See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/249706536

Seeking Safety: Avoiding Displacement and Choosing

Destinations in Civil Wars

Article  in  Journal of Peace Research · May 2009

DOI: 10.1177/0022343309102660

CITATIONS READS

57 101

1 author:

Abbey Steele
University of Amsterdam
18 PUBLICATIONS   195 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Abbey Steele on 08 December 2017.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Journal of Peace Research
http://jpr.sagepub.com

Seeking Safety: Avoiding Displacement and Choosing Destinations in Civil Wars

Abbey Steele
Journal of Peace Research 2009; 46; 419
DOI: 10.1177/0022343309102660

The online version of this article can be found at:

http://jpr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/46/3/419

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

On behalf of:

International Peace Research Institute, Oslo

Additional services and information for Journal of Peace Research can be found at:

Email Alerts: http://jpr.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts

Subscriptions: http://jpr.sagepub.com/subscriptions

Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav

Permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

Citations http://jpr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/46/3/419

Downloaded from http://jpr.sagepub.com at YALE UNIV LIBRARY on June 7, 2009

 © The Author(s), 2009. Reprints and permissions:
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav,
vol. 46, no. 3, 2009, pp. 419–430
Sage Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi,
Singapore and Washington DC) http://jpr.sagepub.com
DOI 10.1177/0022343309102660

Seeking Safety: Avoiding Displacement

and Choosing Destinations in Civil Wars*
A B BEY STEEL E
Department of Political Science, Yale University

Despite civil war violence, some civilians stay in their communities. Those who leave choose one of many
possible destinations. Drawing on fieldwork in Colombia, this article argues that the way armed groups
target civilians explains households’ decisions about displacement. When groups of civilians are targeted
based on a shared characteristic – ‘collective’ targeting – their best options for avoiding violence differ
from those targeted selectively or indiscriminately. This article outlines conditions under which people
can stay in contexts of collective targeting, and where they are likely to go if these conditions are not met.
A civilian facing collective targeting could move to a rival group’s stronghold, cluster with others similarly
targeted, or seek anonymity in a city or different region. Community characteristics, such as whether it
is urban or rural, as well as macro characteristics of the war, such as whether or not there is an ascriptive
cleavage, shape which decisions are relatively safest, which in turn leads to implications for aggregate
patterns. For example, clustering together has a perverse effect: even though hiding among others with
similar characteristics may reduce an individual’s likelihood of suffering direct violence, the community
may be more endangered as it is perceived to be affiliated with an armed group. This then leads to a
cycle of collective targeting and displacement, which has important implications for the development
of warfare. In turn, this cycle and related cleavage formation may have long-term impacts on postwar
stability and politics.

Introduction of 35 residents during a block party in their

neighborhood. Yet María stayed, and never
Violence has shifted in intensity and in kind
left. The number of those fleeing the region
over the 25 years that María has lived in
was alarming at the time, but they would
Apartadó, a city in northwestern Colombia.1
be only the first wave, as millions more fol-
‘Of course we thought about leaving. We
lowed throughout Colombia over the last
wanted to leave many times’, she told me.
14 years.
In 1994, her son was killed in a massacre
María’s decision to stay raises two ques-
tions. Why did she stay in spite of the
* Acknowledgements: I thank Laia Balcells, Stephen Engel,
Patricia Justino, Stathis Kalyvas, Matthew Kocher, Dominika
violence? And, if she were to leave, where
Koter, Ryan Sheely, Susan Stokes, Elisabeth Wood, partici- would she go? These questions tend not to
pants of Yale University’s Comparative Politics Workshop, be the focus of academic and advocacy work,
and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments.
I am indebted to all those who agreed to be interviewed. which is understandable, given the suffer-
This project has been supported by the Centro de Estudios ing caused by displacement. Between 1990
sobre Desarrollo Económico (CEDE) at the Universidad de
los Andes, a National Science Foundation Graduate Stu-
and 2007, approximately 26 million people
dent Fellowship, a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation worldwide were internally displaced (IDPs)
Research Abroad grant, and a dissertation grant from the (IDMC, 2008). Mortality surveys have
MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale
University. Email contact: abbey.steele@yale.edu. shown that the bulk of civilian deaths in
1
Names of interviewees have been changed. places like Congo and Darfur were caused by

