No Remedy: Injustice and Constrained Citizenship in Indonesia's Plantation Zone

This contribution to the special issue examines a constrained version of citizenship in Indonesia's plantation zone. When corporations take hold of village land, residents experience devastating dispossession and a profound sense of injustice, yet they lack effective channels through which to claim rights as citizens or secure remedy from the government or corporations. Drawing on field research in West Kalimantan in 2010–15, the article outlines the dispossessory legal regime that deprives villagers of access to land and livelihoods, while undermining village government and absolving corporations of responsibility for the damage done. It then explores the affective terms in which villagers express their sense of injustice, and the steps they take to try to improve their situation. A final section contextualizes these findings in the broader plantation zone. It reflects on the colonial and post-independence origins of constrained citizenship, and the devastating army-orchestrated violence of 1965 that set the conditions for a military-crony-corporate cabal to grab land and inflict harm with impunity.