‘Barahunga Amahoro—They Are Fleeing Peace!’ The Politics of Re-Displacement and Entrenchment in Post-War Burundi

Abstract

Ahead of the 2015 contested elections, Burundi got embroiled in a vast refugee crisis only a decade after the end of the civil war. Against the official government efforts to depoliticize the crisis, the paper draws on interviews with Burundians across space and time to underscore the fundamentally political character of migration decisions after the war, and argues for the applicability of the social contract theory for a bottom-up conception of political incorporation and citizenship. The evidence suggests that the current wave is no 'repeat' but rather that people are entrenching in displacement against the negative trust capital incurred by the state. People's narratives complicate the very terms of displacement by offering an alternative conception of belonging-through transtemporal and transnational comparisons, they see their movements as amongst a set of 'partial citizenship regimes.' More broadly, the paper hopes to contribute to our understanding of anticipatory movement, re-displacement and entrenchment (as the refusal to move) and, more broadly, people's politico-spatial orientations in post-war space as well as the subversions of this order from below through strategies both physical and discursive.

Ambiguous Outcomes of Returnees’ Land Dispute Resolution and Restitution in War-Torn Burundi

“…Moreover, in respect to the 2015 new wave of forced displacement, humanitarian organisations have reported that a large number of Burundian refugees have yet to return, which implies that many refugees would consider a return to be a choice rather than a necessity [64]. In the current situation where the delay to file claims on pre-displacement land to the CNTB has passed, we anticipate that most Burundian refugees might not return to their places of origin.…”

“…Despite a strong presence of the state in local communities, dispute resolution processes that aimed at land and property restitution have been contested either overtly or discreetly at the community level. Land restitution remains a critical, complex and highly politically sensitive and possibly destabilising issue in Burundi [13,64]. However, state control over local restitution dynamics has increased, because of subsequent policy and legal changes, and the massive return of refugees.…”

On Broker Exploitation and Violence: FromMadalalito Cartel Bosses in the Food Aid Resale Economy of Tanzanian Refugee Camps

“…In 2015, he fled to Tanzania with nearly 200,000 other Burundians to escape the political crisis that resulted in widescale protests, an attempted coup and state‐sponsored repression when Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza overstayed his two‐term limit established after the Burundian civil war. Victor, like most others, had already lived as a refugee in Tanzania during the war but struggled to reintegrate upon returning to Burundi without safe access to land or livelihoods (Falisse and Niyonkuru, 2015; Purdeková, 2017; Schwartz, 2019). Dalia is a Congolese woman who fled South Kivu province in 1996 due to violence during the First Congolese War.…”

Intricate links: Displacement, ethno-political conflict, and claim-making to land in Burundi

“…With a demographic pressure of over 350 inhabitants per square kilometre, and more than 90% of the population involved in subsistence farming, land constitutes a key determinant of local livelihoods, social status, identity and belonging in Burundi. Post-independence ethnopolitical turmoil, violence, and displacement have contributed to widespread tenure insecurity and land disputes (International Crisis Group, 2003;Kohlhagen, 2012;Purdeková, 2016;Sinarinzi and Nisabwe, 1999;Zeender and McCallin, 2013). This paper focuses on claim-making to land in settings where multiple waves of (forced) displacement and (partial) return have led to overlapping, competing claims that lead to tensions and animosity at the local level.…”