Downloaded from http://jpr.sagepub.com at YALE UNIV LIBRARY on June 7, 2009 419

420 j o u r n a l o f P EACE R ESEARCH
treatable diseases contracted by those fleeing
violence, rather than by direct violence itself
(ICG, 2005; PHR, 2005). Yet, studies that
focus on these victims only tend to affirm an
intuitive relationship: as violence increases,
so does displacement. While sensible, this
formulation obscures variation that is rel-
evant for understanding how wars unfold.
Many people stay in spite of violence. Fur-
ther, those who are displaced arrive in new
communities not just as needful recipients of
humanitarian attention (though this is cer-
tainly true), but also as actors in a dynamic
of ongoing violence.
I advocate moving among multiple levels
of analysis to contextualize the risks civil-
ians face, the choices armed groups make,
and how the interaction of the two produces
overlooked patterns of displacement in civil
wars. Drawing on fieldwork in Colombia,
I argue that the way armed groups target
civilians explains households’ decisions about
displacement. When groups of civilians are
targeted based on a shared characteristic –
what I call ‘collective’ targeting – their best
options for avoiding violence differ from
those targeted selectively or indiscriminately.
I outline conditions under which people can
stay in contexts of collective targeting, and
where they are likely to go if these condi-
tions are not met. If a civilian is collectively
targeted and they cannot change allegiances
to the targeting group, they could either
move to a rival group’s stronghold, cluster
with others similarly targeted, or seek ano-
nymity in a city or different region. Com-
munity characteristics, such as whether it is
urban or rural, as well as macro characteris-
tics of the war, such as whether or not there
is an ascriptive cleavage, shape which deci-
sions are most likely and how they might
underlie aggregate patterns. These displace-
ment decisions have implications for pat-
terns of warfare and cleavage formation in
civil wars.
Downloaded from http://jpr.sagepub.com at YALE UNIV LIBRARY on June 7, 2009
volume 46 / number 3 / may 2009
The next section of this article briefly
summarizes the state of the literature on dis-
placement. The third section builds on this
literature to define the concept of displace-
ment and outline the interactions between
civilians and armed groups that explain the
conditions under which someone can avoid
displacement, and where they go if they can-
not. The fourth section draws on my field-
work in Colombia to illustrate how these
mechanisms produce variation in displace-
ment. The fifth section presents implications
and extensions to different contexts. The
sixth section concludes.
Displacement in the Literature
Many terms refer interchangeably to the
phenomenon studied in this article: forced,
compelled, and impelled migration are a few
of the more frequently cited. These terms
reflect early conceptual work by Petersen
(1958) and, later, by Kunz (1973), which dis-
tinguished between types based on the degree
of choice civilians exercised in the process. The
implicit interaction between armed groups
and civilians underlying this conception is
reflected in both the case-study and large-N,
cross-national work on displacement. The
predominant hypothesis is that higher levels
of violence (however conceived) yield more
displacement (proportional or absolute) (e.g.
Schmeidl, 1997; Morrison & May, 1994;
Stanley, 1987; Cohen & Deng, 1998; Weiner,
1992, 1996; Zolberg, 1989; Davenport,
Moore & Poe, 2003; Ball et al., 2002).
Moore & Shellman (2006) refine the
relationship, assuming that civilians face a
lottery of persecution. However, their cross-
national research design requires the assump-
tion that all civilians face the same risk of
persecution at any one time (a weakness
they acknowledge). This leads to the straight-
forward finding that threats from state actors
lead to relatively more refugees than IDPs
 Abbey Steele
from any given country.2 Civilians’ varying
risks of persecution is an important but
incomplete intuition. Melander & Öberg
(2007), for example, find that ‘intensity of
fighting’, measured by battle deaths, is not
a good predictor of displacement. One pos-
sible explanation is that when armed groups
do confront one another, civilians themselves
tend not to be targets. Alternatively, if civil-
ians do face a sufficient risk, it is likely that
to avoid suffering as collateral damage to the
fighting, they can relocate temporarily. These
displacements are unlikely to be recorded in
large-N, cross-national datasets.3 A more rig-
orous conceptualization of risk perception
and threat can help illuminate existing find-
ings and direct attention to areas for further
research.
At the other end of the analysis, micro-level
studies have collected data at the individual
