Mass Resettlement and Political Violence

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between mass resettlement and political conflict. The author theorizes that states can use mass resettlement to extend control over contested frontiers. Settlers whose land rights are politically contested will disproportionately participate in violence to defend the incumbent regime. The theory is tested using data on resettlement and violence in postcolonial Rwanda. The author shows that the Hutu revolutionary regime resettled some 450,000 Hutus after independence to frontier and Tutsi-dominated areas to defend itself against external Tutsi militias. The author contends that the invasion of the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in the 1990s threatened the Hutu settler population because the RPF sought the repatriation of Tutsis onto redistributed land and that consequent land insecurity incentivized violence against Tutsis in 1994. The article identifies the positive effect of resettlement on locality violence during the genocide via a geographic regression discontinuity design. A process tracing of one notoriously violent resettled commune supports the theorized causal sequence. In light of these findings, the author suggests that research should refocus on the way that conflict shapes ethnic demography and that, to understand participation in state-sponsored violence, scholars should attend to the threat posed by regime change to individual livelihoods.

The Moral Career of the Genocide Perpetrator: Cognition, Emotions, and Dehumanization as a Consequence, Not a Cause, of Violence

“… 5. In March 1992, Hutu military, militia, and civilian authorities with the assistance of chief propagandists (who disseminated anti-Tutsi tracts in person before directly encouraging violence on the government’s Radio Rwanda) organized a massacre of several hundred Tutsi in Bugesera. Some scholars (e.g., McNamee 2018) attribute this violence and the violence that followed to land conflicts unique to the region; however, only one respondent in this study mentioned its significance for the genocide. Of note, the journalist responsible for incitement on the radio was fired for his role in the massacres and then rehired during the genocide (1999 HRW report). …”

Bloodlines: National Border Crossings and Antisemitism in Weimar Germany

“…Outside the realm of antisemitism, research on the Armenian Genocide indicates that conflict between nationalist Turks and the Armenians was most salient along borderlines due to fear of Russian influence (Bloxham 2005). Similarly, hatred toward Tutsis was more severe in Rwanda's border regions, partly due to radical mobilization by recent nationalist immigrants (McNamee 2018). Closer to home, recent ethnographic work on the U.S.-Mexico border shows that status anxiety drove anti-immigrant groups from across the country to southern Arizona in the early 2000s to work with local vigilantes and prop up what they perceived as fundamental weaknesses in the armor of the nation-state (Elcioglu 2020).…”

Hábitos Y Estado De Higiene Bucal en Población Indígena Con Discapacidad De La Comunidad Misak, Colombia

“…11 Overall, the Misak community with disabilities have poor oral hygiene, which may compromise their well-being in the future, violating their right to oral health and quality of life. [31][32][33][34][35] This in turn suggests that categories like race/ethnicity and disability increase the oppressions, exclusions and vulnerabilities by decreasing their quality of life and increasing their risks, with higher levels of dental care needs among racial, ethnic, and disabled groups. 12 One of the strengths of the present study is the fact that it was conducted using the census on disabled people of the indigenous community.…”