Paper long abstract:

I seek to explore the following questions in this paper. Does the settlement of the dominant ethnic group members to a minority group populated contested territory result in ethnic conflict? Do different types of settlement patterns lead to different results in settler-local ethnic conflict? How does elements of economic development, state education, and affirmative action matter in this process? In order to answer these question, I propose a new typology of settlement that differentiates situations of settlers being predominantly segregated from the local community and situations of settlers being predominantly integrated into the local community. I term the former situation as segregated settlement and the later as integrated settlement. Furthermore, I argue that segregated settlement would primarily lead to sons of the soil conflict while integrated settlement would lead to primarily resource based ethnic conflict. I choose Xinjiang as my main case study to test the validity of the model proposed. I work with the county level data from 1990 to 2005 as my unit of analysis. Out of 101 counties that I have data of ethnic conflict, economic development, education and ethnic composition on, 66 of them have at least one Bingtuan division established before 1990. I argue that the existence of primarily Han occupied Bingtuan in those countries formed a pattern of segregated settlement. In counties where there is no Bingtuan division established before 1990 but still possess a significant number of Han settlers (merchants, government officials public service workers etc.), I argue those to be integrated settlement. According to Chinese census data, in 1990, 38% of the total Xinjiang population is already Han (which was 7% in 1953), where Uyghurs accounts for 48% of the total population. The same year, 89% of the Bingtuan population was Han, and those Bingtuan Han accounts for 34% of the total Han settlers in Xinjiang. I use both qualitative and quantitative research methods to explore these data. I aim to understand the link between different patterns of settlement and different types of ethnic conflict in counties of Xinjiang and what role did the state policy play in these cases.