Resettlement is a governmental program with inherent spatial effects in that it drives the rearrangement of capital, labour, and land, and seeks to render people and space more governable. This article examines the extent to which this disruptive phenomenon has been theorised. We first review the existing literature, finding a distinct polarisation between mainstream studies and more critical scholarship. We then propose a critical geography of resettlement centred on its multiple logics, agents and expertise, and subject-making and spatial practices. An invigorated critical geography of resettlement is needed to challenge the legitimisation of an expanding resettlement industry.
Adu-AryeeVQ (1993) Resettlement in Ghana: From Akosombo to Kpong. In: CerneaMMGuggenheimSE (eds) Anthropological Approaches to Involuntary Resettlement: Policy, Practice and Theory. Boulder: Westview Press, 133–152.
2.
AikenSRLeighCH (2015) Dams and indigenous peoples in Malaysia: Development, displacement and resettlement. Geografiska Annaler, Series B: Human Geography97: 69–93.
3.
AllenJ (2004) The whereabouts of power: Politics, government and space. Geografiska Annaler, Series B: Human Geography86: 19–32.
4.
ArnallA (2018) Resettlement as climate change adaptation: What can be learned from state-led relocation in rural Africa and Asia?Climate and Development. DOI: 10.1080/17565529.2018.1442799.
5.
ArrighiG (2007) Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century. London: Verso.
6.
ArturLHilhorstD (2014) Floods, resettlement and land access and use in the lower Zambezi, Mozambique. Land Use Policy36: 361–368.
7.
BairdIShoemakerB (2008) People, Livelihoods and Development in the Xekong River Basin of Laos. Bangkok: White Lotus Press.
8.
BarnettJO’NeillSJ (2012) Islands, resettlement and adaptation. Nature Climate Change2: 8–10.
9.
BarneyK (2009) Laos and the making of a ‘relational’ resource frontier. The Geographical Journal175: 146–159.
10.
BartoloméLJ (1993) The Yacreta experience with urban resettlement: Some lessons and insights. In: CerneaMMGuggenheimSE (eds) Anthropological Approaches to Involuntary Resettlement: Policy, Practice and Theory. Boulder: Westview Press, 109–132.
11.
BarutciskiM (2006) International law and development-induced displacement and resettlement. In: De WetC (ed.) Development-Induced Displacement: Problems, Policies and People. New York: Berghahn Books, 71–104.
12.
BauerK (2015) New homes, new lives – the social and economic effects of resettlement on Tibetan nomads (Yushu prefecture, Qinghai province, PRC). Nomadic Peoples19: 209–220.
13.
BillsonJM (1990) Opportunity or tragedy: The impact of Canadian resettlement policy on Inuit families. American Review of Canadian Studies20: 187–218.
14.
BlakeDJHBarneyK (2018) Structural injustice, slow violence? The political ecology of a ‘best practice’ hydropower dam in Lao PDR. Journal of Contemporary Asia48(5): 808–834.
15.
BraunB (2000) Producing vertical territory: Geology and governmentality in late Victorian Canada. Ecumene7: 7–46.
16.
BrownPHXuK (2010) Hydropower development and resettlement policy on China’s Nu river. Journal of Contemporary China19: 777–797.
17.
CerneaM (2016) The state and involuntary resettlement: Reflections on comparing legislation on development-displacement in China and India. In: PadovaniE (ed.) Development-Induced Displacement in India and China: A Comparative Look at the Burdens of Growth. Lanham: Lexington Books.
18.
CerneaMMaldonadoJ (2018) Challenging the Prevailing Paradigm of Displacement and Resettlement: Risks, Impoverishment, Legacies, Solutions. Abingdon: Routledge.
19.
CerneaMMathurHM (2008) Can Compensation Prevent Impoverishment? Reforming Resettlement through Investment. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
20.
