Ethnic Separatism
Ethnic separatism refers to the desire of a specific ethnic group to break away from a larger political entity in order to form an independent state based on their ethnic identity. This movement is often driven by a sense of cultural, linguistic, or historical distinctiveness and can lead to political and social tensions within a region.
7 Key excerpts on "Ethnic Separatism"
eBook - ePub- Damien Kingsbury(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...It is axiomatic that for separatism to exist it must apply to separating a particular territory from a state or other pre-existing territory. Separatist movements therefore have a defined territory – a political geography – they claim as the ‘homeland’ of their bonded group (Toft 2003:ch 1) in relation to the larger, host state. In some cases, that territory claimed by separatists might exceed the area actually occupied by the group in question, and may refer to historical, mythical, culturally common or other irredentist claims. It is important to note that while there may be a claim to a particular territory, historical associations with a given territory are not always as fixed as they are sometimes claimed or assumed to be. ‘Authentic’ original inhabitants are often not that, having displaced others, and ‘sons of the soil’ may be a conceptual construct linked to an idea of a people and territory, especially for privileged political reasons. Further, conceptions of geography may differ, for example where there is an assumed over-arching association with a wider territory than may be felt by some of its particular, local inhabitants. This may be where conceptions of a separatist state are conceived in nationalist terms, but which include people who are less or uncommitted to the idea of the claimed national group, or who are other than the core national group. In this respect, political geography is, as noted by Horowitz, ‘not a fixed concept’ (2000:203). The territory claimed by a separatist movement must, by definition, be part of an existing state, or be functionally incorporated into it. A state may occupy and administer a territory in a functional sense even if that occupation and administration is not recognized by the United Nations or by most other countries, e.g. Timor-Leste under Indonesian occupation, or Western Sahara under Moroccan occupation...
eBook - ePub- Martin Bulmer, John Solomos(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...For political geographers, location and place are geopolitical forces in themselves that generate variable attitudes towards ethno-territorial separatism. Regions that are historic bastions of ethnonationalism, that are envisioned as part of imagined separatist spaces, that are ethnically homogeneous, and remote from centres of modernity and commerce, are, we hypothesize, most likely to be strongholds of ethno-territorial sentiment. Whether place overpowers other factors such as wealth, socio-economic status and position is an open question. Our opinion survey was not designed to ‘test’ any one theory or definitively ‘prove’ one account as superior over another. Rather, what we present below are empirical results that allow us to examine our starting hypotheses in greater detail and to see if they have sufficient analytical power to generate consistent results in both conflict regions or not. The aim of the survey design was to stratify sampling points using thematic data for a wide range of sources: data from aggregate geographic units (rayoni in Russia and opštini in BiH) derived from government sources (such as the Russian Census 2002) were the primary sources to sample individuals who were chosen to participate in the survey questionnaire based on a geographic design that includes all types of districts in the two study regions. To organize our data collection and to overlay and integrate the spatial coverages for the different types of data, we developed two Geographic Information Systems [GIS] to display and analyse the information collected. The key element of our work is the implementation of a large public opinion survey of 2,000 persons in each region in December 2005. Systematic stratification on the basis of geographical units – in this case, districts (rayoni/opštini) and cities/villages – allows for a thorough investigation of the expectations about ethnic territoriality that emerge from the literature...
eBook - ePubTerritories
The Claiming of Space
- David Storey(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In 2010, the French government attempted to repatriate ethnic roma people to Romania, in what appeared a contravention of EU policy on freedom of movement between member states, as well as a highly questionable attack on an ethnic group. Broader issues emerge here in relation to groups which pursue nomadic lifestyles and who, consequently, are subject to considerable public opprobrium. Attempts by gypsy and traveller groups to use particular spaces are often resisted by settled residents. As a group, they are de-territorialized, simultaneously belonging everywhere and nowhere, their mobilities juxtaposed to the settled nature of place-based communities. The mobile lifestyles of some are seen as unnatural and those who practice them are often depicted as untrustworthy and are subject to a range of discriminatory practices (Shubin 2011). Leaving aside these overt and coercive examples, it is clear that many cities exhibit high degrees of ethnic segregation. In most US cities, for example, the elites and middle class are disproportionately white. The spatialization of class (discussed above) thereby contributes to ethnic segregation (Crump 2004). These patterns of exclusion and inclusion and attendant territorialities reflect the complex intersections of race, class and ideology. In considering the evident spatial concentrations of ethnic groups in urban areas, it might be argued that individuals choose to locate in such areas for a variety of reasons. In brief, there are a combination of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ factors; for some there are attractions such as ‘being amongst one’s own’, while others may feel driven to seek sanctuary from a racist, hostile society. A distinction might be made between a structurally influenced segregation and self-segregation. Following Knox and Pinch (2000), key reasons may be summarized as follows. Clustering affords defence against attack by the majority group...
