Natural resources and the salience of ethnic identities

Victoire Girard, Nicolas Berman () and Mathieu Couttenier

NOVAFRICA Working Paper Series from Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics, NOVAFRICA

Abstract: This paper documents a new channel of the natural resource curse: the fragmentation of identities, between ethnic groups and nations. We combine individual data on the strength of ethnic relative to national identities with geo-localized information on the contours of ethnic homelands and on the timing and location of mineral resources exploitation in 25 African countries, from 2005 to 2015. Our strategy takes advantage of several dimensions of exposure to resources exploitation: time, spatial proximity, and ethnic proximity. We show that the strength of an ethnic group identity increases when mineral resource exploitation in that group s historical homeland intensifies. This result holds independently of the impact of resources on local economic conditions and conflicts. We then investigate the various potential channels of transmission. Our findings suggest that feelings of economic deprivation and political exclusion associated with natural resources exploitation drive their impact on the strength of ethnic identities.

Keywords: Identity; ethnicity; natural resources (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 N57 O12 O55 Q32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev, nep-ene and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:unl:novafr:wp2007

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