July 14, 2026

Democracy in the Twenty-first Century

Irina Velicu

This thesis examines land grabbing in post-socialist Romania, a country that has emerged as a major site of land grabbing in Europe yet remains largely overlooked in global debates on this issue. Existing scholarship has largely approached land grabbing through a productivist lens, focusing on dynamics of capital accumulation, yet little attention has been given to how the erosion of rural livelihoods, and the marginalisation of rural (reproductive) labour has made land vulnerable to commodification. Moreover, while the dire prospects of land dispossession are a common concern for most socio/environmental and agrarian studies, not enough research explores the small-scale, cumulative, intimate forms of land grabbing and the slow, everyday violence through which dispossession occur. Additionally, existing studies often portray land grabbing resistance in Eastern Europe as weak or implicit, overlooking more deliberate forms of mobilisation. Addressing these gaps, the thesis looks into how the post-socialist transition created structural conditions that enabled land grabbing. It shows how the crisis of social reproduction in the countryside has eroded the capacity of rural households to sustain livelihoods on the land. These dynamics, combined with weak institutions and rapid integration into global markets, created fertile ground for land grabbing to emerge. Second, it explores how peasants experience dispossession, that takes place through small-scale, dispersed acquisitions ("pin-prick" land grabbing) as a form of slow, intimate violence. The unequal power dynamics among peasants, officials, and economic elites produce small-scale land disputes and normalise extractive violence, ultimately enabling large-scale land grabbing. Third, it analyses the forms of resistance that have emerged in response, tracing how peasant organisations and activists mobilise against land grabbing and articulate alternative agrarian futures. The study engages with Critical Agrarian Studies, Feminist Political Ecology, and Environmental Justice to conceptualise land grabbing as a multidimensional form of intersectional slow violence. The empirical focus is placed on post-socialist Romania, which remains the EU country with the highest number of peasants despite land grabbing drastically increasing in the last decade. Methodologically, the research employs a qualitative, mixed-methods approach combining systematic literature review, semi-structured interviews, participatory observation, and secondary data analysis. Two empirical case studies from Transylvania provide insight into how land grabbing is produced through incremental, small scale land transactions that accumulate into significant land grabs.

Overall, the thesis contributes to a novel, interdisciplinary understanding of land grabbing as an environmental injustice deeply embedded in the crisis of social reproduction on the backdrop of which insidious and intimate forms of violence emerge.

Keywords: land grabbing, slow violence, environmental justice, agrarian question, post socialism