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Abstract
In 2007, the Government of Tanzania and the Government of Burundi in partnership with the UNHCR adopted the Tanzania Comprehensive Solutions Strategy (TANCOSS). TANCOSS offered a choice between repatriation and naturalization to 220,000 Burundian refugees who had been living in three rural settlements in Western Tanzania (Ulyankulu, Katumba and Mishamo) since 1972. It was an unprecedented intervention and it garnered international attention and support (Milner 2014). Initially, obtaining citizenship was meant to be conditional on relocation away from the refugee settlements. This plan, however, was renounced, and ultimately those who opted for citizenship were permitted to remain on the land of the settlements. Following naturalization, new citizens’ relationship with the land they occupy in Tanzania has changed – both in legal and symbolic terms. This article explores how former Burundian refugees were able to access land in exile and how, following naturalization, they seek recognition of their land rights. In the existing literature, scholars have highlighted the prominence of discourses of autochthony in the ways that both citizenship and land rights have come to be defined and asserted in contexts of migration. There is a risk that this emphasis hides other instances, in which autochthony is not the dominant trope through which citizenship or land rights are claimed, as this article demonstrates in the case of Burundian refugees in Tanzania.
En 2007, le gouvernement de Tanzanie et le gouvernement du Burundi en partenariat avec l’UNHCR ont adopté la Stratégie de solutions globales en République-Unie de Tanzanie (TANCOSS). La TANCOSS a proposé à 220 000 réfugiés burundais qui avaient vécu dans trois colonies rurales de l’Ouest de la Tanzanie (Ulyankulu, Katumba et Mishamo) depuis 1972, de choisir entre une rapatriation et une naturalisation. Cette intervention sans précédent a attiré l’attention et le soutien international (Milner 2014). Initialement, l’obtention de la citoyenneté n’avait lieu qu’à condition d’un départ des colonies de réfugiés. Ce plan a cependant été abandonné et en fin de compte, les personnes ayant opté pour la citoyennneté ont eu le droit de rester sur les terres des colonies. Suite à leur naturalisation, la relation des nouveaux citoyens avec les terres qu’ils occupent en Tanzanie a changé – aussi bien en termes légaux que symboliquement. Cet article explore comment d’anciens réfugié burundais ont pu avoir accès à des terres en exil, et comment, suite à leur naturalisation, ils ont cherché la reconnaissance de leurs droits fonciers. Dans la litérature actuelle, les chercheurs soulignent la prominence de discours natifs dans la façon dont la citoyenneté tout comme les droits fonciers en sont venus à être définis et affirmés dans des contextes de migration. Le risque est que cet accent cache d’autres circonstances dans lesquelles le caractère local n’est pas le maître-mot à travers lequel la citoyenneté ou les droits fonciers sont revendiqués, comme cet article le démontre dans le cas des réfugiés burundais en Tanzanie.
Notes
1 Over time these three settlements became known as ‘The Old Settlements’.
2 Malkki’s fieldwork was conducted in 1985 and the book includes also insights from later correspondence with the informants.
3 For detailed account of what aspects motivated people’s choice between naturalization and repatriation see Hovil and Kweka (Citation2008).
4 For more details on the political negotiations behind the naturalization scheme see Milner (Citation2013, Citation2014).
5 This trend has already been observed by Daley (Citation1989) and it has intensified since.
6 The interviews with senior government officials and international actors were conducted in English. The interviews in the settlements were conducted by myself in Kiswahili. Interviews in Kirundi were conducted with support of a local research assistant.
7 During the three stages of fieldwork, I have lived in a local boarding school, with a host family and in a rented room on the premises of a Catholic church.
8 Exceptions include for example the case of Angolans in Zambia (see Bakewell Citation2002); Guatemalans in Mexico (Long Citation2013), and studies of local integration of various refugee groups in Uganda (Dryden-Peterson and Hovil Citation2004).
9 I use the word access as denoting all possible means by which a person is able to benefit from land (Ribot and Peluso Citation2003).
10 Their case studies include the Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia, and Kenya.
11 There is a limited, though influential, body of literature on Burundian refugees in Tanzania including the work of Malkki (Citation1995), Rose (Citation2001) and Turner (Citation2010).
12 Van Hoyweghen (Citation2001, 16–17) puts forward an argument that the resettlement villages constructed in the mid-1960s for Tutsi refugees from Rwanda and later in 1972 for Hutu refugees from Burundi functioned as a pilot project for the Ujamaa villagisation programme launched in 1974.
13 In it important to highlight that this is not the case in other refugee hosting locations in Tanzania. For example, contestations over alienation of land for refugee camps have emerged in 2017 around the expanding Nyaragusu camp in Western Tanzania, Kigoma region.
14 The settlement office in Ulyankulu holds a registry that lists all the plots distributed in 1970s. The registry, however, was never updated, and it does not include any of the later land transfers.
15 The use of terminology has changed from Settlement Commandant to Settlement Officer in 1998 Refugee Act. In Kiswahili, however, it remained the same, and people refer to the Settlement Officer as Mkuu wa Makazi or just Mku (literally the head of the settlement or simply head).
16 It is important to note that claims to land are also often insecure for Tanzanians in other parts of the country (Askew et al 2013). Where former refugees’ situation differs is that their land is not recognised under the Village Land Act and they do not even have customary village land ownership.
17 Tanzania’s Land Act classifies land as: (1) reserved land; (2) village land; and (3) general land. Tenure types and development regulations depend on the category under which the land falls.
18 It is important to highlight that these studies were written recently and are framed by the discourse of post-conflict reconstruction. For 40 years now no significant research has been done on customary land law, tenure security and local land management outside conflict situations in the Burundian context (Kohlhagen Citation2011)
19 Another of the three settlements housing the group of 1972 Burundian refugees. It is located in Mpanda District, Rukwa Region.
20 Ten cell (10 household) and street leaders are the lowest authority in the Tanzanian local government structures
21 Ten cell (10 household) leaders are the lowest authority in the Tanzanian local government structure.
22 Approximately 147 USD
23 Approximately 455 USD
24 e.g. Liberian and Sierra Leonean refugees in Guinea (Fielden Citation2008), Liberian refugees in Ghana (Dick Citation2002), or South Sudanese refugees in Uganda (Kaiser Citation2006).