Home, Again
Home, Again Stephanie Schwartz
Refugee Return and Post-Conºict
Violence in Burundi
In the mid-1990s, hun-
dreds of thousands of refugees returned to Bosnia and Herzegovina, the war
ªnally over. Amid their homecoming, a song became popular in Sarajevo:
“Sarajevan [people] / While Bosnian cities burned/ You were far away/ When
it was difªcult/ You left Sarajevo . . . When you come back one day I shall
greet you/But nothing will ever be the same / Don’t be sad then, it is nobody’s
fault/You saved your head, you stayed alive.”1 The song speaks to a climate of
resentment, discrimination, and marginalization prevalent in Bosnian society,
just not along the lines one might expect.2 After a war largely characterized by
ethnic and religious rivalries, the lyrics exemplify how the legacy of forced mi-
gration and subsequent refugee return created new group divisions in Bosnia
between those who stayed and those who ºed.
This kind of volatile animosity following return migration is not a phenome-
non exclusive to Bosnia. In fact, conºict between returning and nonmigrant
populations after civil war is a nearly ubiquitous issue for societies recovering
from such wars. In Iraq, after years of displacement, the government urged
refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) to come home. These re-
turning families often faced violent backlash from those who stayed behind,
causing many to ºee again.3 In South Sudan, as tens of thousands of refugees
and IDPs returned in anticipation of independence in 2011, tension emerged
Stephanie Schwartz is Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern
California.
The author extends her deepest thanks to Séverine Autesserre, Jonathan Blake, Kate Cronin-
Furman, Page Fortna, Tonya Putnam, Jack Snyder, the anonymous reviewers, and participants at
the Columbia University International Politics Seminar for their feedback over the course of this
project. Geoffrey Basesa and Achel Niyinkunda were invaluable interpreters and interlocutors in
Burundi and Tanzania. The author also thanks Beatrice Edmonds and Zeina Laban for their re-
search assistance. The research for this project was made possible by generous grants from the
National Science Foundation, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Columbia Global Policy Initiative,
and Columbia University’s Department of Political Science.
1. Ivana Macek, Sarajevo Under Siege: Anthropology in Wartime (Philadelphia: University of Penn-
sylvania Press, 2009), p. 116.
2. Anders H. Stefansson, “Refugee Returns to Sarajevo and Their Challenge to Contemporary
Narratives of Mobility,” in Lynellyn D. Long and Ellen Oxfeld, eds., Coming Home? Refugees, Mi-
grants, and Those Who Stayed Behind (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), p. 171.
3. Deborah Isser and Peter Van der Auweraert, “Land, Property, and the Challenge of Return for
Iraq’s Displaced” (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 2009).
International Security, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Fall 2019), pp. 110–145, https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00362
© 2019 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
110
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Home, Again 111
among individuals who had lived as IDPs in Khartoum, those who had
been refugees in East Africa, and those who had stayed in southern Sudan
during the war. Hostility between these groups played out in competition for
employment, struggles for land, and youth gang violence in urban centers.4 In
El Salvador, return migration from the United States changed the nature of vi-
olence against the state. In the 1980s and early 1990s, civil war was the primary
threat to peace. During this time, roughly 2 million Salvadorans ºed to the
United States.5 In the past ten to ªfteen years, however, transnational criminal
organizations have become the main source of insecurity in the region. Experts
have linked this rise in gang activity to the increase in U.S. deportations of
Central American migrants to their countries of origin.6
The prevalence of insecurity related to return migration is especially puz-
zling considering that repatriation is often thought to be both the solution and
end point to migration crises.7 For example, peace agreements have called for
the facilitation of return migration as a way to “undo” the negative impact of
war, and international observers have used refugee repatriation as an indicator
of postwar stability.8 Although scholars and practitioners alike have pushed
back against the conception of return as the most natural and pragmatic solu-
tion to forced migration crises—pointing to the political incentives behind pro-
moting repatriation,9 documenting cases in which return migration disrupted
4. See Marc Sommers and Stephanie Schwartz, “Dowry and Division: Youth and State Building in
South Sudan” (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 2011); and Gabriella McMichael,
“Rethinking Access to Land and Violence in Post-War Cities: Reºections from Juba, Southern Su-
dan,” Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 26, No. 2 (October 2014), pp. 389–400, doi.org/10.1177/
0956247814539431.
5. Micaela Sviatschi, “By Deporting 200,000 Salvadorans, Trump May Be Boosting Gang Recruit-
ment,” Monkey Cage blog, Washington Post, February 12, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/
news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/02/12/by-deporting-200000-salvadorans-trump-may-be-
boosting-gang-recruitment.
6. Ana Arana, “How the Street Gangs Took Central America,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 84, No. 3 (May/
June 2005), p. 98.
7. On the history of repatriation as the preferred policy solution, see Katy Long, The Point of No Re-
turn: Refugees, Rights, and Repatriation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
8. Gerard McHugh, “Integrating Internal Displacement in Peace Processes and Agreements”
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings–University of Bern Project on Internal Displacement, Sep-
tember 2007), https://www.brookings.edu/research/addressing-internal-displacement-in-peace-
processes-peace-agreements-and-peace-building; Marita Eastmond, “Transnational Returns and
Reconstruction in Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina,” International Migration, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Au-
gust 2006), pp. 141–166, doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2435.2006.00375.x; and Brad K. Blitz, Rosemary
Sales, and Lisa Marzano, “Non-Voluntary Return? The Politics of Return to Afghanistan,” Political
Studies, Vol. 53, No. 1 (March 2005), pp. 182–200, doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2005.00523.x.
9. See B.S. Chimni, “From Resettlement to Involuntary Repatriation: Towards a Critical History of
Durable Solutions to Refugee Problems,” Refugee Survey Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 3 (October 2004),
pp. 55–73, doi.org/10.1093/rsq/23.3.55; and Rebecca Hamlin, “Illegal Refugees: Competing Policy
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International Security 44:2 112
local power structures,10 and demonstrating that many migrants do not have a
home into which they can reintegrate—repatriation remains the de facto pre-
ferred solution to refugee crises.11
Still, with notable exceptions,12 the security implications of return migration
are undertheorized in political science. This is a stark contrast to the myriad
connections scholars have established between out-migration and civil war.
For example, research demonstrates that refugee ºight can regionalize conºict
and open channels to transnational violence;13 refugee camps can prolong
wars in sending countries by providing safe haven for rebels;14 diaspora con-
gregating abroad can inºuence conºict outcomes in their countries of origin by
lobbying for, organizing, and ªnancing conºicts at home;15 and political elites
can manipulate population ºows into other countries to gain strategic leverage
Ideas and the Rise of the Regime of Deterrence in American Asylum Politics,” Refugee Survey
Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 2 (June 2012), pp. 33–53, doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hds004.
10. Disruption of power structures may include creating insecurity as well as peacebuilding. For
case studies, see Tim Allen and Hubert Morsink, eds., When Refugees Go Home: African Experiences
(Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1994); Richard Black and Khalid Koser, eds., The End of the Refu-
gee Cycle? Refugee Repatriation and Reconstruction, Vol. 4: Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (New
York: Berghahn, 1999); and Long and Oxfeld, Coming Home?
11. On voluntary repatriation as the preferred solution, see United Nations Secretary General Ban
Ki Moon, “Decisions of the Secretary-General: 4 October Meeting of the Policy Committee
Re: Decision No. 2011/20: Durable Solutions: Follow Up to the Secretary-General’s 2009 Report on
Peacebuilding” (New York: United Nations, October 4, 2011).
12. Mathijs Van Leeuwen and Gemma Van der Haar, “Theorizing the Land–Violent Conºict
Nexus,” World Development, Vol. 78 (February 2016), pp. 94–104, doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2015
.10.011; and Marieke Van Houte, Return Migration to Afghanistan: Moving Back or Moving Forward?
(Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016).
13. Idean Salehyan and Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, “Refugees and the Spread of Civil War,” Inter-
national Organization, Vol. 60, No. 2 (April 2006), pp. 335–366, doi.org/10.1017/S0020818306060103;
Fiona B. Adamson, “Crossing Borders: International Migration and National Security,” Interna-
tional Security, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Summer 2006), pp. 165–199, doi.org/10.1162/isec.2006.31.1.165;
Claire L. Adida, David D. Laitin, and Marie-Anne Valfort, Why Muslim Integration Fails in Chris-
tian-Heritage Societies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2016); Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen,
“Violent Radicalization in Europe: What We Know and What We Do Not Know,” Studies in Conºict
& Terrorism, Vol. 33, No. 9 (August 2010), pp. 797–814, doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2010.501423; and
Tamar Mitts, “From Isolation to Radicalization: Anti-Muslim Hostility and Support for ISIS in the
West,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 113, No. 1 (February 2019), pp. 173–194, doi.org/10.
1017/S0003055418000618.
14. Sarah Kenyon Lischer, Dangerous Sanctuaries: Refugee Camps, Civil War, and the Dilemmas of
Humanitarian Aid (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005).
15. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007); Sarah Wayland, “Ethnonationalist Networks and Transnational
Opportunities: The Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora,” Review of International Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (July
2004), doi.org/10.1017/S0260210504006138; and Paul Hockenos, Homeland Calling: Exile Patriotism
and the Balkan Wars (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003).
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Home, Again 113
in war.16 Although studying the consequences of out-migration is important in
its own right, they often cannot be fully understood without reference to pre-
vious cycles of return and repeat migration.
Moreover, there may be differences between how out-migration affects secu-
rity in receiving states and how mass refugee return shapes conºict dynamics
in countries of origin. Repatriated populations enter a ºuid environment in
their home states, as those in power (often alongside international interven-
ers) attempt to reform governing institutions in an effort to restructure politi-
cal and economic competition. Their return may aggravate old rivalries or
even alter the nature of social divisions.17 Without acknowledging how social
processes such as mass displacement may have changed underlying commu-
nity structures, state-building processes may inadvertently, or intentionally, fa-
vor returnees or nonmigrants. Such biases, real or perceived, can exacerbate
tensions over property rights, access to public goods, or citizenship rights, and
potentially create new sources of insecurity. Yet, much of the existing theory on
post-conºict state building implicitly assumes that causes of violence do not
change over the course of the war, and therefore focuses on how to build insti-
tutions to contain these issues.18 By failing to take into account how migration
may affect the operation and legitimacy of government institutions after
wartime, institutions designed to build peace are likely to miss—or, worse,
exacerbate—new sources of conºict.