CerneaMM (1993) Anthropological and sociological research for policy development on population resettlement. In: CerneaMMGuggenheimSE (eds) Anthropological Approaches to Resettlement Policy: Practice, and Theory. Boulder: Westview Press.
21.
CerneaMM (1996) Understanding and preventing impoverishment from displacement – reflections on the state of knowledge. In: McDowellC (ed.) Understanding Impoverishment: The Consequences of Development-Induced Displacement. Providence: Berghahn Books, 13–32.
22.
CerneaMM (1997) The risks and reconstruction model for resettling displaced populations. World Development25: 1569–1587.
23.
CerneaMMGuggenheimSE (eds) (1993) Anthropological Approaches to Resettlement: Policy, Practice and Theory. Boulder: Westview Press, 13–38.
24.
ChakrabartiADharAK (2010) Dislocation and Resettlement in Development: From Third World to the World of the Third. Abingdon: Routledge.
25.
ChatterjeeI (2014) Displacement, Revolution, and the New Urban Condition. New Delhi: SAGE.
26.
ChatterjeeP (2008) Democracy and economic transformation in India. Economic and Political Weekly43: 53–62.
27.
ChenYTanYLuoY (2017) Post-disaster resettlement and livelihood vulnerability in rural China. Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal26: 65–78.
28.
ChuangJ (2015) Urbanization through dispossession: Survival and stratification in China’s new townships. Journal of Peasant Studies42: 275–294.
29.
ChungBY (2017) Engendering the new enclosures: Development, involuntary resettlement and the struggles for social reproduction in coastal Tanzania. Development and Change48: 98–120.
30.
ClarkD (1997) The World Bank and development-induced displacement in South Asia. The Brown Journal of World Affairs4: 215–231.
31.
CruikshankB (1999) The Will to Empower: Democratic Citizens and Other Subjects. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
32.
De SherbininACastroMGemenneF (2011) Preparing for resettlement associated with climate change. Science334: 456–457.
33.
De WetC (2006) Introducing the issues. In: De WetC (ed.) Development-Induced Displacement: Problems, Policies and People. New York: Berghahn Books, 1–12.
34.
DowningTEGarcia-DowningC (2009) Routine and dissonant culture: A theory about the psycho-social-cultural disruptions of involuntary displacement and the ways to mitigate them without inflicting even more damage. In: Oliver-SmithA (ed.) Development and Dispossession: The Anthropology of Displacement and Resettlement. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press.
35.
DresslerW (2014) Green governmentality and swidden decline on Palawan Island. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers39: 250–264.
36.
DuF (2012) Ecological resettlement of Tibetan herders in the Sanjiangyuan: A case study in Madoi county of Qinghai. Nomadic Peoples16: 116–133.
37.
DwivediR (2002) Models and methods in development-induced displacement. Development & Change33: 709–732.
38.
EldenS (2010) Land, terrain, territory. Progress in Human Geography34: 799–817.
39.
EscobarA (2003) Displacement, development, and modernity in the Colombian Pacific. International Social Science Journal55: 157–167.
40.
EvrardOGoudineauY (2004) Planned resettlement, unexpected migrations and cultural trauma in Laos. Development & Change35: 937–962.
41.
FeldmanSGeislerC (2012) Land expropriation and displacement in Bangladesh. Journal of Peasant Studies39: 971–993.
42.
FergusonJ (1994) The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development’, Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
43.
ForsythTWalkerA (2014) Hidden alliances: Rethinking environmentality and the politics of knowledge in Thailand’s campaign for community. Conservation and Society12: 408–417.
44.
FoucaultM (1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin.
45.
FoucaultM (1991) Governmentality. In: BurchellGGordonCMillerP (eds) The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 87–104.
46.
Gaerrang (2015) Housing projects in the nomadic areas of China’s eastern Tibetan plateau: Representation, market logic, and governmentality. Nomadic Peoples19: 261–280.
47.
