Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures, Tables and Maps
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Property Rights and the Structure of Politics
- Part II
- Ethnicity
- 4 Ethnic Strangers as Second-Class Citizens
- 5 Ethnic Strangers as Protected Clients of the State
- Part III
- Part IV
- Appendix Land Politics Cases and Sources
- References
- Index
5 - Ethnic Strangers as Protected Clients of the State
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures, Tables and Maps
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Property Rights and the Structure of Politics
- Part II
- Ethnicity
- 4 Ethnic Strangers as Second-Class Citizens
- 5 Ethnic Strangers as Protected Clients of the State
- Part III
- Part IV
- Appendix Land Politics Cases and Sources
- References
- Index
Summary
During the time of Houphouet, the Baoulé were installed in our territory par force! In the case of any issue or complaint, the Baoulé would summon the sous-prefet to come and persecute us.
(FPI cadre, Abidjan 16 October 2010)Although ethnic heterogeneity is a pervasive feature of much of rural Africa, the local political structures that organize interethnic relations vary a great deal across space. Such variation produces different forms of local hierarchy, different avenues and venues for political representation (or subordination) of ethnic outsiders, and different imbrications of the state in local-level power relations.
Where the state itself is the allocator of land rights, the political character and dénouement of land-related conflict are likely to contrast starkly with what we have observed in the customary land tenure regimes (LTRs), where local-level customary authorities (lineage heads or chiefs) control land allocation and adjudication. In zones of in-migration governed under statist land regimes, the central government itself has organized the in-migration and settlement (the “implantation”) of ethnic outsiders. These are cases of the migrations organisées or migrations officielles, where state power has been used to “administratively insert” settlers into the locality.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Property and Political Order in AfricaLand Rights and the Structure of Politics, pp. 127 - 176Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014