To address these lacunae, this article examines the connections between
mass refugee return, peace, and security in countries of origin. I offer a theory
16. Kelly M. Greenhill, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2010).
17. On how social processes of war alter post-conºict social structures, see Elisabeth Jean Wood,
“The Social Processes of Civil War: The Wartime Transformation of Social Networks,” Annual Re-
view of Political Science, Vol. 11, No. 1 (June 2008), pp. 539–561, doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.8
.082103.104832; and Liisa H. Malkki, Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology
among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
18. See, for example, Charles T. Call and Elizabeth M. Cousens, “Ending Wars and Building Peace:
International Responses to War-Torn Societies,” International Studies Perspectives, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Feb-
ruary 2008), pp. 1–21, doi.org/10.1111/j.1528-3585.2007.00313.x; Caroline Hartzell, Matthew Hod-
die, and Donald Rothchild, “Stabilizing the Peace after Civil War: An Investigation of Some Key
Variables,” International Organization, Vol. 55, No. 1 (Winter 2001), pp. 183–208, doi.org/10.1162/
002081801551450; and Cyrus Samii, “Perils or Promise of Ethnic Integration? Evidence from a
Hard Case in Burundi,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 107, No. 3 (August 2013), pp. 558–
573, doi.org/10.1017/S0003055413000282. A notable exception is Milli Lake, “Building the Rule of
War: Postconºict Institutions and the Micro-Dynamics of Conºict in Eastern DR Congo,” Interna-
tional Organization, Vol. 71, No. 2 (Spring 2017), pp. 281–315, doi.org/10.1017/S002081831700008X.
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International Security 44:2 114
to explain both the prevalence and character of returnee-nonmigrant divisions
in post-conºict societies, arguing that return migration creates new, situational
identity cleavages based on where individuals lived during the war. Because
forced displacement is one of the most common consequences of civil war, the
potential to categorize groups based on collective experiences of staying or
ºeeing is common across post-conºict settings. I then argue that in each civil
war context, these latent divisions become salient and antagonistic when post-
conºict institutions (such as property rights, cultural traditions, or language
laws) intentionally or unintentionally provide differential dividends to indi-
viduals based on their displacement history.
I lay out my theory and empirical evidence in the following ªve sections.
First, I present my theory of return migration and conºict and then outline the
methodological approach, case selection, data collection methods, and analysis
of positionality and potential bias in the data. Second, I demonstrate how mass
refugee return to Burundi after the country’s 1993–2005 civil war created a cul-
ture of hostility between returnees and nonmigrants that manifested in wide-
spread local-level conºict over land. Third, I analyze how local institutions
in Burundi, namely informal and formal land governance, hardened the coun-
try’s migration-related divisions. Fourth, I demonstrate that because return
migration fomented new local conºict, when a new national-level electoral
conºict arose in 2015, many returnees were already primed to leave the coun-
try and ºed (again) to Tanzania. Thus, previous experiences of return migra-
tion shaped both the character and timing of renewed population ºight in
2015. The ªnal section discusses how understanding the connections between
return migration and local conºict is critical for policymakers and humanitar-
ian actors engaged in peacebuilding.
Theory and Empirical Approach
In this section, I offer a theory to explain both the prevalence of return
migration-related divisions in post-conºict societies and their variation in form
and intensity. I then outline my research design and ethnographic approach.
a theory of return migration and conºict
The theory draws on two key ªndings from the anthropological and socio-
logical literatures on political violence. First, scholars have demonstrated that
experiences of forced migration can alter conceptions of identity and national-
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Home, Again 115
ism, change individuals’ priorities in the postwar period, and create new social
networks both within and across borders.19 Second, research shows that the
experience of violence during civil war—who it is directed at and why—is fre-
quently tied to local-level social dynamics, such as rivalries over land rights,
power-brokering, clan competition, and inequality between villages. These
local cleavages often differ signiªcantly from the national division viewed
as the broader cause of the war, such as religion, ethnicity, or national politi-
cal grievances.20
Starting from these premises, I offer a two-part theory. First, I argue that
return migration after civil war creates new local divisions based on where in-
dividuals lived during the war. These group categories may be as simple as
“those who stayed in-country” and “those who left,” or they can be further de-
lineated by the type of displacement (internal vs. international),21 host-country
characteristics (region, political relationship to country of origin, language,
etc.), or time period (e.g., era of ºight and/or duration of exile). For individu-
als living abroad, shared experiences of adapting to new environments, com-
bined with the very act of leaving, help create new networks and signals
of group likeness. Some characteristics that deªne these networks are dis-
crete and observable—language, accent, way of dress, religion. Others are
19. On identity and nationalism, see Malkki, Purity and Exile. On postwar priorities, see Wood,
“The Social Processes of Civil War.” On transnational networks, see Jennifer M. Brinkerhoff, “Dias-
poras and Development: What Role for Foreign Aid?” in Louis A. Picard, Robert Groelsema, and
Terry F. Buss, eds., Foreign Aid and Foreign Policy: Lessons for the Next Half-Century (New York:
Routledge, 2015), pp. 375–393; Yevgeny Kuznetsov, ed., Diaspora Networks and the International Mi-
gration of Skills: How Countries Can Draw on Their Talent Abroad, WBI Development Studies (Wash-
ington, D.C.: World Bank, 2006); Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of
Transnationality (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999); Alejandro Portes, Luis E. Guarnizo,
and Patricia Landolt, “The Study of Transnationalism: Pitfalls and Promise of an Emergent Re-
search Field,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 22, No. 2 (January 1999), pp. 217–237, doi.org/10.1080/
014198799329468; and Jeffrey H. Cohen, “Remittance Outcomes and Migration: Theoretical Con-
tests, Real Opportunities,” Studies in Comparative International Development, Vol. 40, No. 1 (March
2005), pp. 88–112, doi.org/10.1007/BF02686290.
20. Séverine Autesserre, The Trouble with the Congo: Local Violence and the Failure of International
Peacebuilding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Stathis N. Kalyvas, “The Ontology
of ‘Political Violence’: Action and Identity in Civil Wars,” PS: Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 1, No. 3
(September 2003), pp. 475–494, doi.org/10.1017/S1537592703000355; and Stathis N. Kalyvas, The
Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
21. For the purposes of this article, I limit the inquiry to groups displaced across borders. Internal
displacement may function similar to, though not exactly the same as, international displacement
in the theory. The patterns I describe, however, will be most visible when a group fully exits the
country and then returns as a result of their experiences in other countries, and the opportunity for
narratives of competition over nationalism and citizenship.
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International Security 44:2 116
more nuanced, based on perceptions of differences in national ideology or pa-
triotism, roles in the prior conºict, access to wealth and education, or deserv-
edness of peace dividends. Because most civil wars result in some form of
forced displacement, the opportunity to categorize individuals according to
those who stayed and those who left and returned is common across post-
conºict contexts.
Second, these displacement-based cleavages become more salient when
post-conºict institutions create real or perceived differential outcomes for indi-
viduals based on their migration history. Institutions include both formal
bodies and regulations, or informal practices at the national, regional, and
community levels. Intentional institutional design choices or ambiguities in
interpretation and implementation can produce different outcomes for return-
ees and nonmigrants. For example, national language laws may affect re-
turnees who spent protracted periods of time in host countries with a different
predominant language by impeding access to jobs, education, and health care.
Informal land inheritance practices may create new sources of conºict when
family members return from exile seeking to resettle in their home areas. Inter-
action with these formal and informal institutions can create an endogenous
cycle whereby institutional biases shape and reify migration-related divisions:
as individuals begin to understand their position in society as connected to
their migration history, they adjust their future political and social behavior ac-
cordingly. For instance, if national language laws preclude Arabic-speaking re-
turnees from pursuing jobs in the government, as they did in South Sudan,
and narratives exist about returnees being less patriotic than those who stayed
and fought for their country, returnees may interpret their inability to access
jobs as the nonmigrants deliberately keeping them from power. These return
migrants may then change their behavior in other aspects of political, eco-
nomic, and social life accordingly. Of course, as with other types of identity di-
visions, elites may manipulate migration-based cleavages to their strategic
advantage. Societies where institutions do not provide differential dividends
to returnees and nonmigrants, or where policymakers quickly remedy dispar-
ities and ambiguities rather than exacerbate them, are less likely to see violent
tension between these groups.
Importantly, the theory does not predict that divisions between returnees
and nonmigrants will be stagnant. Rather, it allows for change depending on
interaction with institutions and elites over time. Tensions between returnees
and nonmigrants are therefore best understood on a scale from absence, to
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Home, Again 117
peaceful delineation of categories, hostility, and violence. Widespread tensions
between returning and nonmigrant populations after civil war can shape fu-
ture large-scale conºict dynamics, should additional issues arise at the na-
tional level. Thus, the actual manifestation of violence during a renewed crisis
may occur along migration-related lines, as individuals use the cover of na-
tional politics, or ally with elite actors, to follow through on the local returnee-
nonmigrant rivalries.
research design
I developed the theory inductively based on observations in South Sudan from
2011 through 2013. I then use an in-depth ethnographic case study of refugee
return following Burundi’s 1993–2005 civil war to evaluate the theory against
evidence in a second case.22 In a case study approach, theory development and
theory testing are often intertwined, and this project is no exception.23 But by
developing the primary theoretical constructs in South Sudan ªrst, and then
conducting the ethnographic study in a different context, I am able to get
better analytical leverage to assess whether the expected dynamics appear out-
side the conditions in which they were originally developed.
Both the methodology and case selection offer a number of advantages. Pro-
cess tracing and thick description using ethnographic data are effective tools
for assessing evidence against theory-generated expectations and eliminating
alternative explanations.24 This type of inquiry is especially suited to docu-
menting and evaluating complex meso- and micro-level dynamics over time
such as the intricate interactions between return migration, community iden-
tity, institutions, and violence, which are central to my theory.25 Whereas sur-
22. Stephen Van Evera notes that, in a single case study, “process tracing often offers strong tests
of a theory.” Understanding the antecedent conditions necessary for the theory to operate then re-
quires examining other cases. Van Evera, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997), pp 65–66.
23. James Mahoney, “Process Tracing and Historical Explanation,” Security Studies, Vol. 24, No. 2
(April 2015), pp. 200–218, doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2015.1036610.
24. On case studies, see Van Evera, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science; James
Mahoney, “The Logic of Process Tracing Tests in the Social Sciences,” Sociological Methods & Re-
search, Vol. 41, No. 4 (November 2012), pp. 570–597, doi.org/10.1177/0049124112437709; and Alex-
ander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005). On thick description, see David Collier, Henry E. Brady, and
Jason Seawright, “Sources of Leverage in Causal Inference: Toward an Alternative View of Meth-
odology,” in Henry E. Brady and David Collier, eds., Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared
Standards, 2nd ed. (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littleªeld, 2010), pp. 161–200.
