Les Prisonniers de la haine

2 ideas

1. Ivoirité: citizenship converted into ancestry test

   Ivoirité was a 1990s political doctrine of 'authentic' Ivorian identity that redefined belonging by ancestral origin rather than birth, residence or legal nationality. Northern Ivorians share names, languages and Islam with Sahelian migrants, so the doctrine made them presumptive foreigners. A category built to exclude outsiders therefore expanded to disenfranchise a large share of the country's own citizens and supplied a grievance for rebellion.

2. Dependence on migrants recast as their ingratitude

   Landholders who invited migrants to clear and farm their land come to depend on the wealth that migrant labour creates. When land grows scarce or politics shifts, they resolve that dependence by reframing the migrants as ungrateful guests who owe everything to their hosts. This justifies reclaiming the productive land the migrants built. Xenophobia here works as a property claim presented as a moral grievance.

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