GellertPKLynchBD (2003) Mega-projects as displacements. International Social Science Journal55: 15–26.
48.
GoldmanM (2005) Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the Age of Globalization. New Haven: Yale University Press.
49.
GomersallK (2018) Resettlement practice and the pathway to the urban ideal. Geoforum96: 51–60.
50.
GongboTashiFogginJM (2012) Resettlement as development and progress? Eight years on: Review of emerging social and development impacts of an ‘ecological resettlement’ project in Tibet autonomous region, China. Nomadic Peoples16: 134–151.
51.
GransowB (2015) Turning risks into opportunities? Social assessment as governmental technologies. In: PriceSRobinsonK (eds) Making a Difference? Social Assessment Policy and Praxis and its Emergence in China. New York: Berghahn Books, 164–184.
52.
GreenM (2010) Making development agents: Participation as boundary object in international development. The Journal of Development Studies46: 1240–1263.
53.
GreenWNBairdIG (2016) Capitalizing on compensation: Hydropower resettlement and the commodification and decommodification of nature-society relations in southern Laos. Annals of the American Association of Geographers106: 853–873.
54.
GuggenheimSE (1993) Peasants, planners and participation: Resettlement in Mexico. In: CerneaMMGuggenheimSE (eds) Anthropological Approaches to Involuntary Resettlement: Policy, Practice and Theory. Boulder: Westview Press, 201–228.
55.
GuggenheimSECerneaMM (1993) Anthropological approaches to involuntary resettlement: Policy, practice and theory. In: CerneaMMGuggenheimSE (eds) Anthropological Approaches to Resettlement: Policy, Practice and Theory. Boulder: Westview Press, 1–12.
56.
HabichS (2016) Dams, Migration and Authoritarianism: The Local State in Yunnan. London: Routledge.
57.
HannaPVanclayFLangdonEJ (2016) The importance of cultural aspects in impact assessment and project development: Reflections from a case study of a hydroelectric dam in Brazil. Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal34: 306–318.
58.
HarlanT (2017) A green development model: Transnational model-making in China’s small hydropower training programmes. Area Development and Policy2(3): 251–271.
59.
HeggelundG (2003) Environment and Resettlement Politics in China: The Three Gorges Project. Burlington: Ashgate.
60.
HessS (2010) Nail-houses, land rights, and frames of injustice on China’s protest landscape. Asian Survey50: 908–926.
61.
HickeyS (2009) The politics of protecting the poorest: Moving beyond the ‘anti-politics machine’?Political Geography28: 473–483.
62.
HinoMFieldCBMachKJ (2017) Managed retreat as a response to natural hazard risk. Nature Climate Change7(5): 364–370.
63.
HsingYT (2010) The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
64.
HuatseGyal (2015) The politics of standardising and subordinating subjects: The nomadic settlement project in Tibetan areas of Amdo. Nomadic Peoples19: 241–260.
65.
JainSBalaM (2006) The Economics and Politics of Resettlement in India. Delhi: Pearson Education India.
66.
JohnsonCA (2012) Governing climate displacement: The ethics and politics of human resettlement. Environmental Politics21: 308–328.
67.
JohnsonCAKrishnamurthyK (2010) Dealing with displacement: Can ‘social protection’ facilitate long-term adaptation to climate change?Global Environmental Change20: 648–655.
68.
JonesAMurphyJT (2011) Theorizing practice in economic geography: Foundations, challenges, and possibilities. Progress in Human Geography35: 366–392.
69.
KaikaM (2006) Dams as symbols of modernization: The urbanization of nature between geographical imagination and materiality. Annals of the Association of American Geographers96: 276–301.
70.
KatusSSuhardimanDSenaratna SellamutuS (2016) When local power meets hydropower: Reconceptualizing resettlement along the Nam Gnouang River in Laos. Geoforum72: 6–15.
71.
KeeleS (2017) Outsourcing adaptation: Examining the role and influence of consultants in governing climate change adaptation. PhD thesis, University of Melbourne, Australia.
