Re-distribution from above - the politics of land rights and squatting in coastal Kenya

Using empirical evidence collected from the coastal district of Kenya, an area with a long history of private land ownership which is also situated in a country with one of the most comprehensive efforts at land tenure reform dating from the colonial period, this report challenges the key assumptions of the proponents of land indivualization. In so doing, the author not only points to the many dysfunctionalities associated with land privatisation, including the numerous conflicts it generates on account of the dispossessions and landlessness associated with it, it also reinforces the growing critique that customary land tenure is far more complex and flexible than its critics are prepared to concede.