Resisting Displacement amid Armed Conflict: Community-Level Conditions that Make People More Likely to Stay

Abstract

The paper examines conditions under which communities threatened by armed groups amid the Colombian civil war are most likely to resist displacement. Using a game-theoretic framework and quantitative data, the paper shows that the threatened communities which expect rescue from an armed actor are more likely to resist displacement than those communities which expect no help. Community cohesion has a dual effect on displacement. The amount of peer support among community members reduces their chances to resist displacement, but the extent to which community members are involved in collective decision-making processes makes them less likely to displace. These findings reveal that both displaced communities and those that resisted displacement possess crucial social resources for their post-conflict recovery and development, such as cohesion and strong bonds of solidarity. The paper stresses the importance of local-level organisation coordinating collective decision-making to guarantee the most efficient use of these resources.

Who Shot the Bullets? Exposure to Violence and Attitudes Toward Peace: Evidence from the 2016 Colombian Referendum

“…8. This has been the case, for example, with decisions both to collaborate with armed groups (Kalyvas 2006) and to refuse to cooperate with them (Kaplan 2018; Masullo forthcoming), as well as to resettle (Steele 2009) and stay put (Krakowski 2017;Masullo 2015;Marston 2020).…”

Resisting Displacement: Leveraging Interpersonal Ties to Remain despite Criminal Violence in Medellín, Colombia

“…A strand of the civil wars literature reasons that civilians are generally safer and more autonomous where strong community associations are present to facilitate collective bargaining against the armed group, which is more likely to accept circumscribed intervention in local affairs under such conditions (Arjona, 2016). 4 These local associations are most effective at deterring displacement when they harshly sever ties with any member who defects (Steele, 2017), clarify the "fog of war" by managing relations with the armed actor including clearing up misunderstandings between community members and the belligerent (Kaplan, 2017), and have connections to external supporters, such as churches or foreign support networks (Kaplan, 2017;Krakowski, 2017;Steele, 2017).…”

“…The first component (i) tests H1a: whether a tie to a community figure reduces the likelihood that a resident targeted for displacement flees. The second component (ii) tests H1a against the primary explanation in the literature for how residents remain in place when threatened: that they are more likely to stay when a local community association intervenes on their behalf to negotiate with the armed group (Kaplan, 2017;Krakowski, 2017;Steele, 2017). 42 In other words, this test is meant to determine whether community figures have their own effect on displacement, or whether the organizations they represent have the real impact.…”

Elderly and forced displacement in Colombia

“…It generates the violent rupture of family networks, which causes a growing irreversible social de-structuring, and the rupture of cultural referents. This phenomenon affects the integrity of the victims and generates psychological problems, economic losses, damage to social and community networks that affect individual capacity and possibilities 1 , 2 , 5 , 7 , 8 .…”

“…Genera la ruptura violenta de redes familiares, lo que provoca una creciente desestructuración social irreversible y la ruptura de los referentes culturales. Este fenómeno afecta la integridad de las víctimas y genera problemas psicológicos, pérdidas económicas, daño a las redes sociales y comunitarias que afectan la capacidad y posibilidades individuales 1 , 2 , 5 , 7 , 8 …”