25. Sarah Elizabeth Parkinson, “Organizing Rebellion: Rethinking High-Risk Mobilization and
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International Security 44:2 118
vey work often requires researchers to impose external categorizations to
develop survey instruments, by using an ethnographic approach, I am able
to gather data on the meaning-making processes themselves and explore how
individuals’ ideas, beliefs, values, and preferences are embedded in power re-
lationships in their communities without externally framing the narratives at
the outset.26 Additionally, semi-structured interviews, repeat interactions, and
metadata allow researchers to identify and apprehend why certain political be-
havior makes sense when considered in context. This metadata is especially
important when working with communities that have recently experienced
the type of violence that leads to mass forced migration. Individuals in these
areas are likely to be skeptical of outsiders, and key informants will likely have
participated in or witnessed violence. Analyzing metadata, such as dissimula-
tion or nonverbal communication (e.g., silences, gestures, and tone of voice)
can reveal useful information about how social and political dynamics inform
what interviewees are willing to say and how they prefer to portray them-
selves to outsiders.27
Burundi is a particularly useful case for studying refugee return. The coun-
try has experienced repeated cycles of forced migration, which allows for the
investigation of my theoretical expectations about differentiation among sub-
sets of return migrants who ºed to different destinations, at different times, or
to different types of host countries. The timing was such that return migration
had been completed no more than ten, but no less than two, years from when I
began data collection. This timing allowed for migration-related divisions to
develop, ebb, or persist, and thus provided the opportunity to explore change
over time.
Social Networks in War,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 107, No. 3 (August 2013), p. 420,
doi.org/10.1017/S0003055413000208.
26. Dvora Yanow, “Dear Author, Dear Reader: The Third Hermeneutic in Writing and Reviewing
Ethnography,” in Edward Schatz, ed., Political Ethnography: What Immersion Contributes to the Study
of Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), pp. 275–302; Parkinson, “Organizing Rebel-
lion,” pp. 418–432; Lorraine Bayard de Volo and Edward Schatz, “From the Inside Out:
Ethnographic Methods in Political Research,” PS: Political Science and Politics, Vol. 37, No. 2 (April
2004), pp. 267–271, doi.org/10.1017/S1049096504004214; Lisa Wedeen, “Reºections on Ethno-
graphic Work in Political Science,” Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 13, No. 1 (May 2010),
pp. 255–272, doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.052706.123951; and Erica S. Simmons and Nicho-
las Rush Smith, “Comparison with an Ethnographic Sensibility,” PS: Political Science & Politics, Vol.
50, No. 1 (January 2017), pp. 126–130, doi.org/10.1017/S1049096516002286.
27. Lee Ann Fujii, “Shades of Truth and Lies: Interpreting Testimonies of War and Violence,” Jour-
nal of Peace Research, Vol. 47, No. 2 (March 2010), pp. 231–241, doi.org/10.1177/0022343309353097.
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Home, Again 119
Burundi is also a hard case for my theory. Unlike in South Sudan, migration
from Burundi was highly correlated with preexisting ethnic cleavages: the ma-
jority of refugees in Tanzania were Hutu, whereas Tutsi were more likely to
stay in-country during the war. Therefore, in expectation refugee return would
be more likely to exacerbate these preexisting ethnic divisions rather than pro-
duce new, cross-cutting, migration-related divisions.
Finally, the 2015 electoral crisis in Burundi provided a unique opportunity to
evaluate how the experience of return migration affects individuals’ future be-
havior. Faced with political uncertainty, many Burundians were forced (again)
to make a decision whether or not to ºee the country. I was thus able to explore
whether prior experiences of return affected individuals’ future decisionma-
king in a particularly high-stakes context.
conªrming and disconªrming evidence
Having developed the core aspects of this theory in South Sudan, I outlined a
set of indicators for evaluating how well the argument held in other environ-
ments. A monthlong exploratory trip to Burundi allowed for both preliminary
deductive evaluation of the theory and additional inductive reªnement. In
particular, on this preliminary trip I observed that land governance was the
likely intervening institution at play reifying identity categories in Burundi (as
opposed to my observations about language laws in South Sudan). I then re-
turned to Burundi (and later Tanzania) to conduct the primary data collection
for the ethnographic case study.
Based on my theory, I expected to see new group categorizations in Burundi
between returning and nonmigrant populations, potentially cutting across
preexisting divisions such as ethnicity. Because there were two distinct waves
of out-migration, and markedly different characteristics between host coun-
tries, there could be additional delineation of the returnee group according to
the era in which they ºed or country to which they ºed. Further, if these divi-
sions were particularly strong, I expected that competition between these
groups would converge around institutions that were perceived to provide dif-
ferent outcomes to migrants and nonmigrants.
If my theory did not ªt the Burundian context, respondents would be more
likely to focus on general malaises of the community (poverty, health) or to
highlight preexisting divisions, such as ethnicity, religion, political party, or
other local-level rivalries, as the primary cleavages in their community. Evi-
dence that returnee-nonmigrant labels were used simply to couch references to
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International Security 44:2 120
preexisting divisions, such as ethnicity, would also suggest that migration-
related divisions were less important.
I then used the 2015 national electoral crisis to further examine the salience
of return-related divisions. Evidence from my two trips to Burundi prior to the
crisis established that tension along the return migration-based cleavage cen-
tered on land ownership. Therefore, if these divisions were particularly salient,
I expected Burundian refugees to cite land conºict between returnees and
nonmigrants as among their reasons for renewed ºight. I also anticipated that
some Burundians would have tried to exit Burundi before the opening of
the borders following the 2015 conºict. If the migration-related divisions were
less salient, I expected Burundian refugees to cite push factors related to the
national-level political conºict (ªghting between political parties, targeting for
recruitment into armed groups, repression of perceived opposition voices) or
general fear of war as their primary reason for ºeeing. An absence of migra-
tion, or attempted migration, prior to 2015 would also indicate that the local-
level issues related to migration were less important compared to national
political party divisions.
data collection
I gathered data for this project over the course of nine months of research
on both sides of the Burundi-Tanzania border from 2014 to 2016.28 Overall,
I conducted 258 semi-structured interviews with Burundian civilians, inter-
national humanitarian organization staff, Tanzanian and Burundian gov-
ernment ofªcials, and Tanzanian villagers, in addition to countless hours of
ªeld observation.
I conducted the research in three primary areas: (1) villages in Makamba
28. This project was conducted under Columbia University’s Institutional Review Board protocol
no. AAAN7454. In Burundi, I obtained approval from the Ministry of the Interior. In Tanzania, I
conducted research with a permit from the Ministry of Home Affairs to enter the refugee camps,
reapproved monthly in 2015 and 2016. Normally, international research is approved by Tanzania’s
Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH). Because of upcoming elections, however,
the COSTECH review board was not meeting and I was advised that the government may sup-
press research on refugee issues. Instead, my local partner organization advised that they take the
research project under their umbrella, which did not require COSTECH approval. Although this
sufªced in practice, I wanted to ensure the Tanzanian government approved of the project, so,
upon returning to Tanzania to conduct follow-up interviews in 2017, I applied and received
COSTECH approval (no. 2017-287-NA-2017-139). On the difªculties and ethical considerations in
obtaining local research approvals, see Kate Cronin-Furman and Milli Lake, “Ethics Abroad: Field-
work in Fragile and Violent Contexts,” PS: Political Science & Politics, Vol. 51, No. 3 (July 2018),
pp. 607–614, doi.org/10.1017/S1049096518000379.
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Home, Again 121
Province in Burundi; (2) the Nyarugusu Refugee camp in Tanzania; and
(3) Ilagala village, a small farming town in Tanzania’s Kigoma region.
Makamba Province received the most returnees from Tanzania to Burundi af-
ter the civil war. I selected villages in Makamba to get a diversity of settings
and experiences (e.g., rural hillsides, town centers, Peace Villages, and areas
with known issues of land conºict or relatively fewer known issues of land
conºict.). Nyarugusu was the ªrst camp to receive refugees from Burundi in
Tanzania when violence broke out in Burundi in 2015. Finally, I included a
non-camp ªeld site in Tanzania to explore the nature of migration after the
Burundian civil war, but prior to the renewed conºict in Burundi that began in
April 2015, commonly referred to as the “third mandate crisis.” I chose the vil-
lage of Ilagala because of its reputation as a clandestine destination for
Burundians wishing to live in Tanzania, and because it was the site of a recent
International Organization for Migration pilot program to register Burundian
“irregular migrants.” Through the program, Burundians living illegally in
Ilagala who could prove they were refugees from the 1993 civil war were
given a type of Tanzanian identity card that allowed them to live legally in the
area for two years. Individuals outed as illegal migrants could face imprison-
ment or deportation, and would be wary of publicly identifying as Burundian
or speaking to outsiders. Therefore, by choosing a village that had already ex-
perienced a registration program, I was, by my presence, less likely to jeopar-
dize their safety in the community.
I adapted my sampling methods per the demands in each site. In Makamba
Province, I used a “random-walk method” to collect semi-structured inter-
views in the villages, in addition to key-informant and expert interviews. In
Nyarugusu, I devised a random-walk procedure, stratiªed by residential zone.
I conducted both randomly selected and nonrandom informant interviews in
all the Burundian zones open in camp at the time.29 In Ilagala, I used snowball
sampling, rather than random walks, to better protect the safety and anonym-
ity of interviewees.
29. For the randomized interviews in the refugee camps, I conducted an estimated census of shel-
ters in each zone. I counted the shelters in one block of the zone, and used the count to extrapolate
an approximate number of houses and total population of each zone. I then used a random,
number-generated guide based on the approximate number of shelters to the closest 100 to select
the houses that I would approach for an interview. Not all interviews, however, were randomized.
Some were conducted with the elected leaders of the blocks, with individuals who approached me
directly, snowball-referred informants, and with Burundian and Tanzanian staff of NGOs in the
camps, among others.
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International Security 44:2 122
positionality and bias
The primary aspect of my positionality that could have biased the data was
that because I am a young, white, American, female, many of my interviewees
assumed I was a humanitarian aid worker.30 I took a number of precautions to
combat this perception. I hired my own driver most days while in Makamba
and Ilagala, rather than riding in a nongovernmental organization (NGO) ve-
hicle. The camp managers in Tanzania, however, required that I enter in an
NGO vehicle. I therefore limited my association with the NGOs in other ways:
I walked through the camp to conduct interviews rather than traveling in the
residential zones by car; I never wore an NGO badge or a shirt with a logo
(which all NGO staff were required to do); and I repeatedly emphasized in my
informed-consent process that I was not with an NGO or a government
agency, and I could not offer respondents any immediate assistance in ex-
change for speaking with me.31
Still, because most of the white women in the area were aid workers, I am
conscious in analyzing interview data that participants may still have thought
that I worked with an NGO, and therefore framed their stories to better elicit
aid. I analyzed interviews in which the interviewees placed themselves and
their families as the sole victims with a measure of caution (for example, in a
land conºict, the interviewees may also have been perpetrators of violence).
