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Autochthony, Citizenship, And Exclusion - Paradoxes In The Politics Of Belonging In Africa And Europe, Peter Geschiere

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Our world seems to be globalizing, yet in practice, it is marked more than ever by what Tania Murray Li calls "a conjuncture of belonging." The notion of autochthony plays a special role in this obsession with belonging as some sort of primordial claim: How can one belong more than if one is born from the soil itself? Since the 1990s, the notion has played a key role in politics in several parts of Africa. Yet, its spread has now become truly global. Comparisons with other parts of the world show that this notion retains its apparently "natural"s elf-evidence and, …