Layered Resources and Layered Politics: Dispossession by Environmental Degradation at the Frontlines of Oil Extractivism
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Extractivism and associated environmental-social conflicts have attracted growing attention in recent years. Drawing from archival research, documentary analysis, and ethnographic field work, this article analyzes the decades-long struggle between the oil industry, state authorities, and fisher-farmers over salinization, contamination, and associated dispossession at the frontlines of oil extractivism in Mexico. Analyses of extractive conflicts have frequently centered on smallholders’ struggles against land appropriation. I argue, however, that smallholders’ dispossession through hydrocarbon extraction more commonly materializes in the degradation of their environments than in direct appropriation of their lands. Drawing on recent theorizations in subterranean political ecology and voluminous resource geography, the study shows that consideration of layered resources and layered politics is needed to enhance understanding of oil-related dispossessions and cognate contestations. The article presents extractive frontlines as sites of sacrifice and stamina, involving diverse tactics by local residents and social movements to hold the oil industry responsible, and techniques of pressure and persuasion by the oil industry and the state to stave off local claims for compensation and crush resistance. The study contributes to discussions on access to layered resources and politics, dispossession by environmental degradation, struggles over recognition and responsibility, and visible and invisible forms of contestation and repression amidst extractivism.
Author: Anja Nygren
Institution: University of Helsinki
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Awards: G1199571208, G1310588731, G4619242430
OpenAlex ID: W4412635684