Most important for my theory, however, was not culpability in violence or
victimhood, but who interviewees identiªed as the competing sides in con-
ºicts: Did they say they were attacked by other Hutus? By the government?
Or, did they frame the conºict as occurring between returnees and non-
migrants? Therefore, even responses intended to establish interviewees’ de-
servedness of humanitarian aid are unlikely to have biased the analysis of
the existence and salience of return migration–related situational identities.
Cycles of Forced Migration in Burundi
Although there have been many instances of forced migration in Burundi since
independence, I focus on three primary cycles. First, in 1972 a selective geno-
30. On positionality, see Yanow, “Dear Author, Dear Reader.” On perceptions of researchers as aid
workers or missionaries, see Elisabeth Jean Wood, “The Ethical Challenges of Field Research in
Conºict Zones,” Qualitative Sociology, Vol. 29, No. 3 (September 2006), pp. 373–386, doi.org/
10.1007/s11133-006-9027-8.
31. On occasion, if respondents in the refugee camp indicated they were facing a speciªc issue, I
referred them to the NGO in camp that provided the appropriate care.
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Home, Again 123
cide in Burundi, in which the predominantly Tutsi government organized the
killing of 200,000–300,000 Hutu civilians, sent at least 217,000 Burundians
across the border to refugee camps in Tanzania (known as the “Old
Settlements”).32 Policymakers refer to this group of refugees as the “1972 case-
load.” Some of these 1972 refugees returned to Burundi in the late 1980s,
whereas others remained in Tanzania.
The second mass displacement began in 1993 with the assassination of
President Melchior Ndadaye, and spiked again in 1996 through 1997 at the
start of the civil war. Again, hundreds of thousands of Burundians ºed to
Tanzanian refugee camps and villages. Most of these refugees were housed in
a different set of refugee camps, known as the “New Settlements,” and the ex-
isting camps that housed primarily the 1972 refugees were renamed the “Old
Settlements.” The international community and Burundian policymakers refer
to this cohort as the “1993 caseload.” Like in 1972, refugees ºeeing in the
1990s were primarily Hutu, with the majority congregating in Tanzania. Tutsi
civilians were more likely to stay in-country, though many were displaced
internally, and some ºed to Rwanda or elsewhere in the region. Some of the so-
called 1993 caseload had also ºed in 1972, spending only a handful of
years back in Burundi before ºeeing again. The “1993 caseload” label is there-
fore a misnomer: it more accurately refers to refugees who lived in the
New Settlements.
Finally, in 2015, amid a renewed political crisis more than 413,000 Burundians
ºed to neighboring countries.33 More than half of these refugees ºed to Tanza-
nia, while the other half escaped to Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of
Congo, and Uganda.
32. René Lemarchand, The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa (Philadelphia: University of Penn-
sylvania Press, 2009), p. 129; and Eveline Wolfcarius and Edwin Seleli, “Repatriation of 1972 Bu-
rundian Refugees Hits 50,000 Mark” (Geneva: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee
[UNHCR], September 16, 2009), http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/latest/2009/9/4ab0db636/
repatriation-1972-burundian-refugees-hits-50000-mark.html. These estimates do not include urban
refugees. For discussion of urban refugees in Tanzania, see Marc Sommers, Fear in Bongoland: Bu-
rundi Refugees in Urban Tanzania, Vol. 8: Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (New York: Berghahn,
2001). On the history of displacement in Burundi, see Prisca Mbura Kamungi, Johnstone Summit
Oketch, and Chris Huggins, “Land Access and the Return and Resettlement of IDPs and Refugees
in Burundi,” in Christopher Huggins and Jenny Clover, eds., From the Ground Up: Land Rights,
Conºict, and Peace in Sub-Saharan Africa (Pretoria, South Africa: Institute for Security Studies, 2005),
pp. 196–205.
33. This was the peak refugee count in March 2018. UNHCR, “Operations Portal: Burundi Situa-
tion,” Refugee Situations (Geneva: UNHCR, accessed October 6, 2018), http://data2.unhcr.org/
en/situations/burundi?id(cid:2)212.
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International Security 44:2 124
Importantly, during each of these cycles, government agents and civilians
who remained in-country expropriated land left behind by Burundians
in exile.34
Starting around 2002, with the civil war drawing to a close, hundreds of
thousands of Burundians living abroad returned to Burundi. Some returned
by choice, others by force. Tens of thousands of the Burundians living in the
New Settlements did not want to go back. Many feared that their land in
Burundi had been taken and they would have no place to which to return.35
In delaying their return to Burundi, however, refugees ran the risk of being as-
sociated with the splinter rebel group/opposition party, the FNL, which main-
tained a presence in refugee camps in Tanzania. Despite their common origins
as Hutu-nationalist rebel groups formed in exile, the FNL continued ªghting
after the primary insurgent group (turned political party),
the Conseil
National Pour la Défense de la Démocratie–Forces pour la Défense de la
Démocratie (CNDD-FDD), took power in 2005.36
In 2007, Tanzania announced that
it would begin closing the New
Settlements housing these refugees. Some of the Burundians in these camps
found ways to remain in Tanzania illegally rather than repatriating, often
living in small towns such as Ilagala and farming for Tanzanian villagers. In
2012, Tanzania closed down the last of the New Settlements, forcing the
remaining 37,000 refugees to return to Burundi through a process called
“orderly repatriation.”37
34. See Aymar Nyenyezi Bisoka and An Ansoms, “Arène foncière au Burundi: Mieux comprendre
les rapports de force” [The land arena in Burundi: Better understanding the balance of power], in
Filip Reyntjens, Stef Vandeginste, and Marijke Verpoorten, eds., L’Afrique des Grands Lacs:
Annuaire, 2011–2012 (Africa’s Great Lakes: Yearbook, 2011–2012) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2012),
pp. 37–58.
35. Author interviews, 2015–2016.
36. The FNL signed a cease-ªre with the CNDD-FDD–led government in 2008, but remains one of
the primary political opposition parties.
37. Approximately 2,700 Burundians were allowed to remain as individual asylum seekers. “On
the Closure of the Mtabila Camp in the United Republic of Tanzania and the Return to Burundi
of the Former Refugees, 15 October 2012–31 March 2013,” Consolidated Inter-Agency Information
Note (Geneva: UNHCR, n.d.), http://www.unhcr.org/50a5ff63c.pdf. Both refugees and NGO staff
familiar with the situation reported that numerous human rights violations occurred in the pro-
cess, including burning down refugees’ residences and beating them on to buses. See Amnesty In-
ternational, “Burundian Refugees in Tanzania Intimidated into Returning Home” (London:
Amnesty International, June 29, 2009), https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2009/06/bu-
rundian-refugees-tanzania-intimidated-returning-home-20090629; and “An Urgent Brieªng on the
Situation of Burundian Refugees in Mtabila Camp in Tanzania” (New York: International Refugee
Rights Initiative and Rema Ministries, August 10, 2012), http://refugee-rights.org/wp-content/
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Home, Again 125
Exact data on how many Burundians ºed in which period, where they ºed,
and if and where they returned do not exist. Estimates suggest, however, that
in 1972 at least 217,000 Burundians ºed to Tanzania. By 2003, ten years after
the 1993 civil war had begun, the United Nations (UN) estimated that a total of
500,000 Burundian refugees were living in ofªcial camps in Tanzania from
both the 1972 and 1993 out-migrations. The total number of Burundians living
in Tanzania was likely much greater, as an estimated 300,000 Burundian refu-
gees lived illegally in the Tanzanian countryside and urban centers.38 The UN
estimated that close to 500,000 refugees returned to Burundi from 2002 to
2012.39 Although it is unclear exactly how many from each caseload returned,
of the 1972 population still living in the Old Settlements, approximately
160,000 applied for naturalization in Tanzania and 55,000 expressed desire to
repatriate. This number, however, likely underestimates the total number of
1972 caseload returnees who may have returned prior to the UN’s organized
efforts to close the camps, did not live in camps, or returned during the two
interwar periods.40
The Making of “Les Rapatriés” and “Les Résidents” in Burundi
After the 1993–2005 civil war, experts worried that the mass return of Hutu ref-
ugees from Tanzania to Burundi would provoke ethnic tensions and de-
stabilize the peacebuilding process.41 Return migration did indeed incite
widespread local-level violence in Burundi, but these conºicts were not simply
uploads/2019/02/An-urgent-brieªng-on-the-situation-of-Burundian-refugees-in-Mtabila-camp-
in-Tanzania-International-Refugee-Rights-Initiative-and-Rema-Ministries.pdf.
38. International Crisis Group, “Fields of Bitterness (I): Land Reform in Burundi” (Brussels:
International Crisis Group, February 2014), https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/central-africa/
burundi/ªelds-bitterness-i-land-reform-burundi.
39. Sonja Fransen and Katie Kuschminder, “Back to the Land: The Long-Term Challenges of Refu-
gee Return and Reintegration in Burundi” (Geneva: UNHCR, August 2012), http://www.unhcr
.org/5040ad9e9.pdf; and UNHCR, “UNHCR Burundi Country Brieªng” (Geneva: UNHCR,
August 2009), http://www.globalprotectioncluster.org/_assets/ªles/ªeld_protection_clusters/
Burundi/ªles/UNHCR_BDI_Country%20brieªng_EN_AUGUST09-EN.pdf.
40. Fransen and Kuschminder, “Back to the Land.”
41. International Crisis Group, “Refugees and Displaced Persons in Burundi (I): Defusing the
Land Time-Bomb” (Brussels: International Crisis Group, October 2003), https://www.crisisgroup
.org/fr/africa/central-africa/burundi/refugees-and-displaced-persons-burundi-defusing-land-
time-bomb; Mathijs Van Leeuwen, “Crisis or Continuity? Framing Land Disputes and Local
Conºict Resolution in Burundi,” Land Use Policy, Vol. 27, No. 3 (July 2010), pp. 753–762, doi.org/
10.1016/j.landusepol.2009.10.006; and Judith Vorrath, “From Refugee Crisis to Reintegration Cri-
sis? The Consequences of Repatriation to (Post-) Transition Burundi,” in Stefaan Marysse, Filip
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International Security 44:2 126
the result of reignited ethnic rivalries. Rather, refugee return also created new
cross-cutting divisions in Burundi between returnees and nonmigrants.
presence of migration-based divisions
In this section, I use ethnographic evidence of group labeling, attribution of
group characteristics, and narratives of group competition to demonstrate the
existence of displacement-related divisions in postwar Burundi. These divi-
sions were distinct from, though often operated in alliance with, preexisting
ethnic cleavages.
group labeling. By 2008, Makamba Province (Burundi’s southernmost
district, which shares a border with Tanzania) housed the largest concentration
of refugee returnees in the country.42 In 2014, several years after the return had
completed, villagers in Makamba still identiªed groups in their community by
their previous migration history. Informants described two primary groups:
ªrst there were the Abahunguste (Kirundi for “those who came back”), also
known by the French term les rapatriés (the repatriates). Second were the
Abasangwa (Kirundi for “those who were here and welcomed others”), or les
résidents (the residents) in French.43 Within the rapatrié group, there were fur-
ther subdivisions according to the era that returnees initially ºed (1972 or in
the 1990s), and in some cases by country of asylum (Tanzania, Congo, and
Rwanda). International actors contributed to solidifying the time-related sub-
divisions, as they treated the two groups differently and held strongly to the
narrative that the 1972 returnees needed more aid reintegrating because they
had been away for so long, whereas returnees who originally ºed in the 1990s
did not have as hard of a time coming back, as they had lived outside Burundi
for only a short time (just twenty plus years).
