Ethnicity as a Tool for Resource Competition

Why do ethnic identities often grow stronger, not weaker, as societies become more modern and prosperous? For decades, social scientists expected the opposite. They assumed that economic development would dissolve old loyalties of tribe, caste, and language, replacing them with class-based politics. Instead, modernisation frequently sharpens ethnic boundaries. The answer lies in a simple but powerful idea: ethnicity is often a tool that groups use to compete for scarce resources like jobs, land, education, and political power. When opportunities expand and groups suddenly find themselves competing on the same turf, shared identity becomes a weapon for staking a claim.

The puzzle that modernisation theory could not solve 🔗

Early modernisation theorists believed that ethnic and racial solidarity was a leftover from pre-modern societies. They predicted it would fade as industrialisation, urbanisation, and education advanced. Yet ethnic movements kept rising in both developing and developed countries, which created a puzzle these theories could not explain.

This is where competition theory entered the picture. Developed most influentially by the sociologist Susan Olzak, the theory argues that ethnic mobilisation intensifies precisely when groups begin to occupy similar positions in the economy and compete for the same scarce rewards. Rather than poverty alone driving conflict, it is the closing of gaps between groups, increased contact, and overlapping ambitions that heighten tension. When a previously disadvantaged group starts catching up, the dominant group often feels threatened and works to exclude the newcomers.

Why development breeds competition 🔗

Modernisation creates a larger, more integrated market for jobs, housing, and government benefits. Communities that once lived in separate economic worlds are pulled into the same labour markets and the same queues for state resources. As declines in ethnic disadvantage occur, members of different groups increasingly find themselves applying for the same posts, bidding for the same contracts, and seeking the same university seats.

This overlap is the engine of conflict. When two groups compete in the same niche, identity becomes a convenient way to organise, to claim priority, and to argue that “our people” deserve a fair share. The competition is not abstract. It is felt in concrete things: a government job, a seat in a medical college, a plot of land, a trading licence.

How ethnicity becomes a mobilising tool 🔗

Ethnicity is effective for competition because it provides ready-made solidarity. A shared language, religion, or regional origin creates a sense of belonging that makes collective action easier to organise than it would be for a loose group of strangers with common economic interests. Leaders can appeal to a pre-existing community rather than building one from scratch.

This perspective is often called instrumentalism. In this view, ethnic identity is not simply an ancient, fixed inheritance. It is something that can be activated, emphasised, and politicised when it becomes useful. According to instrumentalist thinking, ethnic conflict emerges when identities are politicised to generate advantages for one group while excluding others from the same pool of resources.

The role of elites 🔗

Competition does not mobilise people on its own. Leaders and elites play a decisive role. Educated and economically ambitious members of a group often have the strongest incentive to maintain and even intensify ethnic boundaries, because they stand to gain the most from securing reserved jobs, political offices, and economic protections for their community.

These elites can transform relatively minor grievances into large movements. When elites from rival groups compete for the same positions of power, they may rally their communities by stressing group differences and framing the contest as a zero-sum game, where one community’s gain is portrayed as another’s loss. The ordinary member is told that the path to a better livelihood runs through group solidarity.

Why developed regions see sharper competition 🔗

One of the most counterintuitive findings of competition theory is that ethnic mobilisation is often strongest not in the poorest, most backward regions, but in relatively developed ones. Where modernisation has advanced, there are more valuable resources to fight over and more educated individuals capable of organising movements.

The most vocal participants in these movements are frequently the educated and economically advantaged members of an ethnic group. These are exactly the people who compete directly for white-collar jobs, professional admissions, and political appointments. For them, ethnicity is a strategic asset. By framing their demands in the language of community welfare, they can secure quotas, subsidies, and offices that benefit their group, and often themselves, the most.

