settler colonial studies blog

It’s only a (settler colonial) question of time: Batool Mashaqi, Zahraa Zawawi, Huthaifa I. Ashqar, ‘Ecology of erasure: spatiotemporal colonial practices and the loss of Palestinian space, time, and lives’, GeoJournal, 90, #250, 2025

27Sep25

Abstract: This study critically examines transportation planning in the West Bank, revealing how it serves as a colonial mechanism of control and segregation, rather than a facilitator of urban growth and connectivity. Unlike cities that thrive as “living organisms” through integrated networks of roads and services, Palestinian territories are subjected to a meticulously crafted spatiotemporal colonialism through fragmentation, where movement is restricted, resources are unevenly distributed, and communities are deliberately isolated. Through an analysis of historical context, policies, zoning, and infrastructure prioritization, this study exposes the use of transportation planning as a tool to entrench colonial power, limit Palestinian self-determination, and erode the socioeconomic foundations of urban life. The findings underscore that transportation planning in the West Bank is not merely a logistical concern but a deliberate colonial strategy to reconfigure urban landscapes, control populations, and restrict Palestinian access to their own land. The study shows that the Israeli colonial power systematically strips away the quality of Palestinian life through relentless control over time and movement, turning checkpoints into sites where not only freedom but lives themselves are taken. Palestinian identity, however, extends beyond the human realm, woven into the land, water, and ecology—an enduring presence that resists erasure through its deep connection to place.

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Resisting forced displacement: Ibrahim M. Alsemeiri, Ciarán O. Carroll, Muhammad Nadir Al-Nuri Kamaruzaman, ‘Israeli Forced Displacement Engineering and Palestinian Sumūd in Gaza’, Open Journal of Social Sciences, 13, 9, 2025

27Sep25

Abstract: The ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza has resulted in the widespread killing of innocent civilians, along with the destruction of homes, universities, and critical infrastructure—deepening a humanitarian catastrophe that reflects a broader settler colonial agenda. This study investigates the deliberate strategies of forced displacement engineered by Israel in Gaza, and the corresponding practices of Palestinian sumūd (steadfastness) as forms of resistance. Situated within Settler Colonial Theory by (Patrick Wolfe, 1999), the research critically examines how Israeli military, legal, political, and media tactics function as mechanisms of population transfer and ethnic cleansing aimed at permanent demographic transformation. Drawing on thematic analysis of official Israeli government and military statements, reports from international organizations and media related to Forced Displacement, alongside thirty semi-structured interviews with Palestinians from diverse backgrounds, the study reveals the systematic nature of displacement and the resilience it engenders. Findings demonstrate that forced displacement in Gaza is not merely a wartime consequence but a central strategy of settler-colonial domination, with repeated displacements fracturing Palestinian social fabric and exhausting resistance. Palestinians’ refusal to comply with Israeli evacuation orders and their persistent rebuilding efforts embody sumūd, a powerful grassroots counter-strategy that transforms survival into political resistance. This steadfastness challenges settler-colonial attempts at erasure and asserts an enduring claim to land, identity, and futurity. The study underscores that while sumūd represents essential resilience, it must be supported by international legal accountability and global solidarity to effectively counter the machinery of ethnic cleansing. This research contributes critical insights to settler colonial studies, human rights discourse, and Palestinian resistance narratives, illuminating the urgent need for integrated approaches to halt ongoing displacement and uphold Palestinian rights.

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The markers of settler colonialism: Sophia Ford, ‘Marking a White Nation Through Historical Markers in the Midwest’, GeoHumanities, 2025

27Sep25

Abstract: This research examines how white hereditary organizations use historical markers in the Midwest—specifically Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri—to shape cultural memory and assert territorial control. Since the early 1900s, lineage organizations such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Daughters of the American Revolution have influenced public memory by promoting the Lost Cause narrative and Manifest Destiny in historical markers. Their impact extends beyond commemoration into citizenship, immigration, and public education, embedding white supremacist and colonial ideologies into broader public discourse. The Midwest offers valuable insights into the intersections of racial cultural memory and territory, as the U.S. government acquired the region for the expansion of chattel slavery and settler colonialism. By inscribing settler trails, glorifying white settlers, extending the Lost Cause beyond the South, and defending racist iconography, these hereditary organizations actively construct and maintain a vision of a white nation through cultural memory.