Certain names were also interpreted as pejorative. For example, Burundians
frequently used the Swahili term “Sabini na mbili,” meaning “72,” to derog-
atorily refer to returnees as Tanzanian (Swahili is the Tanzanian national
language). This term was often used regardless of whether the returnees in
question actually ºed in 1972. Individuals also called returnees “Tanzanians”
or “Congolese,” referencing where they lived during the war. Many returnees,
Reyntjens, and Stef Vandeginste, eds., L’Afrique des Grands Lacs: Annuaire, 2007–2008 [Africa’s
Great Lakes: Yearbook, 2007–2008] (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008), pp. 109–217.
42. UNHCR, “Map of Burundi: Number of Returnees per Province in 2008” (Geneva: UNHCR,
August 31, 2008), http://www.refworld.org/docid/48ce516c2.html.
43. For convenience, I use the French terms in this article.
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Home, Again 127
however, felt that these terms were insults insinuating that returnees were less
Burundian than their peers who stayed in-country.
attribution of group characteristics. Respondents also distinguished
rapatriés from résidents by certain alleged characteristics. Having lived abroad
for decades, some rapatriés spoke only Swahili upon return, as opposed to
Kirundi, the national language of Burundi. Others spoke a mix of Kirundi and
Swahili, or spoke Kirundi with an alleged Swahili accent. Many Burundians
claimed that they could tell if someone was a returnee by sight, claiming that
returnees and nonmigrants dressed differently. Returnee women were said to
cover their hair in a style different from that of women in Burundi and to carry
their babies “like the Tanzanians”—wrapped in a cloth diagonally across their
backs rather than horizontally, as is done in Burundi. It was also common to
hear people comment that only returnee women rode bicycles, something
women in Burundi had never done. Notably, the perception that returnees and
nonmigrants looked and sounded different persisted despite evidence to
the contrary.
The differentiation between these groups fueled narratives about which
group had better claims of national legitimacy. People would use labels such
as “the Tanzanians” to differentiate returnees from Tanzania (as opposed to
those from the Democratic Republic of Congo), but also to deride returnees’
claims of belonging in the homeland. For example, as one returnee said, “I
thought when I came to Burundi, I would face many problems due to loss of
culture. We don’t speak Kirundi. They say people who don’t speak Kirundi are
not Burundian. They call us not Burundian.”44
Importantly, the rapatrié-résident division was not simply another way to talk
about prior ethnic relations. The two categories certainly overlapped, as
rapatriés were primarily Hutu and résidents were thought to be primarily Tutsi.
Therefore, in some cases politicians used these stereotypes of returnees as
Hutu and internally displaced persons or résidents as Tutsi to provoke prior
ethnic rivalries to their own advantage.45 In actuality, although returnees from
44. Author interview, February 10, 2015.
45. This was more frequent in the years immediately following the signing of the Arusha accords
and in accounts of return prior to 2005. See Arnaud Royer, “Les personnes déplacées du Burundi
et du Rwanda” [Displaced persons in Burundi and Rwanda], in Marc Le Pape, Johanna Siméant,
and Claudine Vidal, eds., Crises extrêmes: Face aux massacres, aux guerres civiles, et aux genocides [Ex-
treme crises: In the face of massacres, civil war, and genocide] (Paris: Découverte, 2006), pp. 171–
187; and Julien Nimubona, “Mémoires des réfugiés et déplacés du Burundi: Lecture critique de la
politque publique de rehabilitation” [Memories of refugees and displaced persons in Burundi:
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International Security 44:2 128
Tanzania were primarily Hutu, there were Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa résidents—
they just had to be in Burundi to “receive” those returning from abroad. Many
of the violent conºicts between résidents and rapatriés pitted Hutu against
Hutu.46 In fact, migration-related divisions not only cut across ethnicity, but
frequently divided families where members had lived on either side of the bor-
der during the war. As such, migration-related categorizations existed inde-
pendent of, though sometimes associated with, ethnic categorizations.
Thus, return migration to Burundi had created a new set of group categories
based on where individuals were during the war. These delineations by label
and perceived visible, auditory, and cultural characteristics are indicative of
the creation of new migration-based situational identities. As a returnee from
the 1990s put it, “[It is] us, the residents, and the 72s.”47
social and political tension. Although the creation of new identity
groups does not automatically entail conºict, many Burundians described seg-
regation in their communities along rapatrié-résident lines or said that they felt
discriminated against based on their migration history. A common complaint
was that if there was a death in a returnee’s family, only other returnees would
come to the family’s home to mourn with them. For example, one woman ex-
plained with much derision that when her husband died, the résidents in her
neighborhood went to drink beer instead.48 Other informants in Burundi re-
ported that a local administrator would call a meeting but would not inform
returnees about the gathering. Some 1993-caseload returnees claimed, though
it was not conªrmed, that they could not access health care and that the na-
tional identiªcation cards for returnees after 2012 were different from those of
other citizens. These discriminatory practices, real or perceived, furthered the
1993 returnees’ in-group narrative that the government (and other Burundi-
ans) treated them as a lesser class of citizens.
For their part, résidents claimed that rapatriés would gather in the market to
drink coffee and discuss current events, but would exclude résidents from join-
ing. Many résidents also claimed that the government and international com-
Critical lecture of the public policy of rehabilitation], in André Guichaoua, ed., Exilés, réfugiés,
déplacés en Afrique centrale et orientale [Exiles, refugees, and displaced persons in Central and East
Africa] (Paris: Karthala, 2004), pp. 213–245.
46. See also Mathijs Van Leeuwen and Linda Haartsen, “Land Disputes and Local Conºict Resolu-
tion Mechanisms in Burundi” (Bujumbura: CED-Caritas Burundi, November 2005), http://edepot
.wur.nl/736.
47. Author interview, February 24, 2015.
48. Author interview, December 3, 2015.
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Home, Again 129
munity preferred the returnees when distributing aid. Said one résident, “It’s
because the government is not fair. They always want to help the people who
repatriated and those who remained inside they see as meaningless.”49 The
trope of government favoritism reºected the fact that the ruling party,
the CNDD-FDD, was previously a rebel group formed in exile, and many of
its leading members had relatives who died or were forced to ºee during
the 1972 genocide. The party therefore tended to favor returnees from 1972.
On the other hand, out-groups stereotyped the 1993/New Settlement return-
ees as FNL supporters, given that they did not return to Burundi when the
CNDD-FDD took power in the 2005 elections. Many returnees from the 1990s
therefore believed that the Burundian government discriminated against them
or ignored their needs.50
land conºict. In addition to these sources of segregation and animosity,
tensions between rapatriés and résidents were most evident in conºicts over
land. For many Burundians, national political and social identity is entwined
with a physical connection to ancestral land.51 Therefore, returning to the
homeland was not simply about crossing the border into Burundi, but also
about reclaiming part of their family’s ancestral land. Moreover, most Burun-
dians rely on the land—an estimated 90 percent depend on smallholder agri-
culture for a living.52 Therefore, combined with rapid population growth, the
mass population return put immense pressure on the country’s most desired
resource. Because land in the interwar years had been occupied, expropriated,
bought, or sold, both rapatriés and résidents often claimed the same land as
rightfully theirs. As such, simply by showing up in villages—even if not di-
rectly claiming a plot—returnees posed a potential threat to nonmigrants. The
threat of losing land bred distrust, conºict, and violence between returning
populations and nonmigrants. Conºict between rapatriés and résidents over
49. Author interview, February 10, 2015.
50. On returnees’ dissatisfaction with the state, see also Andrea Purdeková, “‘Barahunga
Amahoro—They Are Fleeing Peace!’ The Politics of Re-Displacement and Entrenchment in Post-
War Burundi,” Journal of Refugee Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1 (March 2017), pp. 1–26, doi.org/10.1093/
jrs/few025.
51. Rema Ministries, “‘Two People Can’t Share the Same Pair of Shoes’: Citizenship, Land, and the
Return of Refugees to Burundi,” Citizenship and Forced Migration in the Great Lakes Region
Working Paper No. 2 (New York: International Refugee Rights Initiative, Rema Ministries, and So-
cial Science Research Council, November 2009); and Mathijs Van Leeuwen and Linda Haartsen,
“Land Disputes and Local Conºict Resolution Mechanisms in Burundi.”
52. World Bank, “Country Overview: Burundi” (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, October 31, 2017),
http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/burundi/overview.
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International Security 44:2 130
land manifested in everything from harassment, to destruction of crops,
threats of future violence, physical assault, and murder.53
Relations did not have to be this bad. As I demonstrate in the following sec-
tion, conºicts between rapatriés and résidents became as severe and widespread
as they did in part because institutions governing land and property rights
provided different dividends to individuals depending on their migration his-
tory. By the time I arrived in Burundi in 2014, returnees from 1972 were faring
better in land conºicts than both résidents and the 1993 returnees, as the rul-
ing party promoted property restitution for crimes committed during the 1972
genocide, and the international community had prioritized helping 1972 re-
turnees ªnd or recoup land. Returnees from the 1990s were least advantaged
in land competition. Denigrated as FNL sympathizes, and subject to the inter-
national community–endorsed narrative that they did not need as much assis-
tance in claiming land upon return, 1993 rapatriés had little power to evict
résidents from a disputed property.
