Research on the social effects of tourism and beachfront property development in Southeast Asia finds that foreigners and local elites reap the main benefits, rather than fishing families and coastal communities, who also become vulnerable to displacement. This article, discussing cleavages and co-operation among parties brought together in court cases over land on a Philippine island, demonstrates that poor coastal dwellers just north of Dumaguete City on Negros Island differ in their ability to use social relations within and beyond kin groups to resist development-induced displacement from the increasingly lucrative foreshore. Members of families who are considered to be descendants of the ‘original people of the place’ have been far less vulnerable to displacement pressure than settlers with more of a ‘migrant’ status.

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In coastal neighbourhoods just north of Dumaguete City on Negros Island, the pressures of 'modernity' have encouraged low-income groups-many of them fishing families-to establish and maintain larger kin-based residential clusters. While clientelism has a strong presence in the wider Philippine polity and is easily observed at the local level during elections, this article questions the view that neighbourhood leaders establish power and authority largely by attaching themselves to patrons, bosses, and governing elites. To elaborate on the nature of these leaders' independence from clientelism, the article engages studies of everyday politics and related literature which demonstrates that ordinary people in Southeast Asia-peasants, landless workers, the urban poor-are not captives of the discourses and practices of elites. In addition to the wealth and class dimensions highlighted in the everyday politics literature, it shows how kinship factors and settler status are relevant for understanding how low-income groups mobilise power on their own and establish neighbourhood leadership in the lowland Philippines.