Peasants, dispossession and resistance in Egypt: an analysis of protest movements and organisations before and after the 2011 uprising

Abstract

The livelihoods of Egypt’s agrarian working classes have been under attack for at least 30 years by policies dispossessing them of natural and economic resources. This process accelerated in the mid 1990s when a domestic land grab took place, eradicating tenure rights for poor tenants. Rural Egypt was part of the 2011 revolutionary process, although heavily marginalised in narratives about the ‘Spring’. Land occupations, farmers’ protests and unionisation were part of the revolutionary landscape, in direct continuity with previous struggles, but also showing signs of rupture and innovation. Reactions from below against dispossession have been variegated and developing, but their determinants remain largely unaddressed. The article retraces the trajectories of these struggles, pointing at the crucial role that the peasants’ allies (leftist civic activism, NGOs and political parties) have played in enhancing and/or undermining agrarian movements at particular historical conjunctures.

Lawyers as infrastructures: mediations, blockages, and new possibilities in grassroots movements

“…Forced evictions like that of the inhabitants of Al-Warraq are not everyday events in Egypt, though the practice has become more common in the past few years under President El-Sisi due to an increased focus on mega-infrastructural projects. 101 This infrastructural frenzy points to an obvious but critical reality when dealing with infrastructures of any kind: they are always changing.…”

Land and small farmer resistance in authoritarian Egypt

“…There was a brief historical moment when “peasant struggles for land moved from quiet retreat and mostly reactive initiatives to direct action and self‐organizing” (De Lellis, 2019, 595). The 2011 uprising was also a struggle by farmers against decades of GoE policy of immizeration and abjection.…”

“…The 2011 uprising was also a struggle by farmers against decades of GoE policy of immizeration and abjection. The moments of greater success for small farmers were linked to the degree to which spontaneous rural dissent found space within local state and elite repression to voice out resistance and that has not always been dependent upon links with urban intellectuals and activists, although that has sometimes been important (Ayeb & Bush, 2019; Bush, 2011; De Lellis, 2019). The level of spontaneity and the feeling that farmer protest might be successful were encouraged by the proximity to urban centres of working class resistance.…”

“…When agrarian issues were mentioned, they tended to be limited to debating food insecurity and the importance of agricultural trade, land reclamation, and direct foreign investment in "land grabs". Only recently has there been an attempt to map or account for the character of agrarian transformations under the dictatorship of General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (Ahmed, 2019;De Lellis, 2019). This article extends our understanding of agrarian transformation in Egypt by reflecting on the possibility of what Borras has called an "agenda for political conversation," involving "deep social reforms" that might be revolutionary if they involved "multiclass struggles far broader than agrarian or rural struggles" (Borras, 2020, 24).…”

“…When agrarian issues were mentioned, they tended to be limited to debating food insecurity and the importance of agricultural trade, land reclamation, and direct foreign investment in “land grabs”. Only recently has there been an attempt to map or account for the character of agrarian transformations under the dictatorship of General Abdel Fattah al‐Sisi (Ahmed, 2019; De Lellis, 2019).…”