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Settler sport: Geena Carlisle, ‘”What’s it got to do with New Zealand?” Settler colonialism and the 1981 Springbok rugby tour to Aotearoa New Zealand’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2025

26Sep25

Abstract: In 1981 the South African Springbok rugby team toured Aotearoa New Zealand, bringing the nation head-to-head with apartheid sport and providing a catalyst for mass protests to break out. While the tour is remembered as having divided the nation and holds an important place in national memory, the anti-tour protests were far from homogenous and remain an under-researched topic in academia. The aim of this article is to reexamine the 1981 anti-tour protests from an intersectional feminist lens, building on literature that investigates the power dynamics of settler colonialism within the events of 1981. I focus on two under researched aspects of the anti-tour protests: the role of women, especially those active in feminist spaces; and the protests’ connection to Black activism, which peaked in the early 1980s in Aotearoa. The 1981 protests offer a critical site to interrogate national myths, identity, and notions of solidarity within a settler colonial context. I argue that while protest spaces often reproduced dominant settler colonial narratives and power dynamics, they also held the potential for forming decolonising solidarities when engaged with consciously and reflectively, and thus challenging entrenched power structures.

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Represent? Norhan Alshihabi, Peter Stanley Federman, ‘Intersecting paradigms of indigenous representation: Representative bureaucracy theory in the settler-colonial context’, Administrative Theory & Praxis, 2025

26Sep25

Abstract: This research proposes using representative bureaucracy theory, in conjunction with settler-colonial theory, to better understand how a lack of meaningful representation within government may help us to understand why and how Native American’s have struggled to move from passive representation to active representation, even within organizations and structures that are ostensibly for the purpose of promoting indigenous interests. This research suggests that utilizing a settler-colonial theoretical framework sheds light on the symbolic nature of representation of Native Americans in government, with implications for representation of indigenous peoples around the world. This study proposes a revised theoretical framework that explains this lack of representation as the result of bureaucratic institutions in the United States acting as part of a settler-colonial project, both in a historical and ongoing manner. Our findings indicate that even when constructed with good intentions, institutions intended to represent tribal interests may fail to serve the long-term economic and cultural needs of indigenous communities in the United States.

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An Indigenous foreign policy: Nadia Abu-Zahra, John Carlson, Veldon Coburn, ‘From Turtle Island to Palestine: settler-colonial Canada, genocide, and Indigenous foreign policy’, Third World Quarterly, 2025

26Sep25

Abstract: In this article, we question how Canada, so adamantly in favour of human rights and a rules-based order, can shield Israel from accountability for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. We give examples of everyday Canadian institutions built on the genocide of First Nations and invested in genocide through contemporary weapons companies and related industries. We quickly move, however, to understanding popular sentiment regarding genocide and how that has manifested in protests, encampments, and solidarity statements and actions. We identify how, over centuries, Indigenous nations have been and continue to be at the forefront of international diplomacy, unity, and visionary forms of protection of all peoples, lands, waters, plants, and wildlife. We contrast this with misinformed and ill-informed policy efforts that sustain settler colonialism in Turtle Island and Southwest Asia, including Palestine. We conclude the article with some thoughts on how the same path to freedom and justice lies ahead in both Turtle Island and Palestine, and how efforts to forge this path take place in active solidarity among Indigenous nations, including Palestine.

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Settler colonialism stinks: Mikko Joronen, ‘Polluting appropriations: Malevolent weathering of settler colonisation in Palestine’, Dialogues in Human Geography, 2025

26Sep25

Abstract: This paper offers a novel take on settler colonisation as a process of appropriating space through pollution. In the context of Palestine and Israel, it illustrates how colonial pollution operates through various material forms that bind air to surfaces– stench, noise, darkness, smoke, fire, ash, and debris– hence constituting what is called ‘malevolent weathering’. In doing so, the paper relates inhabitation and claims of appropriation to contamination of space, arguing, first, that in the context of settler colonisation, polluting functions as a central enabling condition for dispossessive violence. In addition to showing how such contaminations occupy, hold and take space through proliferation of colonial dirt, it argues, second, that polluting creates malevolent weathers that are imposed to purify and clean(se) spaces in order to make them hospitable for settler (re)inhabitation. The paper concludes by framing contamination as a profoundly spatial process that functions through appropriation, weathering, and dispossessive cleansing of space.

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Is it ‘or’, or perhaps ‘and’? Max Ajl, ‘Logics of Elimination and Settler Colonialism: Decolonization or National Liberation?’ In Matteo Capasso, Ali Kadri, The Imperialist Question in Middle East and North Africa, Routledge, 2026

24Sep25

Access the chapter here.

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Crimea as a settler colony? Every accusation is a confession: Greta Lynn Uehling, Decolonizing Ukraine, Rowman & Littlefield, 2025

22Sep25

Description: How the Indigenous People of Crimea Remade Themselves after Russian Occupation.

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Afraid? Aziz Rana, ‘Who’s Afraid of “Settler Colonialism”?’ Dissent, 72, 3, 2025, pp. 79-93

22Sep25

Excerpt: A defining hallmark of the second trump administration has been the extremity of the violence and threats it has directed at immigrants, especially those that are brown and Black. Masked agents in unmarked cars grab work-ers, parents, and students off the streets. Noncitizens languish in detention for purely political speech, while others are forcibly removed to maximum security prisons overseas or to “third countries” in secretive arrangements. Government videos revel in cruelty toward the growing numbers effectively disappeared.

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