72.
KothariU (2005) Authority and expertise: The professionalisation of international development and the ordering of dissent. Antipode37: 425–446.
73.
LasslettK (2015) The state at the heart of capitalism: Marxist theory and Foucault’s lectures on governmentality. Critical Sociology41: 641–658.
74.
LevienM (2017) From primitive accumulation to regimes of dispossession: Theses on India’s land question. In: D’CostaAPChakrabortyA (eds) The Land Question in India: State, Dispossession, and Capitalist Transition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
75.
LiCLiSZFeldmanMWLiJZhengHDailyGC (2017) The impact on rural livelihoods and ecosystem services of a major relocation and settlement program: A case in Shaanxi, China. Ambio47(2): 245–259.
76.
LiHMWaleyPReesP (2001) Reservoir resettlement in China: Past experience and the Three Gorges Dam. Geographical Journal167: 195–212.
77.
LiTM (2007) The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development and the Practice of Politics. Durham: Duke University Press.
78.
LiTM (2010) To make live or let die? Rural dispossession and the protection of surplus populations. Antipode41: 66–93.
79.
LiTM (2011) Centering labor in the land grab debate. Journal of Peasant Studies38: 281–298.
80.
LiTM (2016) Governing rural Indonesia: Convergence on the project system. Critical Policy Studies10: 79–94.
81.
LimKF (2014) ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’: Uneven development, variegated neoliberalization and the dialectical differentiation of state spatiality. Progress in Human Geography38: 221–247.
82.
MaldonadoJKPetersonK (2018) A community-based model for resettlement: Lessons from coastal Louisiana. In: McLemanRGemenneF (eds) Routledge Handbook of Environmental Displacement and Migration. London: Routledge, 289–299.
83.
MarcusAR (1995) Inuit Relocation Policies in Canada and Other Circumpolar Countries, 1925–60: A Report for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (Final Report). Ottawa: Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Privy Council Office.
84.
MarsdenR (1999) The Nature of Capital: Marx after Foucault. London: Routledge.
85.
MathurHM (2013) Displacement and Resettlement in India. London: Taylor and Francis.
86.
MathurHM (2015) Climate change and displacement: Learning from resettlement in the development context. Social Change45: 118–130.
87.
MawdsleyE (2017) Development geography I: Cooperation, competition and convergence between ‘North’ and ‘South’. Progress in Human Geography41: 108–117.
88.
McDowellC (1996) Understanding Impoverishment: The Consequences of Development-Induced Displacement. Providence, RI: Berghahn Books.
89.
McDowellC (2002) Involuntary resettlement, impoverishment risks, and sustainable livelihoods. Australasian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies2.
90.
McDowellCMorellG (2007) Development and displacement: Institutionalizing responsibility. Development50: 33–38.
91.
McNamaraKEDes CombesHJ (2015) Planning for community relocations due to climate change in Fiji. International Journal of Disaster Risk Science6: 315–319.
92.
MilgroomJSpierenburgM (2008) Induced volition: Resettlement from the Limpopo National Park, Mozambique. Journal of Contemporary African Studies26: 435–448.
93.
ModiR (2009) Introduction: Displacement and resettlement – the global and the local context. In: ModiR (ed.) Beyond Relocation: The Imperative of Sustainable Resettlement. New Delhi: SAGE India, xxi–xxx.
94.
MolAPJ (2011) China’s ascent and Africa’s environment. Global Environmental Change21: 785–794.
NielsenKBNilsenG (2015) Law struggles and hegemonic processes in neoliberal India: Gramscian reflections on land acquisition legislation. Globalization12: 203–216.
97.
NilsenAG (2008) Political economy, social movements and state power: A Marxian perspective on two decades of resistance to the Narmada dam projects. Journal of Historical Sociology21: 303–330.
98.