level. Ana María Ibáñez and colleagues in
Colombia surveyed 2,322 internally displaced
people (IDPs) from over 42 municipalities
and 21 departments. They find that varia-
tion exists in the characteristics of displaced
households (Engel & Ibáñez, 2007; Ibáñez &
Querubín, 2004). Further research is necessary
to evaluate if these characteristics are linked
to the likelihood of displacement, or if civil-
ians with these characteristics are more likely
to reside in areas contested by armed groups.
While this work contributes important data
with which to raise questions, it is insufficient
for assessing logics of displacement.
Collective Targeting and Civilian
Responses
Rather than study individual IDPs or state-level
estimates of them, I focus on the interaction
2
Refugees are displaced people who cross an international
border, while those remaining within a country are referred
to as internally displaced (IDPs).
3
For a discussion of challenges to reliable data on IDPs and
refugees in general see Crisp (2000), and in Colombia, see
Ibáñez & Velásquez (2006).
Downloaded from http://jpr.sagepub.com at YALE UNIV LIBRARY on June 7, 2009
A VOIDING D ISPLACEMENT 421
between civilians and armed groups in the
context of communities. I define displace-
ment as civilian migration during war that is
provoked, directly or indirectly, by the actions
of one or several armed groups. Armed groups
are organizations that use violence to compete
for sovereignty over a territory or population;
in this article, I refer to state, insurgent, and
paramilitary groups as armed groups. I assume
that armed groups want to maximize the like-
lihood of controlling a locality and prefer to
use violence toward that end by attempting
to induce compliance and prevent defection
(Kalyvas, 2006). Civilians are individuals who
do not participate in the military activities of
any armed group, but who may be ‘part-time’
affiliates or collaborators. To maximize the
probability of avoiding violence, I assume that
individuals continually assess their risk and
weigh the actions they can take to reduce that
risk, subject to their political preferences and
economic interests. This process is anything
but straightforward in the class of civil wars
that Kalyvas calls ‘irregular’ (Kalyvas, 2006).
These types of wars are characterized by an
imbalance of resources between strong state
militaries and weak insurgents, which leads
insurgents to avoid military confrontations
with the state. Insurgents avoid detection
by blending in with civilians, so frontlines
between relatively matched military forces
do not form. As such, civilians do not know
where to go to avoid violence, which all sides
employ to shape their behavior. In the con-
text of irregular civil wars, then, what is to
be explained is not only the decision of the
household to stay or leave, but also how that
decision is related to the behavior of armed
group(s), and vice-versa.
I argue that the kind of targeting armed
groups employ explains households’ deci-
sions about whether and where to go.4 For
4
Given the different forms of targeting and violence that
men and women experience during civil wars, 'the house-
hold' as a unit of analysis should be disaggregated in future
refinements of the argument.
422 j o u r n a l o f P EACE R ESEARCH
the purposes of this article, I will focus
on civilians’ possible responses when one
armed group is challenging another for con-
trol over a territory and community. When
they have control, armed groups have the
capacity and incentives to target individu-
als rather than groups (Kalyvas, 2006). In
contrast, contesting armed groups can ben-
efit by using a civilian’s ‘type’ as a proxy for
supporting a rival. Type can relate to neigh-
borhood, ethnicity, or other group-level
identifier. Civilians who fit the profile of
a rival sympathizer face a higher probabil-
ity of suffering violence than others in the
community. I call this type of targeting ‘col-
lective’. Collective targeting is distinct from
being caught in the crossfire of battling
armed groups, indiscriminately targeted, or
selectively targeted for not collaborating or
for defecting. I make the distinction because
I think targeting based on some group trait
should shape civilians’ options differently
than if the distribution of possible victims
in a community were random.
Even in contexts in which the macro-
cleavage is not based on an ascriptive iden-
tity like ethnicity, targeting nonetheless
occurs based on group-level characteristics.
Local-level cleavages often determine who
becomes collectively targeted within a com-
munity, even within ascriptive civil wars.
For example, in his study of displacement
in Mozambique, Lubkemann (2005, 2008)
found that existing cleavages influenced
behavior when armed groups entered a
region, including who was likely to denounce
whom, who was likely to leave when, who
they left with, and where they went. In the
