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Involuntary Resettlement (“Déguerpissement”)

Dernière mise à jour le 6 September 2019

The French term “déguerpissement” dates back to the Middle Ages. If an heir decided that a good he was to inherit was saddled with debt, he could renounce it and hand it over to his lord.

French colonists in Dakar began to reuse the term in 1914 as they were leading an expropriation campaigng against the city’s inhabitants. Today, the term is frequently used in French-speaking Africa.

Currently, “expropriation” and “déguerpissement” (which can be translated as “involuntary resettlement”) refer to two different concepts. All Abdoulaye Ibrahim, a magistrate from Chad, makes the following distinction:

  • Expropriation is a procedure for dispossessing citizens of their property for the public interest.” The inhabitant’s property is thus expropriated following specific procedures, often with government compensation.
  • Déguerpissement” is the procedure whereby occupants who are presumed to be in good faith, but who are not covered by a recognized custom on publicly-owned land, are required, for reasons of public interest, to evacuate their land even when they have farmed and built on it.” Consequently, in this situation, inhabitants have no claim to property rights and government authorities usually offer no compensation to populations resettled in this way.

The World Social Forum, held in Dakar in February 2011, identified **four major causes of involuntary resettlement** in affected African countries:

  • To make city centers clean and livable
  • For reasons tied to climate change (as in Benin)
  • As a result of government megaprojects (such as the construction of road or military installations)
  • To allow multinational corporations to acquire land (sometimes through a process for acquiring property rights from legal family beneficiaries).

In recent years, the rural exodus, refugees, and displaced persons have heavily contributed to the number of people seeking to live in cities, but cities cannot or do not want to meet this demand for new housing. Involuntary resettlement is also responsible for many problems that those who are victims of it encounter: health problems, employment problems, and the difficulty of offering education to younger generations.

Involuntary resettlement is thus both the cause and effect of urban or peri-urban precariousness.

To go further : contact the NO VOX Network

File translated by Michael C. Behrent – Assistant Professor – Department of History – Appalachian State University – Boone, NC  28608