eBook - ePubStatelessness and Citizenship
Camps and the Creation of Political Space
- Victoria Redclift(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...2 Spatial formations of exclusion The case of the Urdu-speaking community in Bangladesh is little known outside the subcontinent. However, it is a case that forces us to tackle some of the most important issues of our time. It raises global political questions around the relationship between states, nations and their citizens in the context of local political geographies of language, ethnicity, memory and rights. It contributes to a virtually untold story of diasporas formed through South –South migration, but it also tells a story of internal displacement, forced dispossesion and conflict-induced camp settlement. Consequently, the role of political community is considered alongside the significance of cultural community, and recent interest in theories of diaspora is set alongside a very different literature on forced migration and the refugee. Increasing specialisation and academic segmentation too often precludes the distinctive analytic perspective this provides. In this chapter, my aim is to confront some of the disciplinary and geographical boundaries that impede our understanding of the way in which political exclusion is manifest in the social body – across age, ethnicity, gender and class – and marked in the physical contours of space. In particular, statelessness and citizenship, while dominantly understood as two sides of the same coin, have been studied in very different academic fields. The growing field of Citizenship Studies has its roots in Sociology and Political Science and is largely preoccupied with Western political thought. Consequently, much of the interest in rights, integration and citizenship among minority/migrant communities, as well as Migration Studies more generally, presumes a Euro-American context (Partha Ghosh 2004)...
eBook - ePub- Graham Crow, Graham Allan(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...5 ETHNICITY, SOLIDARITY AND EXCLUSION: RACE AND SPATIAL SOCIAL SEGREGATION One of the principal conclusions reached in the previous chapter was that geographical mobility frequently results in social segregation, with newcomers being restricted to certain areas of a locality and developing only limited social contacts with established residents. Nowhere in Britain is this phenomenon more pronounced than in the case of minority ethnic groups, whose social segregation is so ‘marked and enduring’ (S. Smith, 1989a, p. 18) that geographical mobility alone is clearly insufficient to explain it. The exclusion practised against ‘outsiders’ has an added dimension where ideas about ‘racial’ differences are involved, and ethnicity continues to exert a powerful influence on where an individual lives independently of how long ago migration occurred. Not only has social segregation along ethnic lines survived when it might have been expected to diminish with the passage of time, it is also the case that in particular places physical separateness has become more prominent. In Birmingham, for example, official statistics indicate that ‘urban segregation is increasing’, with inner-city districts becoming predominantly black and Asian while the outer city areas remain ‘as White as Torquay’ (Rex, 1988, p. 31), and this type of situation can be found in many other urban areas, as well as at a regional level (S. Smith, 1989a). The adequacy of different explanations of this segregated pattern of residence may be a matter of disagreement but the reality of manifest and persistent social segregation along ethnic lines is itself beyond dispute. The first two sections of this chapter describe the patterns of segregation which have occurred and the different explanations given for it...
eBook - ePubDe Facto States and Land-for-Peace Agreements
Territory and Recognition at Odds?
- Eiki Berg, Shpend Kursani(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Such a formula of peace—itself an outcome of available resources, existing structures, and political decisions—can have important implications for its stability and endurance (Berg and Ben‐Porat 2008, 32). The preferred solutions to protracted (and territorial) conflicts take the existing borders as given and promote negotiated settlements (Downes 2006, 46). Sometimes partition, however, may offer the only available or immediate solution for quickly ending bloody ethnic conflicts. While there is general international reluctance to support secessionist demands (Sisk 2003), more and more voices call for adopting partition in emergency cases (Kaufmann 1996 ; see also Mearsheimer and van Evera 1995), especially when a security dilemma caused by ethnic violence is not resolvable and, therefore, separation of the hostile groups and the establishment of homogeneous political units for each of them become inevitable. The hostility may be so profound that ‘all attempts to reintegrate the groups in a single state are bound to fail’ (Buchanan 1998, 23). Chaim Kaufmann (1998, 125) defines partitions as ‘separations jointly decided upon by the responsible powers: either agreed between the two sides (and not under the pressure of imminent military victory by one side), or imposed on both sides by a stronger third party’. His pro-partition reasoning relies on the assumption that violence seen in ethnic conflicts generate spontaneous refugee movements— either people are forced to leave or they themselves escape in order to survive. After an ethnic civil war, a situation can arise where the level of trust is too low for co-existence: ‘[e]thnic separation does not guarantee peace, but it allows it’ through fresh cuts demanding the redrawing of borders (Kaufmann 1996, 150)...
eBook - ePub- Karl Cordell, Stefan Wolff, Karl Cordell, Stefan Wolff, Karl Cordell, Stefan Wolff(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Donald L. Horowitz’s exploration of irredentas and secessions also considers ‘adjacent phenomena’ which to separate is no easy task. Secession is defined as the attempt by one ethnic group claiming a homeland to withdraw its territory from a larger state of which said territory forms a part. Irredentism, on the other hand, may be defined as the endeavour of members of an ethnic group, state-sponsored or otherwise, to retrieve ethnic kin by means of the annexation of the territory inhabited by their kinfolk. As with partition, neither secessions nor irredentas offer any genuine resolution to the underlying problems in most of the conflicts in which they have been applied. What then of the related question of responses to ethnic conflict? The ideal solution to ethnic conflict, of course, would be its prevention. Even though, and perhaps even especially because, it is unlikely that full-scale prevention will ever be possible, it is necessary to engage with the theory and practice of conflict prevention. Hence, the objective of the contribution by David Carment et al. is, through an evaluation of relevant theory and policy, to enable a better understanding of why achieving conflict prevention remains such a tricky task, and how it might be performed better in the future. With prevention still too often failing, managing and (hopefully) settling ethnic conflicts remain the predominant, if second-best, responses. In turn, Asaf Siniver considers different management and settlement practices, including negotiation, mediation, arbitration, and adjudication, as well as, on occasion, the application of armed force, while carefully distinguishing between conflict management and conflict settlement, and assessing the efficacy of strategies employed for either purpose...
