Post‐Conflict Ambon: Forced Migration and the Ethno‐Territorial Effects of Customary Tenure |
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Authors: | Jeroen Adam |
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Institution: | 1. is a research fellow at the Conflict Research Group, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Ghent University, Universiteitstraat 8, 9000 Ghent, Belgium;2. e‐mail: jeroen.adam@Ugent.be. His research focuses on issues of conflict, land access and migration in Indonesia. |
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Abstract: | In post‐conflict contexts characterized by large‐scale migration and increasing levels of legal pluralism, customary land tenure risks being deployed as a tool of ethno‐territorialization in which displaced communities are denied return and secure land rights. This thesis will be illustrated through a case study of the Indonesian island of Ambon where a recognition of customary tenure — also called adat — was initiated in 2005 at the end of a high‐intensity conflict between Christians and Muslims. Although a system of land tenure providing multiple forms of social security for the indigenous in‐group, adat in Ambon also constitutes an arena of power in which populations considered as non‐indigenous to a fixed historical territory are pushed into an inferior legal position. The legal registration of customary tenure therefore tends to be deployed to settle long‐standing land contests with a growing migrant community, hereby legally enforcing some of the forced expulsions that were brought about by the recent communal violence. |
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