For their part, résidents claimed that having lived on the land for more than
twenty years, and investing time and money into planting crops and building
houses on the property, it was rightfully theirs. Résidents often questioned the
legitimacy of returnees’ claims by asserting that those coming back were not
“truly Burundian” or that the returnees, especially those from 1972, were
claiming land that was never theirs. (See ªgure 1 for a summary of these group
divisions and in-group/out-group narratives).
interaction with institutions
The primary institutions contributing to violent conºict between rapatriés and
résidents in Burundi were informal and formal land-governance practices. An
informal tradition of patrilineal inheritance of land set the stage for competi-
tion over ownership. Consequently, conºict over land was frequently between
male members of the same family (and ethnicity) who had different migration
histories—brothers or uncles who ºed during the war and those who stayed
behind. Considered alongside disputes between returnees and nonmigrants
53. See International Crisis Group, “Fields of Bitterness (I)”; and International Crisis Group,
“Fields of Bitterness (II): Restitution and Reconciliation in Burundi” (Brussels: International
Crisis Group, February 2014), https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/central-africa/burundi/ªelds-
bitterness-ii-restitution-and-reconciliation-burundi.
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Home, Again 131
Figure 1. Migration-Related Divisions in Burundi
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who were not related, rapatrié-résident divisions within kinship groups show
the power of refugee return in delineating new lines of conºict in Burundi.
If informal inheritance practices created a permissive environment for intra-
familial rapatrié-résident conºict, the formal institutions governing land and
property rights, including a newly created federal land commission called the
Commission Nationale des Terres et Autres Biens (CNTB), had an even greater
impact. Although the CNTB was not the only formal institution governing
International Security 44:2 132
land, by 2014 it had become the focal institution in the politics of return and re-
settlement.54 The CNTB was widely known in rural areas, and my interview-
ees regularly cited the commission by name without prompting. Therefore, to
understand the role of institutions in the construction of migration-based situ-
ational
identities, I focus on the institution most salient in respondents’
accounts of returnee-nonmigrant relations.
The peace agreement ending Burundi’s civil war, known as the Arusha ac-
cords, stipulated that the government encourage the repatriation and reinte-
gration of refugees and create a special commission to adjudicate land
disputes arising from return—speciªcally those from “old caseload” return-
ees.55 Thus came the CNTB. The ªrst iteration of the CNTB was a relatively in-
dependent commission, led by a Tutsi clergyman named Father Astère Kana.
This early CNTB promoted a policy of sharing land between rapatriés and
résidents. Although this was not fully satisfactory to either party, some villag-
ers accepted the practice.
This sharing policy was not universally upheld, however. People could ap-
peal CNTB rulings through the regular court system, which often reversed the
CNTB’s decisions. In other cases, returnees, especially those from the 1990s
who had less political and economic capital, were too scared to take their
claims to court for fear of retribution. Résidents, having earned livelihoods
from the land for decades, tended to have more resources that allowed them to
get by in a stand-off or buy off ofªcials. Moreover, it was generally easier for
résidents to maintain occupation than for rapatriés to enforce an eviction. This
opacity in implementation precluded the CNTB from assuaging the hostility
between the two groups.
When Father Kana died, the CNTB was placed under the presidency, and a
party loyalist, Sérapion Bambonanire, was appointed as head of the commis-
sion. Under Bambonanire, the CNTB revised its policy to require full restitu-
tion of all land and property to returnees, particularly those from 1972. The
54. On other institutions governing land, see Tracy Dexter and Philippe Ntahombaye, “The Role
of Informal Justice Systems in Fostering the Rule of Law in Post-Conºict Situations: The Case of
Burundi” (Geneva: Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, July 2005), https://www.ªles.ethz.ch/isn/
26971/CaseofBurundi.pdf. On “Peace Villages,” see Jean-Benoît Falisse and René Claude
Niyonkuru, “Social Engineering for Reintegration: Peace Villages for the ‘Uprooted’ Returnees in
Burundi,” Journal of Refugee Studies, Vol. 28, No. 3 (September 2015), pp. 388–411, doi.org/10.1093/
jrs/fev002.
55. “Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement for Burundi,” August 28, 2000, Protocol I, Chap-
ter 2, Article 7.25.C, https://peacemaker.un.org/node/1207.
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Home, Again 133
CNTB justiªed this policy as a form of transitional justice: the land was
wrongly taken as a result of the 1972 genocide; therefore, it was only right that
all property be returned. Although true in part, this was an oversimpliªcation
of the issue, as occupants on the land may not have illegally appropriated the
land themselves, but bought the plots from the government or inherited them
indirectly. While the government’s line was that résidents had other land to
which they could return if forced to leave the disputed property, résidents dis-
agreed, claiming that, having lived for decades in the area, they maintained no
other home. Taking matters to the extreme, Bambonanaire’s CNTB applied this
policy retroactively and reopened some cases where disputants had already re-
solved to share the land.
The new approach worsened relations between returnees and nonmigrants,
exacerbated violence between community members and against the CNTB it-
self, and reiªed the groups’ separation. As one respondent explained, “Before
we used to share the land. Back then we used to live together, could go to
neighbor and ask for ªre [for cooking]. Now there is no sharing.”56
Soon, communities began rebelling against the commission. Wielding ma-
chetes, stones, and farming tools, villagers attempted to prevent CNTB vehi-
cles from entering their town to investigate cases and implement rulings. In
March 2015, about one month before the third mandate protests in Bujumbura
would shake the nation, thousands of citizens in Makamba took to the streets
protesting the land commission. The governor of Makamba responded by halt-
ing the implementation of CNTB rulings in the province “to avoid a blood
bath,” and President Nkurunziza announced a nationwide suspension of
CNTB activity.57
The economic consequences of restricted access to land were also dire. Be-
cause the vast majority of villagers were subsistence farmers, without property
they were left in a desperate ªnancial situation. Forced to farm for others
and use wages to rent houses, Burundians who were most disadvantaged in
accessing land were often unable provide adequate food, clothes, or care for
their families.
In addition to land governance, respondents described several other institu-
56. Author interview, February 23, 2015.
57. “Conºits fonciers au Burundi: Les décisions de La CNTB suspendues” [Land conºicts in
Burundi: CNTB decisions suspended], Radio France Internationale, March 22, 2015, http://www
.rª.fr/afrique/20150322-conºits-fonciers-burundi-decisions-cntb-suspendues-pierre-nkurunziza-
presidentielle-3e-mandat.
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International Security 44:2 134
tions as discriminating against individuals based on their migration history.
For example, because many returnees had studied in English and Swahili in
Tanzania, they often claimed to be at a disadvantage in the Burundian system,
which taught in French and Kirundi. In other cases, individuals assigned this
narrative of discrimination without the same concrete evidence of differential
treatment. For example, Bonifax58—a returnee—had completed some univer-
sity education while in Tanzania, but struggled to get Burundi to recognize
his certiªcates of program completion so he could pursue employment in
Burundi. In this instance, Bonifax’s qualiªcations earned in Tanzania may not
have been equivalent to the diploma he sought in Burundi. But according to
Bonifax and others, discrimination against returnees was to blame: “I think it’s
because we are repatriates.”59 Bonifax later went on to explain that issues be-
tween rapatriés and résidents persist in his community because they were still
having land conºicts, and in some cases having to give back land.60 Bonifax’s
use of rapatrié-résident land conºict as the lens to interpret other community in-
teractions (being denied a diploma) illustrates the endogenous cycle proposed
in my theory: new local divisions spurred by population return are aggravated
by institutions that provide differential dividends based on where individuals
lived during wartime such that individuals view future community interac-
tions through the same returnee-nonmigrant frame.
alternative explanations for local conºict in postwar burundi
One could argue that resource scarcity, poor land governance, or both are
sufªcient to explain the emergence of widespread local violence in post–civil
war Burundi. Land in Burundi is scarce yet extremely valuable. So, regardless
of institutions, one may expect competition for property rights. I agree that re-
source competition was an essential contributing factor. Resource competition
alone, however, is not a sufªcient explanation for the character and persistence
of returnee-nonmigrant conºict in Burundi, as the context of the land gover-
nance regime appears to have played a role. Given the same resource scarcity,
returnee-nonmigrant tensions were worse under the second iteration of the
CNTB than they were under the initial policy of land-sharing between repatri-
ates and residents.
58. All names of respondents were changed to protect conªdentiality of informants.
59. Author interview, February 23, 2015.
60. Ibid.
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Home, Again 135
An alternative land governance-based explanation would suggest that long-
standing structural issues concerning land rights in Burundi explain the local
violence in Burundi after the civil war rather than return migration.61 To this
end, Mathijs Van Leeuwen points to the fact that return migration did not ex-
acerbate ethnic conºict between Hutu rapatriés and Tutsi résidents. Instead, vio-
lence in Burundi after the civil war largely occurred between family members,
or it was the result of state expropriation.62 Therefore, analyzing the violence
through the lens of land conºict, not return migration, sufªciently explains the
observed dynamics.63 I agree that land governance is one of the primary fac-
tors that contributed to the violence in postwar Burundi. In fact, this is central
to my theory. My data suggest, however, that one cannot discount the role of
return migration in this process. In my interviews, conºicts between family
members were often also characterized as conºicts between returnees and
nonmigrants and some interviewees used the language of migration identity
(e.g. “the one who stayed”) to describe problems within their family.64 More-
over, although the violence between returnees and nonmigrants most fre-
quently centered on property rights, narratives around these group identities
also existed outside the realm of land conºict or even economic competition;
they were also evident in descriptions of social segregation, claims of le-
gitimate citizenship, and perceived discrimination in education. Limiting
scholars’ understanding of the rapatrié-résident divide to land conºict would
preclude the identiªcation of a wider pattern of conºict between returnees and
nonmigrants in Burundi and in other countries where the institutional envi-
ronment rendered a different issue as the primary source of competition be-
tween migrants and nonmigrants.
61. Van Leeuwen, “Crisis or Continuity?”
62. In 2014, the International Crisis Group (ICG) made a similar claim that “seventy-two percent
of conºicts submitted to judicial courts consisted of ordinary land conºicts, while only four per-
cent were tied to returns.” International Crisis Group, “Fields of Bitterness (I).” The ofªcial gov-
ernment statistics that ICG cites from 2009, however, would reºect estimates of cases in the regular
courts after the establishment of the CNTB in 2006. The CNTB took over primary jurisdiction on
all cases of land conºict between returning and nonmigrant populations. Though some of the
CNTB cases were then appealed through the regular judicial system, this statistic cited by ICG
speaks more to the pervasiveness of land issues generally than to the lack of land issues provoked
by return, which would have been calculated as CNTB cases, not judicial cases.
63. Van Leeuwen and Van der Haar, “Theorizing the Land–Violent Conºict Nexus.”
64. Both Van Leeuwen and Haartsen suggest that this overlap does occur, but they consider it reg-
ular family conºict as opposed to return induced. Van Leeuwen, “Crisis or Continuity?” and
Van Leeuwen and Haartsen, “Land Disputes and Local Conºict Resolution Mechanisms in
Burundi.”