Machaze province, the extended family was
the locus of pre-war conflicts, which led to
the dissolution of families and, by extension,
communities, through atomistic displace-
ment once armed groups competed for the
area. In the Nampula province, where ethnic
cleavages structured social relations, entire
villages relocated together.
Downloaded from http://jpr.sagepub.com at YALE UNIV LIBRARY on June 7, 2009
volume 46 / number 3 / may 2009
Collective targeting against these ‘types’
will be most likely to take place during
phases of contestation because both armed
groups have incentives to resort to it. For
the incoming group, collective violence can
serve as a signal to civilians that continuing
to comply with the established group will be
costly. Thus, it can deplete a rival’s resource
base and influence if enough civilians decide
the risk is too high to stay in the commu-
nity. In addition, collective targeting by an
incoming group can push civilians to defect
to them if they think that group can protect
them in the future. The incoming group
might offer to protect them in exchange for
local information. For the challenged armed
group, collective targeting may make sense
to punish suspected defectors in a context
in which information is not complete, and
to signal to others that defection will be
costly (Kalyvas, 1999). In this article, I focus
on collective targeting because I think it is
common in irregular civil wars and, in some
cases, may even produce the highest levels of
displacement.
In the context of armed group competi-
tion and violence, households make a choice
about how to minimize the threat of direct
violence: to stay or to leave. Those who
choose to stay are most likely to be those
who believe that they are either not targeted
by either armed group or protected by the
stronger of the two.5 Those households that
decide to leave a community in response to
collective targeting have three general desti-
nation options. A household can seek protec-
tion by moving to a stronghold of the armed
group with which it is associated (accurately
or not), ‘hide’ among other civilians similarly
targeted, or attempt to shed its perceived
association by hiding alone.
Civilians who are targeted for a perceived
association with an armed group might move
5
While I do not go into detail here, I expect civilians’
beliefs about targeting to be relevant in the displacement
decisionmaking process.
 Abbey Steele
closer to it because the group may be willing
or able to protect civilians in areas they
control. Kalyvas & Kocher (2007: 186) point
out that joining an armed group may be rela-
tively less dangerous if its rival employs col-
lective violence: ‘If an individual’s chances of
being victimized depend on a profile rather
than on his or her behavior, then shunning
participation in the rebellion … may actu-
ally prove deadlier than joining it, since the
rebels may be able to offer a degree of protec-
tion’.6 When protection is not available, or
unwanted, moving closer to other civilians
who share the characteristics for which one
is being targeted by an armed group can help
a household hide.7 For example, moving to
a predominantly Shi‘a neighborhood in Iraq
can reduce the odds that a particular Shiite
household will suffer direct violence as the
result of collective targeting. In cases in which
the profile is not easily identified by physical
characteristics, or is not salient beyond the
region or community where the household
is targeted, seeking anonymity may be the
best alternative. In the next section, I draw
on fieldwork in Colombia to illustrate these
decisions.
Avoiding Displacement and Choosing
Destinations in Colombia
With an IDP population roughly estimated
between 3 and 4 million people, Colombia
ranks among Sudan, Iraq, Uganda, and the
Democratic Republic of the Congo as one
of the countries most affected by internal
displacement in the world (IDMC, 2008).8
6
Collective violence falls within Kalyvas & Kocher’s cat-
egory of ‘indiscriminate’ violence. I make the distinction
because I think civilians’ decisions will differ depending on
whether or not they perceive themselves to be equally likely
as other civilians to suffer violence, rather than somewhat
likelier or less likely.
7
This logic will not apply to contexts of genocides, or in
which violence against particular groups is an end in itself.
8
There are two main sources of data on displacement in
Colombia: the government agency Acción Social (AS),
and Bogotá-based NGO Consultancy for Human Rights
Downloaded from http://jpr.sagepub.com at YALE UNIV LIBRARY on June 7, 2009
A VOIDING D ISPLACEMENT 423
Rich ethnographic work, disaggregated
quantitative data, and the possibility of con-
ducting fieldwork in areas where violence has
subsided make Colombia an apt context in
which to explore the interactions between
armed groups and civilians.
