You Left, We Stayed Behind: Displacement-Based Identity Formation After Civil War

• In Event: Ethnographies of Migration and Displacement

Abstract

Conflict between returning and non-migrant populations is a pervasive yet frequently overlooked issue in post-conflict societies. Whereas there has been immense interest in understanding the connections between ethnic identities, politics, and violence in civil war, much less attention has been paid to the role of non-ethnic identity politics in these contexts. I argue that population displacement and return after civil war creates new, migration-based identity divisions that shape local politics in much the same way that we think about ethnic identities. Understanding the complexity of intersecting and evolving identities in civil war contexts is a difficult task, as the researcher must gather data on how individuals and communities affected by violence self-identify, and how their conception of “the other” has or has not changed over time. Ethnographic techniques like embeddedness, flexibility, and repeated interaction allow researchers to tease out the nuances of this meaning-making process. Therefore, this article uses an ethnographic approach to trace the production of returnee and non-migrant identity categories in post-civil war Burundi. Drawing on evidence gathered in Burundi and Tanzania between 2014 and 2016, I demonstrate how migration-based identity divisions were evident in the widespread use of different labels to distinguish “les résidents” from “les rapatriés”, the development of narratives of difference between returnees and non-migrants, and the perception of discrimination based on migration history. These displacement-based identities layered on top of, and worked in alliance with, pre-existing ethnic and class divisions. The result was the creation of a new landscape of social and political divisions, in which conflict between returnees and non-migrants was one of the primary sources of violence during peacetime.

Author

• Stephanie Schwartz, University of Southern California