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International Security 44:2 136
The Legacy of Return: Who Fled and Who Stayed in 2015
In 2014, given the violent conºict over land and extreme poverty in Makamba,
there was a signiªcant population—especially among the 1993-caseload
returnees—who wanted to leave Burundi. Some rapatriés interviewed in
Burundi before the third mandate crisis even reported that their neighbors had
threatened them by saying that if war came back to Burundi, the rapatriés
would be the ªrst killed: “Those who didn’t run away [the résidents], they are
trying to scare us that if the ªghting starts up during the elections that they
will come and kill us. But really [I] think this is their way of trying to scare us,
chase us off the land.”65
At the same time, Burundi was approaching another nationwide conºict.
The country was scheduled for a presidential election in 2015, the ªrst in
which a president would face the constitutional two-term limit envisioned by
the Arusha accords. In April 2015, the ruling CNDD-FDD Party declared that
President Nkurunziza would seek a third term in ofªce, or third mandate. This
announcement set off mass protests in Bujumbura, an attempted coup, the
formation of an armed rebellion, and a government crackdown on any-
one perceived to be a member of an opposition party or critical of the re-
gime. The crisis also spurred mass displacement: by May 2015, more than
100,000 Burundians had ºed to neighboring countries.66 Refugees continued to
ºee in droves in the coming months.
Observers initially thought that the difference between who stayed and who
ºed in 2015 reºected the political nature of the conºict—Nkurunziza and his
allies against anyone associated with the opposition.67 But, in the following
section, I argue that prior experiences of return also inºuenced who stayed,
who left, and when they left in 2015.
who ºed? threats of violence along local and national cleavages
Refugees’ explanations for what forced them to ºee in 2015 elucidate the exis-
tence of two types of security issues that operated both separately and in com-
bination: the national electoral crisis and local conºicts related to previous
return migration. Accordingly, reasons for ºight fell into three categories.
65. Author interview, August 4, 2014.
66. Jack Redden, “UNHCR Says More Than 105,000 Refugees Have Fled Violence in Burundi”
(Geneva: UNHCR, May 15, 2015), http://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2015/5/5555f62a6/unhcr-
says-105000-refugees-ºed-violence-burundi.html.
67. The destination countries were still correlated with ethnicity, with primarily Hutu congregat-
ing in Tanzania and Tutsi in Rwanda.
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Home, Again 137
Those in the ªrst category (25.6 percent) emphasized land conºict or related
issues as the preponderant danger. Many in this category were repeat refugees
who previously ºed in the 1990s and then returned to Burundi. For example,
in an interview with two women who ºed early on in the crisis, immediately,
and without my prompting, one of the women told me her husband had died
in 2013, “after we returned to Burundi by force. Because of land problems.”68
As we continued talking, she explained that she was among those Burundians
who had ºed in 1972, and then again in 1993. She had not wanted to return to
Burundi because she knew that her land was occupied, and there would be
problems if she went back. She was forced to return, however, when Tanzania
closed the New Settlements in 2012. According to her, “The ones who had not
ºed do not want to see us in the country, because they have taken lands.
Whenever they see us, they feel bitter.”69
Both women went on to tell me about how, when they returned to Burundi,
family members who had stayed in-country during the war were now occupy-
ing their land. Those on the land threatened to kill the women and their fami-
lies if they tried to stay. In the ªrst woman’s case, they had already murdered
her husband. This is why they had to leave in 2015. When I asked them about
the third mandate crisis, the second woman looked at me with an expression
completely absent of recognition and said, “I do not understand.” I explained
about Peeta (as President Nkurunziza is colloquially known) running for a
third term and the subsequent electoral violence, and she replied “[We have]
nothing to hear about Peeta.”70
These women were exceptional in their absolute rejection of the relevance of
the national-level conºict. Most refugees knew about the third mandate crisis.
Still, the consequences of their previous return were preponderant in their de-
cisions to ºee. As one refugee explained, “We had ºed and those who re-
mained on the land said it was theirs. Conºicts followed. [T]hey can kill each
other based on land.”71 Another woman said she left simply because, “We had
no lands and nowhere to cultivate.”72
Refugees in the second category (28 percent) highlighted issues related to
the national conºict as their primary reason for ºight, such as political repres-
68. Author interview, November 26, 2015.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid.
71. Author interview, December 8, 2015.
72. Author interview, December 21, 2015.
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International Security 44:2 138
sion, torture, attempted recruitment into government or opposition forces, and
fear of return to full-scale war. For example, a man whose eyes were badly in-
jured after he was tortured by members of the ruling party recounted, “Well
ªrst, you see what they’ve done to me (pointing to his eyes). I was told with the
insecurity (meaning the 2015 electoral crisis) they were coming to ªnish me. At
22.00h that night I made the decision to leave.” He went on to describe how
the main problems in Burundi were with the ruling party, which he had been
asked to join and had refused.73 Notably, refugees’ characterization of the na-
tional conºict centered on pro- or anti-Nkurunziza allegiances rather than eth-
nic dynamics.74
Other interviewees in this category responded that they left because they
were afraid the protests were a harbinger of full-scale civil war. As one woman
stated, “The main reason to come here—I saw that life was bad since I was a
child. I saw that what I ºed before comes back. So, I thought some members of
my family died, even my father, because of war. And even now [it’s] starting to
be the same as it had [been].”75
The majority of refugee respondents fell into the third category (46.4 per-
cent), citing both local-level issues related to their previous return and the
national-level political conºict as reasons for ºeeing. Some expressed these as
distinct issues; for example, they faced land conºict or other adverse conse-
quences of return and, separately, were afraid that the country was about to
descend into war. More commonly, however, respondents saw the two as in-
tertwined: given the elevated political chaos, they felt it would be easier for
those with whom they were already ªghting to act with impunity. For many
refugees, the person they had a land conºict with had a network connecting
them to the ruling party. For example, their nephew may have been in CNDD-
FDD’s feared youth militia, the Imbonerakure, and therefore able to use the
cover of the ruling party’s crackdown to access arms and follow through on
existing vendettas in the name of party allegiance. As one man explained to
me, “The ªrst reason, our land was taken. [They] tried to kill us . . . [They] said
once this conºict begins (meaning potential renewed war), you would be among
73. Author interview, November 27, 2015.
74. Where, in the past, most Burundian refugees were Hutu and those who stayed were Tutsi, at
the outset of the 2015 crisis, both Hutu and Tutsi ºed. Hutu civilians tended to congregate in Tan-
zania, whereas Tutsi civilians ºed to Rwanda.
75. Author interview, February 26, 2016.
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Home, Again 139
those killed, so [they] could take the land permanently.”76 This response is con-
sistent with those of rapatriés interviewed in Burundi before April 2015 who
worried that the elections would exacerbate existing land conºicts.
Many interviewees further explained that their family members who re-
mained in-country during the war often accused returnees of being with
the opposition political party/rebel group, the FNL, as a way to leverage the
political climate and scare the returnees off the land. In fact, many current
Nyarugusu residents described how those in Burundi would accuse them of
being afªliated with the FNL even before the 2015 crisis broke, using the logic
that only FNL loyalists would have waited so long to come back after the war
was over.
This complicated interaction between political and personal conºict is most
evident in the following interviewee’s description of the CNTB: “There is this
organization called CNTB, they came to [allow] people to be back in their land,
but [they] were to be killed in that land. Because they [the CNTB] could say
‘the repatriates tak[e] that land,’ and they let you. But then they [the disputing
party] come back and kill you with your family and say they were killing mur-
derers and FNL. You are FNL because of the land they want. So they can
kill you.”77
The ways in which refugees spoke about these different divisions operating
in alliance reºects a common pattern of civil war violence: local actors work
with national elites or appropriate national-level discourses—such as religion,
class, or political allegiance—for private or supra-local purposes.78 In turn, lo-
cal politics can shape the outlines of contestation at the center. In this case, the
local cleavages were clearly linked to prior cycles of forced migration and re-
turn from the previous wars. This is evident in how respondents across
all three categories delineated between threats coming from “those who
didn’t run away” and “repatriates” as opposed to (or in conjunction with) “the
ruling party.”
when did they ºee? early versus late ºight
Local conºict resulting from return migration after the 1993–2005 civil war not
only affected who ºed amid the 2015 crisis, but also when they ºed.
76. Author interview, December 10, 2015.
77. Author interview, January 19, 2016.
78. Kalyvas, “The Ontology of ‘Political Violence’”; Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War; and
Autesserre, The Trouble with the Congo.
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International Security 44:2 140
early ºight. Although the violence at the outset of the crisis centered in
the capital city, Bujumbura, the majority of Burundian refugees arriving
in Tanzania came from Makamba Province.79 As previously discussed,
Makamba was one of the regions with the greatest density of returnees after
the previous war. The ªrst available reports show that, as of July 10, 2015,
64.5 percent of the refugees in Tanzania were from Makamba. Only 5.6 percent
had come from Bujumbura and Bujumbura Rural combined—the area where
protests and violence centered at the outbreak of the national conºict.80 Inter-
national organizations staff also conªded that the vast majority of the refugees
they met arriving in ªrst few months of the inºux were women and children,
many of whom were repeat migrants—this was their second, third, or even
fourth time ºeeing Burundi. In my interviews, these “early arrivers” often em-
phasized issues resulting from their previous return (like land conºict) as one
of their primary reasons for ºight. Many explained that they had wanted to
leave Burundi well before the 2015 crisis, but had not found the means to do
so. As one refugee explained, “The ªrst problem was land. The thought of
leaving was there before. Those who had tickets went to Uganda [before]. But I
missed because I did not have the means.”81 The electoral crisis in Bujumbura
provided the opportunity they were looking for to ºee to Tanzania with
the expectation that they would be allowed to cross the border and seek
UN protection.
Given that so many of the early arriving refugees in camp cited issues
that predated the third mandate crisis, it is unsurprising there were also
Burundians who ºed prior to the 2015 crisis after unsuccessfully returning.
79. From April through May 2015, 78 to 90 percent of conºict events occurred in Bujumbura. See
“Cartographie du conºit au Burundi en 2015 dataset” [Map of conºict in Burundi in 2015 dataset],
accessed December 15, 2016, https://2015burundi.crowdmap.com/main; and Clionadh Raleigh
et al., “Introducing ACLED: An Armed Conºict Location and Event Dataset,” Journal of Peace Re-
search, Vol. 47, No. 5 (September 2010), pp. 651–660, doi.org/10.1177/0022343310378914.
