From Displacement to Development : Exploring the Evolution of Ethiopian Resettlement Policy through Changing Development Discourses

Abstract: Resettlement policies have been central to the Ethiopian development strategy in recent decades, and have resulted in contentious debates regarding their implications as a development practice based on expropriation. Researchers, politicians, and activists have provided varying perspectives which tend to either represent resettlement as a harmful detriment to local development, or a powerful tool to generate growth and economic opportunities. This thesis examines how resettlement policy has evolved as a development tool in Ethiopia during the 2000s, and to what extent it has been shaped by the developmental discourses of modernization and the developmental state. By employing Critical Discourse Analysis, the thesis tracks the interdiscursive shifts of resettlement policy across three periods to investigate how it has been continuously shaped by developmental discourses. Hence, the thesis provides insights regarding how national politics are influenced by global development discourse, and how expropriation functions as a development tool in the global political economy. The thesis concludes that resettlement has changed drastically, and become a more socially concerned and locally anchored development tool. The influence of modernization discourse has consistently been significant, but interdiscursive shifts have changed its implications, while the influence of developmental state discourse was initially significant but decreased over time. The thesis identifies decentralization and diversification as two transdiscursive movements that have shaped the evolution of the discourses, and how they have constituted of resettlement policy.