The right to the settler colonial: Thiruni Kelegama, ‘The politics of rural access and settler colonialism: Weli Oya and the tensions of a right to the rural’, Dialogues in Human Geography, 2025 | settler colonial studies blog

The right to the settler colonial: Thiruni Kelegama, ‘The politics of rural access and settler colonialism: Weli Oya and the tensions of a right to the rural’, Dialogues in Human Geography, 2025

13Jun25

Abstract: This commentary extends Van Sant and Fairbairn’s right to the rural concept by examining how access claims operate in contested territories through the case of Weli Oya, Sri Lanka. Analysing this Sinhala settlement scheme at the edge of Tamil-claimed territories, I demonstrate how rural access claims transcend agricultural utility to serve territorial control projects and reinforce settler colonial dynamics. These tensions necessitate a more nuanced analytical approach to distinguish between emancipatory and oppressive rural access claims in contested landscapes.

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