Living Displacement : The Loss and Making of Place in Colombia

Focusing on two cases of resettlement in rural Colombia, this book examines how displaced campesinos make sense of their plight and how it shapes their everyday lives. It is based on ten months of fieldwork employing ethnographic methods working, living and sharing with the displaced and the receiving populations; both of whom are in their own ways struggling to make their place. 

Living displacement draws on people’s narratives which are embedded in the broader socio-political and historic context of the country. These narratives depict lives of violence and terror; dangerous journeys to the current hamlets and the burden, consequences and the symbolism associated with the category desplazado (internally displaced person). It investigates the process of place negotiation between the displaced and the receiving populations, each with claims to a right of belonging, the challenges the displaced encounter in their attempts to tame unknown terrains and how the nostalgic memories of the place left behind and the still present fear shape individuals’ lives. 

The book suggests that these complex experiences are best understood through the prism of place, examining people’s lives both pre- and post- physical relocation. The gradual loss of place to violence and terror and subsequent process of place-making after uprooting demonstrate that displacement is not an event which starts with movement and ends with resettlement or return, but is a process whose timeframes are difficult to define.