Contingent Homes, Contingent Nation: Rwandan Settlers in Uganda, 1911-64

This study examines the relationship between displacement and state-formation in Uganda, a country that has hosted some of the largest refugee populations on the African continent since the late 1950s. Specifically, it explores the place-making work of Rwandan migrants and refugees who came to Uganda during the momentous middle decades of the twentieth century seeking work, relief, and political refuge. Rejecting neat chronologies and categories of the state, I trace continuities of mobility and governance to demonstrate connections between colonial state formation and postcolonial refugee management. Colonial authorities, I argue, possessed neither the capacity nor the political will to make migrant populations “legible.” In the absence of central oversight and support, administrative responsibilities for migrants fell to low-level chiefs, employers, and landlords, who became the country’s de facto gatekeepers. Decentralized governance facilitated migration and encouraged many Rwandans to resettle permanently in Uganda, but it also blurred the boundaries between “natives” and “settlers.” When Rwanda erupted in revolutionary war in 1959, driving nearly 70,000 people to seek asylum in Uganda, the Uganda government responded by introducing laws and building camps to separate “refugees” from “citizens.” New administrative techniques, however, could not undo decades of unregulated Rwandan migration and settlement. This dissertation explores how members of the Rwandan diaspora navigated these shifting lines of political exclusion over time, moving in and out of bureaucratic categories as they sought to make their homes in Uganda.PhDHistoryUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/144182/1/ashrock_1.pd