‘We just been forced to do it’: exploring victimization and agency among internally displaced young mothers in Bogotá

Abstract

Background Armed conflict in Colombia has a history of 50 years that continues to this day. According to the Victims Record of Colombia, from 1985 to 2013 2.683.335 women have been victims of the armed conflict. Women have been described as the main victims of the armed conflict, especially in the Colombian cultural context that in some regions is still considered to be a ‘machista’ and patriarchal one. In contrast, some authors have explicitly stressed Colombian women’s agency instead of positioning them only as victims. Some of them are described as ‘survivors’ of the war, emphasizing their impressive resistance to the outcomes of war and forced displacement. In contrast to the background of these scholarly discussions, our study focused on how displaced women living in Bogotá themselves articulate their experiences of agency and victimization. This paper will therefore explore how women, in reconstructing their life stories, expressed the tussles between victimization and agency. Methods We used qualitative methods conducted within an ethnographic approach. Based on ten years of experience in the neighborhood and one year of fieldwork, we collected the life stories of twenty internally displaced mothers, and ran eight workshops with them. We analyzed the narratives with a specific focus on how women expressed victimization and agency in four important periods in their life that related to the process of displacement: when they left home, when they became pregnant, when they were forced to leave their towns, and when they arrived in Bogotá. Results Participants’ life stories showed how they struggled with agency during their lives. They were victims of abuse and violence during childhood and finally decided to leave their homes. They decided to have their babies despite the fact that they were abandoned by their partners and families, and after doubts about and attempts to have an abortion. Throughout the process of displacement the participants had been engaged in ambiguous relationships with armed groups. Finally they arrived in Bogotá and faced adverse circumstances but were looking for better opportunities for them and their children. Conclusion The analysis of how internally displaced women narrated their life stories showed us that the concepts that dominate scholarly debates about agency, victimization and survivorship do not do justice to the life stories of the participants in our study. These stories show that changes with a major impact were loaded with ambiguity and were characterized by helplessness, lack of control and agency simultaneously. The reconstruction of these life stories goes beyond the stereotype of displaced women as only ‘victims’, but points also to their agency and courageous decisions they made in contexts that were not controlled by them and where support was often lacking. Instead of label them, it is important to understand the complexity of the life experiences of IDW, in o...

Psychosocial Rehabilitation Experiences of Women Victims of Armed Conflict in Colombia.

“…A strong sense of community and political participation found in the microsystemic, meso-systemic and macro-systemic levels [15,29,30,67]…”

“…Secondly, political participation situated from a gender approach, articulating pedagogical processes with women's care work. Such citizenship practices are shown to be essential in post-war settings and women's political participation [15,38,[43][44][45]. A mentioned case, experienced community PR processes in moral and symbolic dimensions.…”

“…Furthermore, they identified this agency as a response to the negative psychosocial consequences that the prolongation of armed conflict implies on revictimization processes due to an absence of non-repetition guarantees and satisfaction measures [48]. It is important to recognize the leadership that they have developed amid the socioeconomic and political violence they have faced as it has been the mechanisms by which they have guaranteed the well-being of them as women, their families and communities [15,[42][43][44][45]51].…”

“…Regarding PR whose objective is to re-establish physical, mental, psychosocial health and welfare by overcoming the victimizing acts affections in the individual, familiar and community levels; address structural violence and gives control to victims in the decision-making process [3,[34][35][36]. In that sense, PR includes actions focused on the victim's and communitarian resources, skills, agency and capacities to overcome victimization rather than emphasizing on psychopathological or deficit approaches that derive from a reductionist individual analysis of armed conflict [3,15,16,35,37,38]. The latter one, objectifies victims reducing their personal and collective possibilities of contributing to their reparation process to mere integrative acts remaining in a re-victimizing, negative feedback loop situation [14,36,[39][40][41].…”

“…PR is relevant in reparation processes as it has been proven in different countries, its repercussions on lessening symptoms at the individual-clinical and psychosocial levels by sharing experiences and agency, improving the way in which women victims relate to their community [24,47]. It also allows the strengthening of skills and knowledge through workshops and training that serve as tools for empowering women in their contexts [15,47].…”