NilsenAG (2010) Dispossession and Resistance in India: The River and the Rage. New York: Routledge.
99.
NyimaT (2010) Development discourses on the Tibetan plateau: Urbanization and expropriation of farmland in Dartsedo. Himalaya30: 79–90.
100.
OakesT (2016) Villagizing the city: Turning rural ethnic heritage into urban modernity in southwest China. International Journal of Heritage Studies22: 751–765.
101.
Oliver-SmithA (2010) Defying Displacement: Grassroots Resistance and the Critique of Development. Austin: University of Texas Press.
102.
OwenJMuriukiGKempD (2018) Livelihoods, Food Security and Mining-Induced Displacement and Resettlement. Brisbane: Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining, University of Queensland.
103.
ParasuramanS (1999) The Development DilemmaLondon: Macmillan Press.
104.
PrinceRDuftyR (2009) Assembling the space economy: Governmentality and economic geography. Geography Compass3: 1744–1756.
105.
PtackovaJ (2012) Implementation of resettlement programmes amongst pastoralist communities in Eastern Tibet. In: KreutzmannH (ed.) Pastoral Practices in High Asia: Agency of ‘Development’ Effected by Modernisation, Resettlement and Transformation. Dordrecht: Springer, 217–234.
106.
RogersSWangM (2006) Environmental resettlement and social dis/re-articulation in Inner Mongolia, China. Population and Environment28: 41–68.
107.
RogersSXueT (2015) Resettlement and climate change vulnerability: Evidence from rural China. Global Environmental Change35: 62–69.
108.
RoyA (2010) Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development. New York: Routledge.
109.
RutherfordS (2007) Green governmentality: Insights and opportunities in the study of nature’s rule. Progress in Human Geography31: 291–307.
110.
SanyalK (2007) Rethinking Capitalist Development: Primitive Accumulation, Governmentality, and Post-colonial Capitalism. New Delhi: Routledge.
111.
SargesonS (2013) Violence as development: Land expropriation and China’s urbanization. Journal of Peasant Studies40: 1063–1085.
112.
ScudderTColsonE (1982) From welfare to development: A conceptual framework for the analysis of dislocated people. In: HansenAOliver-SmithA (eds) Involuntary Migration and Resettlement. Boulder: Westview Press.
113.
SerjeM (2015) Resettlement projects as spaces of exception. In: SatirogluIChoiN (eds) Development-Induced Displacement and Resettlement: New Perspectives on Persisting Problems. London: Taylor and Francis, 111–124.
114.
ShiGQ (2018) Comparing China’s and the World Bank’s displacement policies over time: The ascent of the ‘resettlement with development’ paradigm. In: CerneaMMaldonadoJ (eds) Challenging the Prevailing Paradigm of Displacement and Resettlement. Abingdon: Routledge.
115.
ShiGQZhouJYuQN (2012) Resettlement in China. In: TortajadaCAltinbilekGBiswasAK (eds) Impacts of Large Dams: A Global Assessment. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 219–241.
116.
SimsK (2017) Gambling on the future: Casino enclaves, development, and poverty alleviation in Laos. Pacific Affairs90: 675–699.
117.
SingerJPhamHTHoangH (2014) Broadening stakeholder participation to improve outcomes for dam-forced resettlement in Vietnam. Water Resources and Rural Development4: 85–103.
118.
SmithN (1984) Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space. London: Verso.
119.
SNWTP Construction Committee Office (2015) “中国环境报：陕南持续发力清水永续北送” (China environment report: Southern Shaanxi continues to generate sustainable fresh water to be delivered north). Available at:http://www.nsbd.gov.cn/zx/mtgz/201512/t20151201_406204.html.
120.
TadgellADobersteinBMortschL (2017) Principles for climate-related resettlement of informal settlements in less developed nations: A review of resettlement literature and institutional guidelines. Climate and Development10(2): 102–115.
121.
TanY (2008) Resettlement in the Three Gorges Project. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
122.
