Abstract

Successive interventions in South Sumatra's peat swamps including logging, transmigration, plantations, conservation, and restoration have led to changing land use permits, boundaries, canal systems, different land use classifications, and prohibitions. This article examines how those overlapping territorial regimes reshaped access to wetland resources in Perigi and Riding, Ogan Komering Ilir, and how their effects were differentiated within the local population. It uses 'hidden population' as an analytical concept for politically-produced invisibility rather than as an official or self-ascribed identity. The analysis draws primarily on fieldwork conducted in 2018, supplemented by relevant contextual observations from research undertaken in the same area in 2019 and 2021 and other more recent data sources. Territorialization made earlier histories of use and resource claims progressively less legible within formal governance. Accounts of livelihood loss were particularly pronounced among people dependent on interior swamp resources and poorly connected to village institutions. Legal, institutional, ecological, and economic ambiguities further constrained decisions about fishing, cultivation, canal maintenance, and intergenerational livelihood transfer. Accounts distinguish household adaptations from collective efforts to defend land, including canal construction and negotiation during a plantation dispute. The case contributes to political ecology and feminist political ecology by explaining produced invisibility as an uneven, relational, and negotiated outcome of territorial governance.

Keywords: differentiated access, feminist political ecology, hidden populations, peatlands, South Sumatra, territorialization

How to Cite:

Handoyo, , Wijaya, T., Effendi, R., Nurfatriani, F., Rochmayanto, Y., Hidayat, D. C., Munawaroh, & Ramawati, , (2026) “Claiming the swamp: How territorialization produces hidden populations in South Sumatra's peatlands”, Journal of Political Ecology 33(1): 10184. doi: https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.10184