An explanation emphasizing scarcity of resources would argue the following: Land in Burundi is both scarce and extremely valuable. Between population growth, environmental degradation, and the predominance of the agricultural sector, it is unsurprising to see conflict emerge when even more people enter the country trying to make claims on this resource.
I agree that resource competition was an essential contributing factor to the local-level violence in Burundi’s transition period. However, resource competition alone is not a sufficient explanation to account for the character and persistence of returnee-stayee conflict in Burundi. First, several institutions, both formal and informal seem to have affected the level of conflict in addition to the scarcity of the resource. This is especially true of some of the formal bodies governing land, like the CNTB. Other institutional interactions also exacerbated these divisions, including perceived disadvantages in the national education system, and regularized practices among international organizations.
This lends plausibility to my argument that institutions which provide differential dividends (real or perceived) based on individuals’ migration history reify and exacerbate displacement-related cleavages. Future comparative case studies of return migration in other contexts could provide additional leverage to evaluate the role of institutions in development of these cleavages.
Second, exclusively focusing on resource competition can obscure the process of situational identity construction that can affect community dynamics; Scarcity of land alone cannot account for
the development of social identities of rapatrié and résident that persisted in Burundian communities outside the realm of resource competition, for example in the ways certain individuals describe how they can no longer share fire with their neighbors, or how only the returnee men sit and drink coffee in town. However, an institutional lens can illuminate how competing conceptions of deservedness and perceptions of relative deprivation can reify group divisions during post-conflict transitions. If, after interacting with certain institutions, individuals believe they are being treated differently based on their migration histories, this can create a greater sense of identification with an imagined community of like others. They may then adjust their future political and social behavior may adjust according to this more salient group identification.
Third, and relatedly, scarcity is what you make of it: Just because there is competition does not mean there will be violence, nor does it determine who the violence will be directed towards. 79 In addition to being a scare resource, in Burundi land holds particular cultural significance. In theory, if scarcity was the only issue, instead of violence you might see a proliferation of side payments or alternative mechanisms for diffusing conflict as opposed to dividing land. Had there not been this particular attachment to agrarian life, expanding the diversity of economic activity in Burundi may have produced better economic outcomes for both the government and many Burundians, especially since being tied to increasingly infertile land has contributed to the pervasive poverty and hunger.80
79 Van Leeuwen and Van der Haar 2016. Though developed independently, Van Leeuwen and van der Haar use similar arguments of cultural significance and framing to refute the argument that scarcity alone can explain violent land conflict, using evidence from both Burundi and Mexico. They also draw on Kalyvas 2006 and Autesserre 2010 to explain the emergence and direction of violence. However, they argue that institutions cannot explain the violence associated with land conflict, and instead cultural context or framing needs to be taken into account. I agree that framing and culture are important, however I also believe that institutions play a role, and that these institutions are not just formal laws or organizations, but include strongly held cultural practices that pattern behavior (what Van Leeuwen and Van der Haar call cultural frames), and the resulting dynamics can further shape post-conflict peacebuilding.
80 See McNeish, Hannah, “Wasting away in Burundi,” Al Jazeera 21 February 2015,
<https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/02/wasting-burundi-150218090629874.html>, accessed 15 May 2018.
Moreover, if scarcity were the only issue, returnees might have been satisfied with renting a house and the same small bit of land they might otherwise receive if they won in court, without taking on the risk of violence. But most interviewees did not accept this as a sufficient resolution to the issue.
When land competition pitted returnees against non-migrants, given cultural attachment to ancestral land, returnees viewed the land as rightfully theirs, even if they had left it behind during the war, and did not want to rent a house somewhere else. Without such a strong cultural attachment to land, more Burundian villagers may have been willing and able to pursue alternative forms of employment.
Residènts on the other hand, saw the land as their only means of survival, and having lived in that area for decades, did not know of any other familial land to which they could return. Therefore, the processes of displacement and return created a situation where not only were two groups competing for scarce resources, but displaced populations and non-migrants each expected the resource to be theirs in the status-quo. As such, failing to win a land case represented a net loss for either party, not a potential gain. Prospect theory then helps explain why, when presented with the possibility of losing that land, many Burundians were willing to take on enormous risk to guard against potential losses.
Population growth and degradation of land quality were frequently cited as issues in both interviews and the map-making exercise. Though, I would argue that these issues were not only linked to the increasing scarcity of resources, but to the disruption of the traditional way of life where individual families maintained inherited tracts of land far away from each other on the hillsides.81 As such, in this case both scarcity and cultural frames compounded the need to protect against future losses of land.
81 Van Leeuwen and Van der Haar 2016 make a similar argument.