Development has uprooted people not only from homes, but homelands to which they may have been tied by old ancestral bonds. Sometimes it is highly visible. The removal of people to make room for roads, railway lines, industrial plants, harbours and urban expansion and redevelopment has been evident in centres where decisions are made and where those who portray social changes to the rest of society – including journalists, academics, activists – are typically located. It can be far less visible when it occurs in the more politically peripheral places where dams, canals and mines are developed, or where people are cleared from forests, either for logging or for conservation. Less visible still is displacement brought about without such interventions as eviction or forcible resettlement, for instance, when development policies or processes undermine livelihoods or render habitats unliveable or unsafe.

Displacement deprives people of many things, some of which are fundamental to their lives, including homes, productive assets, livelihoods, familiar environments to which skills and practices have been attuned, community networks and a sense of local belonging. What determines the extent of their deprivation and suffering depends on what they face in their new location and the resources with which they arrive there. If an uprooted community could simply be transplanted from one location to another site that is equally productive, healthy and desirable, then the deprivation would consist simply of the loss of accustomed place and the stress of relocation.