Rural precarity: relational autonomy, ecological dependence and political immobilisation in the agro-industrial margin

Abstract

Across the world, economic interests and state-making interventions have converged in dispossessing rural and urban dwellers. Drawing on literature on rural transformation, precarity, and life after dispossession, this paper explores how lifeworlds are constructed after dispossession. Based on ethnographic research in an Afro-descendant village in agro-industrial Colombia, I analyse five income-generating activities that together point to rural precarity , characterised by uncertain labour relations, fragile conditions of life, ecological dependence, and reconfigured rural relations. While villagers construct their lifeworlds around community, autonomy, and recognition, the constant search for income and reconfigured rural relations uphold and deepen inequalities in the agro-industrial margin.

Navigating precarity in everyday (sub)urban space in Helsinki, Finland

“…This article focuses on precarity as an urban concept characteristic of contemporary cities as "both product and producer of urban life" (Lancione, 2019, 182), although we acknowledge that precarity can also take rural forms (e.g., Bowers, 2021;Hougaard, 2022).…”

“…This article focuses on precarity as an urban concept characteristic of contemporary cities as “both product and producer of urban life” (Lancione, 2019, 182), although we acknowledge that precarity can also take rural forms (e.g., Bowers, 2021; Hougaard, 2022). Recent studies on urban precarity (Campbell and Laheij, 2021; Harris and Nowicki, 2018; Philo et al, 2019) have explored precarity multifacetedly and not only as a structural condition but as one that is lived, sensed, and experienced.…”