To illustrate interactions between house-
holds and armed groups in different com-
munities and over the course of local-level
trajectories of the war, I refer to examples
from my fieldwork in the northwest region of
Urabá. In Urabá, three Communist-inspired
armed groups, the Ejercito Popular de
Liberación (EPL), the Fuerzas Armadas Rev-
olucionarias de Colombia (FARC), and the
Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) estab-
lished a presence by the 1970s. The FARC
and the EPL maintained part-time militias
in the cities and towns, but their military
columns tended to remain in the mountains
and rural communities. In the late 1980s, the
groups competed for union memberships on
banana plantations and for political influence
in urban neighborhoods. In 1991, the EPL
demobilized through a national peace accord
but maintained a strong political presence in
the region.9 The FARC accused demobilized
EPL members of collaborating with state
intelligence and military forces and targeted
them for assassination. Some former EPL
members formed militias called Comandos
Populares (CPs), which retaliated. Former
members of each group contend that they
acted out of self-defense in response to the
threat posed by their adversaries. Paramilitar-
ies took advantage of the cleavage when they
and Displacement (CODHES). AS registers households and
individuals when they arrive to a state agency office. Its reg-
istry contains 2.9 million people through 2007, which the
agency acknowledges is not the entire population of IDPs
in the country. CODHES collates reports on IDP arriv-
als to municipalities from various sources like local-level
NGOs, press, and the Catholic Church to estimate overall
displacement, but it does not register specific households.
It estimates that between 1985 and 2007, over 3.8 million
people were displaced.
9
A dissident group of the EPL re-armed six months later
and established itself in the northern part of Urabá.
424 j o u r n a l o f P EACE R ESEARCH
entered the region in 1994, the earliest large-
scale offensive they launched in the country.
Some former members of the EPL aligned
with them, and tit-for-tat massacres between
the FARC and the paramilitaries ensued
throughout the region, with the complicity
of the military. Until then, displacement had
been minimal.
The interviews I conducted in various
communities in the region directed my
attention to patterns of displacement unob-
served at the country and even municipal
level and often overlooked at the individual
level.10 In particular, I found that households
that stayed in the region despite high levels
of violence resided in neighborhoods and
communities that were associated with an
armed group that could offer protection. If
this strategy was not an option, they could
either move to a rival group’s stronghold,
cluster with others similarly targeted, or seek
anonymity in a city or different region.
Deciding to Stay
In the context of ongoing violence, staying
is risky – but for some, maybe not in relative
terms. The risk can be mitigated by seeking
the protection of an armed group. In the
context of competition, staying will neces-
sitate complying with the dominant group,
10
For this article, I draw on 58 in-depth interviews con-
ducted in Medellín, Urabá (in the municipalities of
Apartadó, Mutatá, Necoclí), and Bogotá. In Medellín,
I interviewed 5 IDPs from Apartadó living in 3 differ-
ent neighborhoods and 9 key informants including com-
munity organizers, representatives of state agencies, and
businessmen. In Urabá, I interviewed 35 people, including
ex-combatants, union and community leaders, NGO work-
ers, and leaders of indigenous communities and the peace
community of San José de Apartadó. Fifteen of them had
been displaced within the region. In Bogotá, I interviewed
9 people: 3 generals who commanded the army brigade
based in the region, a colonel who commanded a battalion
from the same base, two former mayors of Apartadó (one
of whom was also the former regional political director of
the EPL before demobilization), and a demobilized FARC
member who was assistant to the commander of the 5th
Front, one IDP, and one academic expert on the region. All
interviews were semi-structured and lasted between 20 min-
utes and two hours. They were conducted between January
and August 2007, and between March and August 2008.
Downloaded from http://jpr.sagepub.com at YALE UNIV LIBRARY on June 7, 2009
volume 46 / number 3 / may 2009
implying for some changing allegiances or
abandoning neutrality.11
Households may stay despite danger
because they believe that they are targeted,
if at all, by the weaker group or protected
by the stronger one. This was the case with
María from Apartadó. The massacre in which
her son was killed was allegedly perpetrated
by the FARC’s urban militia. María herself
was a sympathizer of the EPL, and the neigh-
