Land Grab Processes in Romania and Bulgaria: A Historical Continuity Perspective

Abstract

Although they are positioned in the periphery of the Western economic core Romania and Bulgaria are different from the Third World countries that were exploited and colonized by the Western powers in the preceding centuries where currently land grab processes are at work. However it is observed that because of their geographical and political standings those countries are also influenced by the ongoing global land grab processes albeit in different ways. The externalities of processes of enclosure primitive accumulation or accumulation by dispossession as defined in general by the critical literature have continued to inflict particularly small landholders as did in other societies in different parts of the world. However upon their accession to the European Union land grab processes in those countries entered into a new historical phase discerned by incoming new actors such as equity fundsand the unique dynamics such as the transformation of land into a speculative asset and an energy source.