“We will give our blood, but not our land!”—Repertoires of resistance and state-organized land-grabbing at a Bangladeshi tea plantation

Abstract

Land-grabbing is an international issue closely associated with conflict and violence, as communities confront, through prolonged struggles, powerful elite networks involved in the illicit transformation of space. Resistance to land confiscations can be a life-and-death struggle especially for poor rural and urban communities whose livelihoods are tied to the targeted land. Because these struggles are often marked by corruption, state violence, and the persecution of already marginalized populations, they have become an area of emerging interest for state crime and state-corporate crime scholars. However, there is only introductory data mapping how communities resist land-grabs engineered through illegitimate state-corporate activity. Against this backdrop the following paper analyses a case of community resistance to land-grabs in Bangladesh using a contentious politics framework and the concept of land-laundering. The structure and activity of this resistance has been mapped through interviews with stakeholders involved in this struggle, complemented by documentary research.