Negotiating displacement : a study of land and livelihoods in rural East Timor

Abstract

This thesis is a study of the strategies two rural communities employ to negotiate land and livelihoods under conditions of internal displacement. I contend that internal displacement has enduring and transformative effects. The dynamics of internal displacement are examined in the context of East Timor, a country that has tolerated cumulative foreign domination, and where displacement is predominately considered a product of conflict. I take an alternative view to suggest that displacement has equally been produced by successive attempts of state territorialisation and development interventions. One effect of conceptualising internal displacement as conflict-induced is the dominant representation of 'displaced' East Timorese as passive and disempowered victims of war and occupation. Engaging local perspectives and experiences of displacement, the ethnographic case studies presented in this thesis seek to illustrate how 'displaced' East Timorese respond, adapt and creatively transcend their circumstances. Focussing on two rural communities forcibly resettled by the Indonesian authorities in Laga and Same Sub-Districts, findings illustrate that resettled individuals and families forged new economic relations and mobilised extended kin-based ties, in order to negotiate access to customary land to rebuild their livelihoods in the sites of resettlement. My ethnographic focus also considers the perspectives of customary landowners who have had to negotiate the consequences of displacement by reworking conditions of land access and social relations to accommodate incoming settlers. What began as involuntary resettlement is increasingly showing signs of transforming into other modes of mobility. Now free to return to their ancestral places of origin, 'displaced' East Timorese are strategically situating themselves to create multi-local livelihoods within the changing political and economic environment. There is however an inherent tension in negotiating an existence between the ancestral settlement and resettlement sites as some individuals and families have come to embrace ideas of 'modernity' through their experiences, which is unsettling their commitment to their ancestral land. I suggest that 'displaced' East Timorese are attempting to ameliorate this tension by finding 'translocal' solutions.