Between spoil and banishment: social representations of territory among a displaced population settled in the county of Soacha, Cundinamarca

Yuri Chávez Plazas
yachavez@unicolmayor.edu.co
Universidad Colegio Mayor de Cundinamarca, Colombia

Yuri Romero Picón
yuri.romero@uan.edu.co
Universidad Antonio Nariño, Colombia

Abstract:

This paper follows the theoretical-methodological guidelines for the study of social representations of territory. It aims to report findings from an ongoing research whose goal is understanding which social representations are guiding practices and interactions among forcedly displaced individuals, settled in communes four and six in Soacha county. According to our findings, it can be said that social representations built by the displaced population legitimate banishment and spoil they were submitted to, since they presuppose the impossibility to recover their lands and have no hopes to return to the place they were tore away from. They just pursue settlement and socio-economic stabilization alternatives in the places they have been taken in. Forced displacement results in marginality and poverty, people undergo a break, turns rootlessness into a continual condition, but people persist in maintaining their lives in exile.

Keywords: forced displacement, social representations, come back, territory.