Mobility and Exclusion

Conflicts between Autochthons and Allochthons during Political Liberalisation in Cameroon

Bibliographic Data

ID20049977
AuthorsPiet Konings (0000-0003-4617-3153, corresponding author)
Year2001
Pages169-194
Publication date2001-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueMobile Africa (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/9789004492202_015
WikidataQ61053362
OpenAlexW1569105921
ISBN9789004492202
LanguageEN
Citations received17

Political liberalisation in Africa has often been accompanied by a somewhat paradoxical obsession with autochthony, leading to more or less violent forms of exclusion of migrants. South West Province, one of the two provinces in the Anglophone region of Cameroon, provides an interesting case study to illustrate this striking phenomenon. In an area where a plantation economy was established during German colonial rule, massive labour migration has been encouraged from elsewhere in the country, particularly from the other Anglophone province, North West Province. Following large-scale settlement of northwestern migrants in the South West, the ‘autochthonous’ population began to resent their increasing domination in demographic, economic and political terms. When the government and its regional allies felt threatened by widespread opposition and federalist/-secessionist tendencies in the Anglophone region during the political liberalisation process in the 1990s, they started exploiting existing tensions between the ‘autochthonous’ and ‘allochthonous’ populations to boost South-West identity, promote various forms of ethnic cleansing, and thus split the Anglophone front

Colonialism · Development economics · Economics · Economy · Geography · Human settlement · Liberalization · Opposition (politics) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Sociology · African history and culture studies · Law

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