‘The sweet memories of home have gone’: displaced people searching for home in a liminal space

ABSTRACT

By ignoring how conflict and displacement disrupt the location of home for those who flee within national borders, studies on displacement have largely failed to fully understand the material and symbolic impacts of living without a place called home. Drawing on the experiences of internally displaced people in Colombia, this paper argues that following conflict and displacement home becomes neither an entirely fixed place those who escape conflict unequivocally want to return nor an entirely mobile space they necessarily experience on the move. Rather than ambiguously attached to the place left behind or refashioned on the move, the empirical findings reveal that home is consistently experienced by the displaced as a tension between ‘here’ and ‘there’ or ‘nowhere’. Although many displaced people do find a physical place to live following displacement they experience the sense of being trapped in a liminal space where they feel emotionally and existentially homeless. Analysis of detailed interviews shows that most of them continue to search for a sense, rather than a place called, home. A home which is emotional and affective rather than purely physical. The paper concludes by highlighting how sedentarist and non-sedentarist understandings of home coexist in the displaced location of home.

KEYWORDS:

• Colombia
• conflict-induced displacement
• forced migration
• home
• liminal space

Acknowledgements

The findings presented in this paper are part of a PhD research project carried out at the Global Development Institute at The University of Manchester. I am grateful to Uma Kothari and Diana Mitlin for their constructive criticism, encouragement and invaluable support. I am also grateful to María del Pilar Bohada Rodríguez for her never ending engagement and support with my research. Furthermore, I want to express infinite gratitude to the research participants who shared with me their often painful experiences of conflict and displacement. This paper would not have seen the light of day if not for their generous commitment to my research. Finally, I am grateful for the valuable comments from the anonymous JEMS referees.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This phrase is borrowed from Clifford (1994 and 1997) work on diaspora, mobility and dwelling.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Administrative Department of Science, Technology and Innovation of Colombia – Colciencias [PhD Scholarship, Grant 529-2011].