Contemporary enclosures and resistance: women in struggle in Ireland, Scotland and Brazilian Amazon

This paper traces a discussion between women to the fore of struggles against contemporary enclosures in Ireland, Scotland and Brazil. The forms of resource capitalisation; wildcat and corporate mining, 'rewilding' schemes and 'green' energy infrastructures, lead to different material effects and subjective experiences for those who inhabit the zones of intrusion, expansion and encroachment. They lead also to differentiated motivations for -and forms of- resistance by individuals and communities whose histories, cultures and livelihoods interdepend with the territories in which new movements are born or reborn. A discussion with women taking and remaking collective actions in their particular places reveals distinctive challenges, strategies and successes in the face of acute power inequalities, and highlight capital-labour antagonisms that lie outside of conventional readings of industrial and worker organising. The interconnectedness of the experiences across disparate territories that are shared here helps to makes visible the current wave of capitalist enclosure and the effects on rural, island and forest communities. Furthermore, the dialogue unveils the effective and positioned methods by which women make and remake communities of resistance on the grounds on which they tread, and create recognition, affection, solidarity and commitment with others across territories in ways that, as the paper concludes, point to revitalisation of a much needed global solidarity, from below.