80. Bujumbura residents did not simply ºee across closer international borders. As of June 2015,
only 8 percent of refugees in Rwanda originated from Bujumbura. Similar data broken down by
originating region are not publicly available for the Democratic Republic of Congo. By early June
2015, however, there were only 9,923 refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo, compared
with more than 51,000 in Tanzania and 29,000 in Rwanda. UNHCR, “Burundian Refugees in Tan-
zania: Daily Statistics” (Geneva: UNHCR, July 10, 2015), http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/
ªles/resources/Tanzania_Registrationstatistics_10Jul2015.pdf; and UNHCR, “Burundi Situation:
Displacement of Burundians into Neighbouring Countries (as of 1 June 2015)” (Geneva: UNHCR,
June 1, 2015), https://www.refworld.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/rwmain?page(cid:2)search&docid(cid:2)5576a
5704&skip(cid:2)0&query(cid:2)burundian%20displacement%20into%20neighboring%20countries.
81. Author interview, December 2, 2015.
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Home, Again 141
Take the case of a young construction worker, James, who returned from the
New Settlements to Burundi in 2012. When he and his siblings arrived on their
parents’ land in Burundi, someone else was occupying it. A dispute ensued,
and James’s brother was mysteriously killed after destroying a fence their
neighbor had constructed to divide the land. Seeing his brother killed, and
worrying for his other siblings, in 2013 James decided to leave Burundi again.
He and his family tried to ºee to Kenya, but wound up settling as irregular mi-
grants in Ilagala, a small Tanzanian town near the Burundi border. James’s ex-
perience was common among Burundians living in Ilagala. Many were former
rapatriés who lived in Burundi for only a year or two before deciding to re-
migrate. Like many refugees in Nyarugusu, land and/or family conºicts upon
return were among the primary reasons that new arrivals in Ilagala ºed
Burundi again—and why they were desperate not to return.
later ºight. Refugees ºeeing to Tanzania from approximately mid to late
July 2015 onward often highlighted political persecution as their primary rea-
son for ºeeing. These refugees were also more likely to be ªrst time migrants
(former résidents), and originate from a more diverse set of locations in
Burundi: the percentage of refugees arriving in Tanzania from Makamba fell
from 65 percent in July 2015 to 46 percent in January 2016.82 In addition, later
arrivals were more likely to be men who had stayed on land they maintained
or reclaimed after the previous war until they felt it was too risky (vis-à-vis the
national conºict) to stay.
In my interviews in Nyarugusu, it was not until I reached the zones housing
a greater proportion of refugees who arrived later in the crisis that I saw out-
ward signs of heightened political engagement indicative of ºight based on
the threats posed by party politics. It was there where I met a refugee who
proudly showed me his FNL (opposition party) ºag, which he had gone to
great lengths to keep with him throughout his journey, and where I saw young
men playing a local board game that was labeled with four teams—three were
Champions League football teams and the other was FNL.
This pattern in the timing of ºight was also evident in the different reports
of security issues refugees would bring to international NGO staff responsible
for protection in the Tanzanian camps. Nyarugusu was the ªrst camp to re-
ceive refugees in Tanzania, but as the refugee crisis continued, the inter-
national community opened two new camps, Nduta and Mtendeli. Nduta
82. UNHCR, “Operations Portal: Burundi Situation.”
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International Security 44:2 142
tended to house later arrivals in Tanzania. Mtendeli tended to house earlier ar-
rivals who were directly transferred from Nyarugusu to relieve overcrowding.
NGO and UN staff reported that refugees in Nyarugusu and Mtendeli would
complain about different security risks than those in Nduta: In Nduta, refu-
gees reported that their safety in camp was at risk because of potential cross-
border forced recruitment or inªltration of Imbonerakure into Tanzania—
in other words, political party–related conºict. In Nyarugusu and Mtendeli
camps, NGO staff received safety complaints from refugees citing land conºict
back in Burundi that had emerged during their previous repatriation. These
refugees feared that family members or neighbors would send someone to
come and hunt them to prevent them from returning to Burundi and re-
claiming land (and there was at least one such attempt in Nyarugusu while I
was there).
who stayed in 2015?
As discussed in the previous section, Burundians who ºed later on during the
crisis were often ªrst time migrants (former résidents), those who recovered
land during the return period, or both; they stayed as long as they felt it was
still safe in order to protect those assets. Similarly, those who stayed in-country
tended to be résidents or 1972 rapatriés who were less adversely affected by
prior return migration in their community.83
perceptions of security. On the Burundian side of the border, state of-
ªcials in Makamba and villagers alike asserted that there were no security is-
sues in area. These claims of relative safety reºect the direct inverse of the
early-leaving refugees’ reasons for ºight: those who ºed early felt their safety
was threatened due to land conºict, and those who stayed (or waited to leave)
claimed that these issues did not threaten their safety. However, whereas those
who ºed later on in the conºict admitted the national security issues had
ªnally reached a breaking point, those still in Burundi as of February 2016 de-
nied that political unrest was creating insecurity. Indeed, respondents in
Burundi explained away the refugee ºight by claiming that these Burundians
ºed only rumors of war, not real violence. Others derided refugees for leaving
by saying they only left to seek handouts from the UN, or because they
83. In addition, some respondents who stayed had ºed in the 1990s but returned between 1999
and 2002, before the war fully concluded and prior to the mass return. As such, they identiªed
more strongly as résidents, not rapatriés.
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Home, Again 143
thought they would be resettled in the United States. Many respondents I
interviewed in Burundi claimed that although there had been issues be-
tween rapatriés and résidents over land before, this had not been an issue for
some time.
Despite respondents’ claims that there was nothing to fear in Burundi, the
fact that the governor now traveled in an extended motorcade armed with
rocket launchers would suggest that the security situation was more precari-
ous than these interviewees, including the governor himself, cared to admit.
Analyzing why some respondents had incentives to lie about the security situ-
ation provides important evidence about the political atmosphere in Burundi.
Where the refugees in Tanzania pointed to violent conºict over land with their
neighbors as forcing them to ºee, if you felt safe in Burundi in 2016, it was
quite possible that you had been on the winning side of a violent land conºict
or had threatened to use violence in such a conºict.
In addition to these incentives to de-emphasize their own role in creating in-
security, interviewees may have avoided characterizing the situation as inse-
cure because they were scared of retaliation from the ruling party. The state
security apparatus was deeply embedded, and interviewees may have wor-
ried that their answers in an interview would leak to party ofªcials. Indeed,
respondents’ frequent attempts to discredit the refugees mirrored the CNDD-
FDD’s rhetoric that the Burundians ºeeing were overly fearful, unfaithful to
Burundi, or opposition supporters.
This evidence suggests that individuals who stayed in Burundi had incen-
tives to dissemble about the real sources of violence in their community—both
local and national. Although it is more difªcult to parse out for each respon-
dent whether their interests in covering up the insecurity resulted from their
participation in local land conºict or from their alliances with and/or fear of
the ruling party, triangulating this evidence with interviewees’ economic
status provides further indication that local-level conºict and access to land
are at least part of the explanation.
economic incentives. Many of the Burundian villagers I interviewed who
were still in-country as of February 2016 had economic assets to protect, stat-
ing that they would wait until it was absolutely necessary to leave if they had
land or a job. For example, some of the villagers I spoke to owned or had ac-
cess to land; others had a business, job, or other source of income that allowed
them to get by. These interviewees’ decision to stay makes sense if one consid-
ers both the local and national sources of insecurity pushing people to leave.
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International Security 44:2 144
Those who were on the winning side of a local-level land conºict, and there-
fore had economic assets to protect, would be more likely to risk staying be-
hind to protect those assets until they felt that the insecurity posed by national
crisis outweighed the beneªt of protecting the land they had recovered or
maintained during the previous period of return migration.
Conclusion
The mass return of refugees to their countries of origin is often thought of as a
sign of increased peace and stability. Return migration, however, is actually a
frequent source of insecurity in countries recovering from civil war. Processes
of out-migration and return can aggravate old rivalries and create new divi-
sions between populations who were displaced across borders and those who
remained in-country. New migration-related group identities are more likely
to harden and become violent when post-conºict institutions intentionally or
unintentionally favor individuals based on where they were physically located
during wartime.
These dynamics were clearly at play in postwar Burundi. In a country
plagued by ethnic and political divisions, refugee return to Burundi after the
1993–2005 civil war created new community divisions between so called
rapatriés and résidents. Exacerbated by land governance policies, competition
along return migration-related cleavages led to widespread violent conºict
over land. Rivalries between returnees and nonmigrants were a powder keg
ready to explode if the opportunity presented itself. That opportunity came in
the form of the 2015 third mandate crisis. Thousands of Burundians ºed the
government crackdown on anyone perceived to be in an opposition political
party or critical of the regime. Who left and who stayed did not, however,
reºect a simple distinction between ruling-party and opposition supporters.
Rather, the electoral crisis activated divisions at both the local and national
level. Rapatriés who had not yet been able to recover land worried that the na-
tional conºict would allow local actors to carry out personal vendettas with
impunity, and were therefore among the ªrst to ºee to Tanzania. As the
conºict took hold, later arrivals had more direct connections to opposition
groups or experience of being targeted by the CNDD-FDD.
This pattern accords with existing theories that explain the origins of vio-
lence during civil war as the result of alliances between local and national divi-
sions, but also highlights a crucial dimension missing from those explanations.
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Home, Again 145
Seemingly idiosyncratic local conºicts may have a common source: return mi-
gration. Because forced migration is one of the most common sequelae of civil
war, the process of return is likely to spark local hostilities across a variety of
post-conºict contexts. The differing manifestations are related to institutional
conditions in the country of origin.
Understanding the process through which return migration leads to vio-
lence is critical for policymakers engaged in humanitarian responses to refu-
gee crises. In cases of protracted forced migration, plans to orchestrate
voluntary return to countries of origin must be treated as a potential source of
new conºict. Simply (re)entering home areas creates the opportunity to differ-
entiate groups based on their migration history. In cases of repeat migration,
this may mean that individuals who experienced issues upon their previous
return because they were seen as returnees will be unwilling to endure that
process again, even if national peace processes succeeded. Instead, these refu-
gees may seek to stay in host countries or resettle abroad.
More broadly, the implication of institutions in the emergence of displace-
ment-based identities has important consequences for how scholars and
policymakers think about successful peacebuilding. Creating strong institu-
tions is frequently cast as one of the strongest tools in the peacebuilding arse-
nal, especially in cases of ethnic conºict. Yet, the case of Burundi demonstrates
that although institutional reform may help to mitigate against preexisting ten-
sion, it can also create venues to reify social divisions and intentionally or
unintentionally fuel new conºicts in postwar environments. Peacebuilding in-
terventions must therefore balance the need to address the distinct needs of
different groups in the population without institutionalizing new migration-
related divisions.
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