In the areas surrounding the Lekki Free Zone, in Nigeria’s Lagos State, economic and social inequality has increased since 2010, including between locals and in-migrants. The Yoruba ethnic group is dominant in the region, and tend to extract higher rents from non-Yorubas from other parts of the country. By contrast, it is migrants who capture most of the better-paid factory jobs in the zone, while locals who are employed there tend to work as security guards, gardeners and cleaning staff (Adunbi, 2022). Local young men, known as omo-onile (‘sons of the soil’), now disaffected and without formal occupation, have turned to extortion of funds from those buying or upgrading property in the area, or even parking their car at the roadside. Some have also targeted investors in the Lekki Free Zone (Goodburn, Knoerich, Mishra & Calabrese, 2024).

Although few locals have found formal sector employment in the Lekki Free Zone, more have benefited economically from the broader development of the local area. An influx of migrant workers has provided rental opportunities to local communities, with wealthier omo-onile constructing ‘face-me-face-you’ blocks of rooms to let, and the villages nearest the zone have seen an increase in market stalls, street vending and small enterprises. Population increase has thus led to commercial development in the area, benefiting those locals who could afford to construct rooms or engage in small businesses. Those without the capital to invest in construction or entrepreneurship have not experienced the same benefits, leading to complaints of increased inequality (Goodburn, Knoerich, Mishra & Calabrese, 2024).

Around Liaoshen Industrial Park in Kapeeka, Uganda, economic and social inequality have increased since the zone’s establishment in 2015 (Wyrod, 2019). Many locals have experienced significant indirect economic benefits from the park. Local agricultural markets have considerably expanded, both to supply the zone’s food processing plants and to cater to the demands of the rapidly increasing local population. Another major benefit for locals is the growth of the market for rental housing in Kapeeka and surrounding villages. Market stalls, street vending and small enterprises such as entertainment and catering have all also boomed. Kalagala, one of the villages nearest the zone, has seen its quiet bi-weekly market expanded to a lively daily market until well after dark (Goodburn, Knoerich, Mishra & Calabrese, 2024). However, migrants from northern Uganda have lower social status than Baganda locals and are more willing to work long hours under harsh conditions for low pay in the zone. Those who fail to find sustainable jobs in Liaoshen’s factories often end up as domestic servants or farm labourers for wealthier Baganda locals (Goodburn, Knoerich, Mishra & Calabrese, 2024). These distinctions may exacerbate long-standing Ugandan ethnic divisions.

Assembly line jobs in the factories of India’s Sri City were available to only specific groups of locals, typically women aged 18-25 with an education to at least age 16. Local men, by contrast, were seen as disruptive and were forced to find work outside the zone. Where this was not possible, households became dependent on the temporary earning power of one daughter. Protests broke out in 2010 over the failure of the zone to provide at least one job per household, as promised during land acquisition (The Hindu, 2010).

Wealthier former farmers with larger landholdings received enough compensation for their land to enable them to capitalise on opportunities from zone development (Aggarwal & Garg, 2024). They upgraded their homes by adding extra rooms, and in better located, wealthier and higher-caste villages, rented these rooms out to white-collar in-migrants, thus gaining a new source of income. For most villagers, however, expanding homes to offer rental accommodation was infeasible financially and practically, especially in villages further from the industrial sites and lacking paved roads or access to public transport.

The industrial city and SEZ of Noida, in India’s Uttar Pradesh, has at least three forms of inequality generated or exacerbated by industrial development. First, because the city has attracted large-scale in-migration since the 1980s, many former landowners have developed lucrative new livelihoods providing rental and other services to migrants, whereas former landless farm labourers have struggled to generate sustainable incomes (Bali & Bhatia, 2021). A second form of inequality is that between wealthy villagers and impoverished blue-collar migrant workers, who may be exploited for rent, food and other services in villages as well as on the factory floor (Mishra, forthcoming). A third form is the economic and cultural gulf between villagers and the new professional urban elites who have taken up residence in the new, gated urban estates, with exclusive access to leisure and other amenities (Das & Kumar, 2023).

The dispossession of local villagers from their farmlands for SEZ establishment in 2001 in Polepally, Telangana, exacerbated existing inequalities between Dalit communities (India’s lowest castes) and upper caste groups, with the former faring worse inter-generationally and becoming locked in debt traps (Agarwal and Levien, 2019). Nearly all of those who lost land were from backward castes, while those of higher status were spared dispossession. Dalit households also suffered disproportionately from the uncompensated acquisition of common grazing land, on which many had depended, with nearly three-quarters having to liquidate all their livestock (Agarwal and Levien, 2019). By contrast, upper-caste families who had retained most of their landholdings were able to engage in land speculation, cementing their economic dominance.