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.