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Social uprisings in response to privatization dynamics in the water sector have triggered widespread debate on the social and ecological impact of neoliberal water policies. Much of this debate remains in the urban and domestic water sector, thereby disregarding the struggles of marginalized urban and rural producers who use water for multiple purposes. Furthermore, while private providers are blamed for prioritizing profit over people, it is increasingly clear that while water may be a valuable commodity, the sector as a whole inhibits long-term profitability. Instead, using the concept of "accumulation by dispossession," the current process of privatization is understood as a new round of enclosures of the commons, implemented by a neoliberal state to open up new territories to capitalist development and to capitalist forms of market behavior. The contraction of global markets and the reconfiguration of the public sector as notions of nation and citizenship take on new meanings allow for the commodification and privatization of public goods and assets. Using the case of a Mexican irrigation district the paper shows how notions of scarcity are mobilized during neoliberal reform to reconfigure social relations of agricultural production so as to free up land, water, and labor for the market. This has not only resulted in large-scale dispossession of land and water, but also in stripping a group of their collective rights, and thereby dismantling a collective identity forged on past struggles over land and water. JEL Codes: Q15, Q25, Q28

The existing legal and policy framework regulating water service provision in Greater Maputo, Mozambique appears fixated on the official service areas. In doing so it inadequately addresses the geographically varied service provision modalities which characterise the city. We argue that the predominant legal and policy framework does little to support development of improved services in areas unserved by the formal utility. Although ad hoc measures recognising small-scale providers as a temporary alternative to service provision by a formal utility have been implemented, these measures appear designed to increase control over these providers rather than support the service delivery capacity of small-scale providers. Adapted from the source document.

Since the 1980s, a major change took place in public policies for water resources management. Whereas before governments primarily invested in the development, operation and maintenance of water infrastructure and were mainly concerned with the distribution of water, in the new approach they mainly focus on managing water resources systems by stipulating general frameworks for water allocation. This paper studies the rationales used to justify the water reform process in Kenya and discusses how and to what extent these rationales apply to different groups of water users within Likii catchment in the central part of the country. Adopting a critical institutionalist's perspective, this paper shows how the water resource configurations in the catchment are constituted by the interplay between a normative policy model introduced in a plural institutional context and the disparate infrastructural options available to water users as result of historically produced uneven social relations. We argue that, to progressively redress the colonial legacy, direct investments in infrastructure for marginalized water users and targeting the actual (re)distribution of water to the users might be more effective than focusing exclusively on institutional reforms.