TanYChenYHugoG (2009) Displacement and economic consequences of the Three Gorges Project: A case study of resettlers in Sichuan Province. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal18: 473–496.
123.
TanYHugoGPotterL (2005) Rural women, displacement and the Three Gorges Project. Development and Change36: 711–734.
124.
TanYZuoAHugoG (2013) Environment-related resettlement in China: A case study of the Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan Province. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal22: 77–107.
125.
Van MeijlT (2012) Changing property regimes in Māori society: A critical assessment of the settlement process in New Zealand. The Journal of Polynesian Society121: 181–208.
126.
VandergeestP (2003) Land to some tillers: Development-induced displacement in Laos. International Social Science Journal55: 47–56.
127.
VandergeestPIdahosaPBosePS (2007) Development’s Displacement: Ecologies, Economies, and Cultures at Risk. Vancouver: UBC Press.
128.
WangMLoK (2015) Displacement and resettlement with Chinese characteristics: An editorial introduction. Geography Research Forum35: 1–9.
WebberM (2012) Making Capitalism in Rural China. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
131.
WebberMHanX (2017) Corporations, governments, and socioenvironmental policy in China: China’s water machine as assemblage. Annals of the American Association of Geographers107(6): 1444–1460.
132.
WebberMMcDonaldB (2004) Involuntary resettlement, production and income: Evidence from Xiaolangdi, PRC. World Development32: 673–690.
133.
WehrweinGS (1937) An appraisal of resettlementJournal of Farm Economics19: 190–202.
134.
WilmsenB (2016) After the deluge: A longitudinal study of resettlement at the Three Gorges Dam, China. World Development84: 41–54.
135.
WilmsenB (2017) Damming China’s rivers to expand its cities: The urban livelihoods of rural people displaced by the Three Gorges Dam. Urban Geography39(3): 345–366.
136.
WilmsenBWebberM (2015a) Displacement and resettlement as a mode of capitalist transformation: Evidence from the People’s Republic of China. In: PriceSSingerJ (eds) Global Implications of Develpment, Disasters and Climate Change: Responses to Displacement from Asia Pacific. Abingdon: Routledge, 60–73.
137.
WilmsenBWebberM (2015b) What can we learn from the practice of development-forced displacement and resettlement for organised resettlements in response to climate change?Geoforum58: 76–85.
138.
WilmsenBAdjarteyDVan HultenA (2018) Challenging the risks-based model of involuntary resettlement using evidence from the Bui Dam, Ghana. International Journal of Water Resources Development. DOI: 10.1080/07900627.2018.1471390.
139.
WindsorJEMcVeyJA (2005) Annihilation of both place and sense of place: The experience of the Cheslatta T’En Canadian First Nation within the context of large-scale environmental projects. Geographical Journal171: 146–165.
140.
World Bank (2015) Resettlement Fact Sheet. Washington, DC: World Bank Group.
141.
WuJP (2015) Running away is the best? Ecological resettlement of ethnic minorities in Guizhou, China. Geography Research Forum35: 95–112.
142.
XueLWangMXueT (2013) ‘Voluntary’ poverty alleviation resettlement in China. Development and Change44: 1–22.
143.
XunLLBaoZM (2008) Government, market and households in the ecological relocation process: A sociological analysis of ecological relocation in S banner. Social Sciences in China29: 113–128.
144.
YanDCShiGQHuZJWangH (2016) Resettlement for the Danjiangkou Dam heightening project in China: planning, implementation and effects. International Journal of Water Resources Development33(4): 609–627.
145.
YehET (2005) Green governmentality and pastoralism in Western China: ‘Converting pastures to grasslands’. Nomadic Peoples9: 9–29.
146.
YehET (2013) Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
147.
YehETWhartonE (2016) Going west and going out: Discourses, migrants, and models in Chinese development. Eurasian Geography and Economics57: 286–315.
