Field and river

20th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (ICES20)
Mekelle University, Ethiopia

"Regional and Global Ethiopia - Interconnections and Identities"
1-5 October, 2018

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CONCEPTIONS OF BOUNDARIES AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE STATE-MAKING OF ERITREA [Abstract ID: 0502-05]

Tanja R. MÜLLER, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, UK

Boundaries with or rather against the Ethiopian state were an important features not only in the Eritrean liberation struggle and its ideology, but equally in the politics of post-independence Eritrea. These in turn found a counterpart in the way the Ethiopian state reacted to the Eritrean liberation war as well as to political developments in its aftermath. Those boundaries are not only of geographical importance or a marker of the nation as an imagined community, thus carrying symbolic importance, they are also intimately related to citizen rights, obligations and denial. This paper looks at the different ways in which boundaries between Ethiopia and Eritrea became hard frontiers with concrete implications for conceptions of statehood as well as the lives of citizens. Methodologically, the paper is based on interview and archival research in Eritrea and among some Eritrean refugees between 1996 and 2017. The paper discusses the rhetoric in EPLF documents from the time of the liberation war period and how it uses conceptions of a clear frontier as a rallying cause, and how those conceptions translated into the emergence of a particular type of gatekeeper state post Eritrean independence. It also engages with how these conceptions translate into the emergence of citizens of Ethiopia and Eritrea whose rights-claims as citizens are determined by conceptions of formal citizenship that mirror those boundaries, most visible in the aftermath of the 1998-2000 Eritreo-Ethiopian border war. Finally the paper investigates how conceptions of a fixed boundary have an afterlife in the encounters of refugee populations from Ethiopia and Eritrea, their rights-based claims within international refugee law, but also their social encounters in transit locations where they are often stranded together. Ultimately the paper argues that in spite of the fact that Ethiopia largely escaped formal European colonialism, conceptions of boundaries and frontiers that have their origins in Western political thought and practices have fundamentally shaped the relationship of Ethiopia with Eritrea as a core part of its periphery.