With the recent referendum on Scottish independence and the current conflict in Ukraine, it seemed like a good time for a quick guide to what separatism is all about
What is
Separatism?
Separatism is when a group of people want more political
control over the area in which they live.
They want to be ‘separate’ from the rest of their country
either by becoming a totally new independent country (e.g. when part of Sudan
broke away to become South Sudan) or they may want to remain a part of the same
country but have some of their own laws (they want more autonomy), for example,
Scotland is part of the United Kingdom but some of their laws are different to
the laws in England.
Why Do People Want
Independence/Autonomy?
There are lots of reasons why people might feel like this
but the bottom line is they want more rights, they want better lives, and they
want to be happier.
Imagine living in a country where the official language is
different to the one you speak at home. Imagine having to read road signs, do
your school work, watch TV, do everything outside your home in that foreign
language. It might get pretty annoying after a while.
Maybe your family has a religion that celebrates days of the
year where you have to go to school, for example imagine having to work on
Christmas day because it’s not considered important enough by the government to
make it a holiday.
You might live in an area in a remote location and the
government doesn’t give your area much money to improve your area. You see new
shopping centres and sports facilities and transport links being built in other
areas of the country but your community always seems to miss out. Maybe there
are some important mineral resources in your area such as coal, which the
government mines and sells to other countries, yet your community doesn’t get
any of that money invested in their area. It goes into improving the more
central areas of the country such as the capital.
You might experience all of these things or just one or two,
but after a while some people in your community might decide that you’d be
better off if you had your own laws, if you could study in your own language,
you could mine your own coal and use the money to build new facilities, you
could have holidays to fit in with your religion and culture. These people
might decide to form a political group and challenge the government. They will
probably start reminding you all the time about how different you are to the rest
of the people in the country and how they don’t really care about you.
This psychological aspect is very important in separatism.
Wei (2002) talks about the manipulation of the ‘minority collective
consciousness’ and the ‘we-they dichotomy’ that emerges as people are
encouraged to identify themselves as either superior (which would give the
ruling power an excuse to mistreat minority group on their country) or inferior
(giving that minority group a reason to become separatists). The manipulation
of these feelings by political elites can provide the ‘underlying fuel for the
separatist fire’ and hence start or sustain separatist conflicts.
Separatism might also occur if the national government of a
country collapses leaving individual regions to try to gain control. It can
also be related to supranational groups