Territory and Exile: a comparative analysis of political subjectivity and peacebuilding practices among young people from the Colombian Pacific region

This research proposal focuses on understanding and comparing how young people from Tumaco (Colombia) and exiled Colombian women in the UK express their political subjectivities, shaped by their unique experiences of conflict, identity, and resilience. It also examines how they engage in peacebuilding processes through a political culture of memory and reconciliation in their respective contexts and territories.

The project aims to uncover various forms of political subjectivities and peacebuilding initiatives exploring citizen-led alternatives for human development and social change, community negotiation, truth clarification, and reconciliation practices in a post-agreement context, following the Peace Agreement signed in 2016 between the Colombian government and the former FARC guerrilla. The project will engage with members of Memory House, the Afro Youth Centre (Tumaco), and Diaspora Woman (UK).

Context

Tumaco is one of the municipalities most affected by violence in Colombia. The region is controlled by FARC dissidents, drug trafficking structures, and criminal gangs. According to National Police figures, Tumaco has the highest homicide rate in the country, with 70 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.

Since 2016, 33 social leaders and 1,338 individuals have been killed; around 4,350 people have been displaced, and more than 3,000 young people are at risk of being recruited by armed groups. In 2013, after fourteen years of denouncing human rights violations in Tumaco, the Diocese created 'The Memory House', a social and pedagogical project led by young people to amplify the voices of victims, raise awareness about the impact of armed conflict, and value the cultural traditions of the territory.

Through their work in collating life stories, collectively constructing 'The Memory House' museum, and training in Human Rights and Peace, young people have gained recognition.

The armed conflict has resulted in more than half a million exiles who have contributed their testimonies to the Truth Commission. Before the Truth Commission was established to create nodes in various regions worldwide to invite exiled populations to share their experiences, there was no institutional body responsible for listening to victims abroad.

Many exiles began to organise independently, motivated by the belief that, after years of exile, they could at least listen to one another as a means of healing and initiating their own processes of forgiveness. This is a central focus of Diaspora Woman, an organisation that has gathered over 90 testimonies about the armed conflict. Originally formed as a commission of women peacemakers, they developed communication and psychosocial methodologies to collect testimonies from exiled women and victims of violence.

Their work has been widely recognised by the Colombian government, which invited them to participate in the negotiating table for peace talks held in Havana from 2012 to 2016. Formulation of the Problem

This research aims to analyse social alternatives that emerge in contexts of domination, abandonment, uprooting, and control, which are embedded in dynamics of encounters, continuous link-building, and the capacity of individuals to form networks. These dynamics lead to the construction of values, processes of self-regulation, and ways of resisting and coexisting.

In the field of post-structural political philosophy, this can be described as micropolitics-a dimension characterised by plurality, heterogeneity, social representations, and a field of associativity, subjectivity, and the ability of individuals to modify their realities and maintain a new status in opposition to the coercive force of dominant powers.

The principal research questions guiding this project are: How are young people and women developing peacebuilding from processes of memory, reconciliation, and truth clarification within the post-agreement framework? How do the political subjectivity processes of young people and women unfold