Abstract
In 2015, Tanzanian government granted citizenship to over 150,000 Burundian refugees who had been living in three rural settlements in Western Tanzania (Ulyankulu, Katumba and Mishamo) since 1972. This mass naturalization policy was part of TANCOSS (Tanzania Comprehensive Solutions Strategy) which was adopted and implemented in partnership with the Government of Burundi and the UNHCR. It was an unprecedented intervention and it marked the first time in history that any state has naturalized such a large group of refugees under the protection of UNHCR in a single move. 

My research traced the implementation and aftermath of this policy in Ulyankulu settlement and in Dar es Salaam over a period of 3 years. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic research, I observed that the conventional understanding of citizenship, developed to address priorities and concerns of sedentary population, does not capture the experience of the displaced. I suggest that what is missing from the contemporary literature on citizenship is a closer attention to how people affected by displacement understand citizenship.  

My research shows that the priorities of the displaced emphasize safety and recognition as the most important markers of citizenship. In the thesis, I show how these themes unfold in relation to mobility, land access and political inclusion. I propose that what emerges from the experiences and narratives I documented is a concept of probational citizenship. The probational citizenship framework reveals why the new citizens continue to alternate between feelings of safety and insecurity regarding their new status and how that condition shapes their lives in Tanzania post-naturalisation.

Supervisors:

Hazel Gray, Lotte Meinert and Andrew Bowman

Discussants:

Amanda Hammar, Professor MSO and director of Center for African Studies, University of Copenhagen

Michael Eilenberg, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Aarhus University