‘Sons of the soil’: A model of assimilation and population control

Avidit Acharya, David D Laitin and Anna Zhang
Additional contact information
Avidit Acharya: Department of Political Science, Stanford University, USA
David D Laitin: Department of Political Science, Stanford University, USA
Anna Zhang: Department of Political Science, Stanford University, USA

Journal of Theoretical Politics, 2018, vol. 30, issue 2, 184-223

Abstract: We model the cultural outcomes of ‘sons of the soil’ conflicts. These are conflicts between the local inhabitants of a particular region and migrants to the region, typically belonging to a dominant national culture. Our goal is to understand the conditions under which migrants assimilate into the local culture, or in which locals assimilate into the national culture. The model has two main actors: a national elite of a dominant ethnic group, and a regional elite seeking to promote the traditional culture of the sons of the soil. Both actors have parallel strategies, viz. assimilating the other group into their culture, controlling the size of the migrant population, doing both, or allowing market forces to determine outcomes. The model has three possible cultural outcomes: the culture tips to that of the sons of the soil; the culture tips to that of the migrant group; or the region remains bicultural, with each group retaining its own culture. We illustrate these outcomes through four cases: (i) Bengalis and Assamese in the Indian state of Assam; (ii) Russians and Estonians in the Ida-Virumaa county of Estonia; (iii) Tamils and Sinhalese in Jaffna and the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka; and (iv) Castilians and Catalans in the autonomous community of Catalonia in Spain.

Keywords: Assimilation; ethnic conflict; population control; sons of the soil (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951629817737858 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:30:y:2018:i:2:p:184-223

DOI: 10.1177/0951629817737858

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Theoretical Politics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().