Losing one's place - A case study of colombia's displaced citizenship [Perder el lugar: Un caso de estudio del desplazamiento en Colombia]

Abstract

The study of social frameworks where violence is shaped requires an analysis of armed actions not as isolated events but linked to the structural conditions that enable their emergence. The normalization of violence in marginal rural areas not only destroys the place where victims have rights (their home) but also the very idea of being holders of rights. The physically forced displacement of these rural inhabitants is thus seen as the concretization of a previous social displacement that had taken their citizenship away in the first place. The effects of these measures of reparation in Colombia are limited (and even counterproductive) because violence and forced displacement have only been understood in terms of their physical dimensions and are not directed toward achieving a democratic transformation that would bring the victims back into the political community.