The “sons of the soil” dynamic 🔗

A classic illustration of resource competition is the “sons of the soil” phenomenon, a concept the political scientist Myron Weiner used to study migration and ethnic conflict in India. Indigenous or long-settled communities mobilise along ethnic lines when they perceive migrants or outsiders as competitors for local jobs, land, and opportunities. Globally, such conflicts account for a striking share of ethnic strife and are driven by increased economic competition and insecure property rights.

The Assam movement is a textbook case. The All Assam Students’ Union mobilised the indigenous Assamese population around the fear that large-scale migration was eroding their economic prospects, land rights, and cultural survival. The grievance was framed in ethnic terms, but the underlying struggle was over who would control local resources and opportunities.

Resource competition in India’s reservation movements 🔗

Nowhere is the link between ethnicity and resource competition clearer than in India’s recent agitations for reservations. The reservation system allocates seats in education and government jobs to specific categories, which turns group identity into a direct gateway to scarce public resources. This has produced a powerful incentive for communities to mobilise and demand inclusion.

The Maratha agitation in Maharashtra 🔗

The Marathas make up a large share of Maharashtra’s population and were historically seen as a dominant farmer and warrior community. Yet as economic conditions for many in the community declined, and as competition for government jobs and college seats intensified, they organised to demand reservation under the Other Backward Classes category. The movement, led in recent years by activist Manoj Jarange-Patil, has involved repeated hunger strikes and large protests demanding that Marathas be recognised as Kunbis to access the existing 27 per cent OBC quota.

What makes this case revealing is the counter-mobilisation it produced. Existing OBC groups launched their own protests, fearing that admitting Marathas would dilute their share of the quota. This is competition theory in action: one group’s bid for resources directly triggers a defensive reaction from a rival group claiming the same pool.

The Jat and Patidar movements 🔗

Similar dynamics played out elsewhere. In 2016, the Jats of Haryana launched a major agitation demanding inclusion in the OBC category for access to reserved jobs and education. The protests turned violent and caused significant loss of life and property, underscoring just how intense the competition for these resources had become.

Around the same time, the Patidar community in Gujarat, traditionally prosperous in agriculture and business, mobilised under a similar banner. In each case, a relatively well-off community argued that it was being squeezed out of opportunities and demanded a protected share. These were not the poorest communities. They were groups with the organisational capacity and economic stake to fight for a larger piece of the pie.

What this tells us about ethnic conflict 🔗

The resource competition lens helps explain why ethnic conflict is so persistent in modern, developing societies. It shifts the focus away from purely cultural or historical explanations toward material interests. Ethnic identities endure and intensify because they remain useful for organising claims on jobs, land, education, and political power.

This does not mean culture and history are irrelevant. Shared identity gives a movement its emotional force and its capacity to mobilise. But the trigger for conflict is frequently competition over tangible resources. As the economist and sociologist Michael Hechter and others have argued through ideas like internal colonialism, perceptions of unequal exploitation between regions and groups add further fuel to these struggles.

Understanding this dynamic matters for policy. If competition over scarce resources is the root cause, then conflict cannot be solved simply by appealing to unity or by waiting for development to wash away ethnic loyalties. It requires addressing the underlying scarcity, ensuring fair access to opportunities, and managing the distributional pressures that modernisation inevitably brings.

What do you think? If reservations and quotas are themselves scarce resources, does the reservation system reduce ethnic competition or intensify it by giving communities a direct incentive to mobilise around identity? And in your own region, which is the stronger driver of ethnic mobilisation, genuine deprivation or the strategic ambitions of educated elites?

References

1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/competition-theory
2. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9780470674871.wbespm043
3. https://www.academia.edu/16993603/Deciphering_Sons_of_the_Soil_Conflicts_A_Critical_Survey_of_the_Literature
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Assam_Students_Union
5. https://www.deccanherald.com/india/maharashtra/maratha-quota-stir-manoj-jarange-patil-has-kept-escalating-demands-3708155
6. https://www.britannica.com/topic/internal-colonialism