Land, Livelihoods and Displacement in Indonesia

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We are organizing a workshop,which promises to open up an innovative research agenda on land transformation, evictions and livelihoods extending across urban and rural areas. In the spirit of the IID’s call for proposals, we plan to invite to this event four activists who have been challenging evictions and developing alternatives in both rural and urban areas. The original motivation for this workshop is the explosion of land transformations in recent years, across rural and urban Asia. In urban areas, spectacular top-end real estate developments and infrastructure projects are displacing the low-income urban majority who reside in informal settlements, which are also key spaces for pursuing the informal livelihood strategies they often depend on. In rural areas, peasant agriculture is being displaced by special economic zones, peri-urban real estate and infrastructure developments, and plantations set aside for cash crops—in particular what have become known as ‘land grabs’: inter-state agreements to set land aside in one country for export oriented food and green energy production to the other country. In both contexts, these changes are triggering displacementof current residents, challenging their livelihood possibilities. The large-scale nature of these transformations, as well as the protests they have triggered across Asia, have made questions of land, livelihoods and displacement a priority for both academic research, development policyand activism. Indonesia, Asia’s third largest country, has become something of a cause célèbre for these issues, because of the dramatic nature of transformations in contexts ranging from rural Kalimantan’s palm oil plantations to downtown Jakarta. In Jakarta, the recent past has seen an escalation of evictions under the current governor:tens of thousands of residents from informal settlements had to watch the police and military, bulldozers, heavy machinery, and construction crews forcefully remove the homes that they had built with sweat equity.

To date there has been very little intellectual exchange between scholars working in rural and urban areas as well as between scholars and activists–not only in Indonesia, but also more generally across the global South. This workshop will convene an interdisciplinary group of leading international scholars and activists from Indonesia to transcend these divides and share experiences and insights. The workshop will be organized by Professors Helga Leitner and Eric Sheppard of UCLA’s Geography Department, who are currently undertaking collaborative research into land transformations in Indonesia, also interacting with Indonesian activists. We have one activist in residence, Dian Irawaty, currently a doctoral student at UCLA, who has been involved in the past in two of the activist organizations discussed below: UPC and RUJAK. She will be a great asset for facilitating the interaction between activists and scholars also bringing her own experience as an activist to the table.

To promote active interchange among participants this will be organized as a dialogic workshop,which intersperses research presentations with small group discussions that culminate in plenary sessions. These will be organized in such a way as to ensure that activists’ voice and experience are central to the discussions; academics and activists will thus be in a position to learn from one another. Beyond the co-production of activist/academic knowledge during the workshop, our intention is to use this as the foundation for a collaborative research program in Indonesia.

By: Helga Leitner and Eric Sheppard, UCLA Geography

Our Hoods, Our Stories: Documenting Displacement in Boyle Heights and Chinatown

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The graduate student working group connected with community groups as UCLA students and worked on building connections for a project-based course that allows a longer-term commitment from UCLA to support anti-gentrification and anti-displacement work.

  • They have reached out to organizations like Union de Vecinos, Chinatown Community for Equitable Development.
  • Our Hoods, Our Stories Working Group attended community town hall meetings to learn what issues community members are facing.
  • They created a list of readings and a syllabus for a class on gentrification; its effects on community members and local economies; and policies that can either mitigate or exacerbate conditions of gentrification.
  • Their intention is for this to begin as a student-led and student-taught course, but will look for a faculty sponsor for the class to continue to inspire further research and action in the field of displacement.
  • Students hosted Gente Sí, Gentrify No: Resisting Displacement in Boyle Heights with the organizations they have connected with
    • Activists, residents, and community members came together to discuss the struggle against gentrification and displacement in Boyle Heights. Boyle Heights is at the epicenter of a spatially contested struggle for shelter in the midst of Los Angeles’ crisis of housing affordability. This renewed interest in the neighborhood comes after decades of disinvestment, racial discrimination, and substandard employment opportunities for its long-term residents. As a historic entry point for Mexican immigrants into the country, gentrification in Boyle Heights has not only taken a toll on the neighborhood’s most vulnerable populations, but it has eroded the vital social and cultural institutions of self-determination. But the threat of displacement has also inspired a rigorous and thriving social movement. In a moderated discussion, panelists explored the realities of gentrification and the organizing that has emerged as a response to provide context to the debate about gentrification in the neighborhood, and similar debates taking place across Los Angeles.

By: Eve Bachrach, Gina Charusombat, Amman Desai, Julia Heidelman, Lawrence Lan, Jacklyn Oh, Xochitl Ortiz, Carolyn Vera, and Estefania Zavala Urban Planning and Asian American Studies.

Political Sociology and the Global South Working Group

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With generous assistance from the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, the Political Sociology and the Global South working group has been a success in advancing research, critical thought, and alliances on issues in the Global South. Our working group, led by a group of graduate student coordinators across the social sciences, is an intellectual community of graduate students and scholars who share interests on the intersecting issues of Global South socioeconomic development and underdevelopment, political and social movements, labor, and state-society relations. Our working group is open to all regardless of enrollment status. In the fall quarter, we had two students — Leydy Diossa and Emma Colven — present drafts of their paper while also hosting professors —William Robinson, from UC-Santa Barbara, and Steven McKay, from UC- Santa Cruz. We followed the fall quarter with a strong winter quarter that had three students — Joel Herrera, Pei Palgren, and Andrew Le — present their work while three external speakers — Phillip Hough from Florida Atlantic University, Aihwa Ong from Berkeley, and Yen Le Espiritu from UC- San Diego — also came to our working group. We plan on completing the academic year with Summer Gray, Leslie Salzinger, and Vivek Chibber visiting us from their respective universities along with student presentations by Cory Mengual and Dan Zipp. We will cap the year off with a mini-conference that connects with themes of our working group and the Institute.

By: Kenton Card, Matias Fernandez, Andrew N. Le, Urban Planning and Sociology.