Mineral resources and the salience of ethnic identities

This paper shows how ethnic identities may become more salient due to natural resources extraction. 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 find that the strength of an ethnic group identity increases when mineral resource exploitation in that group’s historical homeland intensifies. We argue that<br> this result is at least partly rooted in feelings of relative deprivation associated with the exploitation of the resources. We show that such exploitation has limited positive economic spillovers, especially for members of the indigenous ethnic group; and that the link between mineral resources and the salience of ethnic identities is reinforced among members of powerless ethnic groups, and<br> groups with strong baseline identity feelings or living in poorer areas, or areas with a history of conflict. Put together, these finding suggest a new dimension of the natural resource curse: the fragmentation of identities, between ethnic groups and nations.本文旨在阐释自然资源开采何以推动族群身份变得更为凸显。我们整合了两类数据：一是关于族群身份（相较于国家身份）认同强度的个体层面数据，二是2005至2015年间25个非洲国家的族群传统聚居区范围、矿产资源开采的时间与区位的地理定位信息。本研究的识别策略利用了资源开采暴露的多个维度：时间维度、空间邻近度与族群邻近度。研究结果显示，当某一族群传统聚居区内的矿产资源开采强度提升时，该族群的身份认同强度会随之增强。 我们认为，该结论至少部分源于与资源开采相关的相对剥夺感。我们进一步发现，此类开采带来的正向经济溢出效应十分有限，对原住民族群成员而言尤为如此；且在弱势族群、基线身份认同较强者，或是居住于贫困地区、曾发生过冲突地区的群体中，矿产资源与族群身份凸显性之间的关联会得到强化。 综合来看，上述研究结果揭示了自然资源诅咒（natural resource curse）的全新维度：族群与国家之间的身份割裂。