication)
Chaya Raghoenath (RRUSHES-5 Finance Manager)
Funding
Contact the research team
- Email address
- borras@iss.nl
If you would like more information about this research project, please contact Professor Jun Borras