Anti-Refugee Violence and African Politics, by Ato Kwamena Onoma

Abstract

Ato Kwamena Onoma Anti-Refugee Violence and African Politics New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 297 pp., $90.00 (cloth) ISBN: 978-1 107036697With a refugee population of nearly 3 million, Africa is home to over a quarter of the world's refugees. The heavy economic and social toll of managing such large numbers of displaced peoples clearly represents a formidable policy challenge for the continent's hosting countries. In recent years, however, there has also been growing concern over the political costs of hosting refugees since some populations have served to threaten the political stability of both receiving and sending countries. This is largely owing to the militarization of refugees, who mobilize to coordinate violent attacks against their sending-or even host-country. And yet, while there is a burgeoning literature that explains this troubling phenomenon, the vast majority of refugees continue to be victims rather than perpetrators of political violence.In Anti-Refugee Violence and A frican Politics, Ato Kwamena Onoma provides a major contribution to the literature on the refugee-conflict nexus by reorienting the focus on refugees as victims of violence. In order to probe the causes of anti-refugee violence in Africa, Onoma asks a key question: why do some local populations mobilize to commit large-scale violent attacks against civilian refugees whereas others refrain from doing so despite the encouragement of state officials? This question hinges on the assumption that generalized anti-refugee violence is possible only when the state encourages violent attacks on refugee populations that have links with opposition groups. Contrary to dominant arguments that gravitate toward causal explanations based on ethnic affinity, economic competition, or population numbers, Onoma advances an original hypothesis, arguing that the critical distinction for explaining violent outcomes can be found in the difference between residence-privileging versus indigeneity-privileging areas of refuge. In residence-privileging areas, refugees remain autonomous from the host populations, which prevents the forging of relations between these groups and facilitates the demonization of refugees by senior state officials in environments of uncertainty. In indigeneity-privileging areas, the subjugation of refugees generates pacifying effects through the development of hierarchical relationships between host and refugee-relationships that serve to foster knowledge and demystify ideas about refugees.To illustrate the theoretical argument, Onoma draws on four cases from the following regions: (1) Conakry, Guinea; (2) Forest Region of Guinea; (3) southwestern Uganda; and (4) the Kivu region in Democratic Republic of Congo. After outlining the core arguments in the introductory chapter, and providing an elaborate explanation of the theoretical framework in chapter 2, he dedicates separate chapters to each of these regions. Through careful historical analyses, complemented by rich, in-depth fieldwork, the book provides a compelling account of how the structure and system of distribution of rights and resources shapes the likelihood of anti-refugee violence. The argument is powerfully illustrated in chapters 3 and 4 in which Onoma juxtaposes the experiences of refugees in the early 2000s in Guinea's capital (Conakry) and Forest Region, where refugee populations settled into local communities in markedly different ways. Whereas outbursts of anti-refugee violence occurred in the residence-privileging area of Conakry, Onoma explains how the indigeneity-privileging area of the Forest Region adopted a fundamentally different approach to the state's call to violently target migrants. …