Land Disputes: From Ethnicity to the Nation. Inter-Ethnic Relationships and Ivoirité in the South-West of Côte d'Ivoire” [« Conflits fonciers : de l’ethnie à la nation. Rapports interethniques et ivoirité dans le Sud-Ouest de la Côte d’Ivoire »]

In the wake of the renewed democratic movement in Ivory Coast, questions about the troubled land tenure system emerged in the South-West. The relationships between the Bawle and the Krou worsened when the traditional land tenure system—tutorat—came to be disrespected. When the political leadership of the Akan group crumbled at the national level, one could have thought that the land tenure conflict would focus on the Bawle migrants. However, in 1999, a new conflict—concerning land tenure and the disregard of tutorat obligations—erupted between Krou on one side and Burkinabé or Malian on the other. This led to the expulsion of the immigrants from their settlements in the forest. Why did the interethnic conflicts evolve into an international clash? In this paper, we analyse how the invention of "Ivority" turned the tensions between Ivorians into a nationalist conflict between Ivorian and "foreigners".