borhood she lived in was associated with the
group. The alleged perpetrators were from a
nearby neighborhood predominantly associ-
ated with the FARC and the political party
Unión Patriótica (Patriotic Union – UP).
The presence of the CPs, allied with the para-
militaries, allowed residents of EPL-affiliated
neighborhoods to count on some degree of
protection. In contrast, neighborhoods asso-
ciated more closely with the UP and, by
extension, the FARC, like Alfonso Lopez
and Policarpa, were exposed. Nicolas, an ex-
combatant of the FARC who served in Urabá
as the assistant of the regional commander,
said that the 5th Front of the FARC ‘made
an error’ when it relocated its troops, because
it left the populations vulnerable to attack.
Once the FARC withdrew from the city, resi-
dents did not have adequate protection from
attack by the CPs and paramilitaries. Poli-
carpa was ‘abandoned’, according to Carlos, a
former EPL political leader in the region.
Rather than leave, residents of Policarpa
could have tried to ally with the incoming
groups. ‘If they could, the people depoliticized
and that enabled the conquest of the zone’,
Nicolas told me. A willingness to stay may be
a strong signal that civilians will collaborate.
Those that could not credibly realign, or did
not want to, went to rural strongholds of the
FARC in Urabá or to Medellín. Nicolas also
11
It should be noted that when I discuss alignment, I follow
Kalyvas’s distinction between ‘behavioral’ and ‘attitudinal’
support, and focus on the former (Kalyvas, 2006). I think
it is possible and even frequent that attitudinal support is
inconsistent with behavior.
 Abbey Steele
told me that the FARC relocated collabora-
tors who were in danger: ‘It was part of the
revolution’. This statement is consistent with
Kalyvas & Kocher: ‘rebel combatants have
access to skills, resources, and networks that
should promote their survival relative to
noncombatants’ (Kalyvas & Kocher, 2007:
187). However, sometimes the armed group
cannot or will not offer protection to every-
one. At least in the case of Apartadó, when
the FARC left its supporters without its pro-
tection, it may have been a better strategy to
become a collaborator of the state and para-
militaries. During competition, civilians can
try to ally with the armed group that they
think will provide protection. These patterns
suggest important conditions that allow
civilians to avoid displacement: people must
align with the group that remains dominant
(which would require careful hedging), or
they must already be aligned with the group
that gains advantage in the community.
Deciding to Leave
A household displaced in the context of
collective targeting can seek protection by
moving to a stronghold of the armed group
with which it is associated (accurately or
not), ‘hide’ among other civilians similarly
targeted, or ‘hide’ alone by seeking anonym-
ity. Even though the observational outcome is
the same – groups of IDPs cluster together –
the mechanisms are distinct. The first is an
effort to seek protection, while the second is
an attempt to hide.
Diego opted for the former. When he
decided to leave Alfonso Paz, he had been
a member of the union linked to the FARC
and worked on a banana plantation for
20 years. I interviewed him in Medellín,
where he has lived for 10 years. He left
Apartadó when he noticed strangers around,
‘riding by on their motorbikes’. He assumed
they were paramilitaries or informants
working with them, and as the violence
increased in his neighborhood, he decided
Downloaded from http://jpr.sagepub.com at YALE UNIV LIBRARY on June 7, 2009
A VOIDING D ISPLACEMENT 425
he should leave. In Medellín, he went to a
neighborhood called Santo Domingo, which
was under the influence of FARC-affiliated
militias in the late 1990s.
Moving to a particular neighborhood or
community that a militia or an armed group
already controls signals a willingness to col-
laborate with an armed group in exchange for
protection. A joint study on displacement by
the University of Antioquia and the Bishops’
Conference of the Catholic Church (2001)
found that in Medellín, ‘[armed groups] help
the displaced to settle and assign them a plot to
build their shacks’ (Pastoral Social, 2001: 55).
However, some armed groups infer how trust-
worthy a household is based on which region
they arrive from and which armed group dis-
placed them. A former paramilitary leader who
controlled ten neighborhoods in Medellín told
me that he ordered inquiries into arriving fami-
lies before approving their settlement in neigh-
borhoods. Armed groups in neighborhoods in
the eastern zone of Medellín did not seem to
care where IDPs arrived from, but groups on
the western side did:
the militias maintain strict control over the
‘upstart’ population to ensure that those dis-
placed by the guerrillas do not settle there,
because they are presumed to be paramilitaries,
and when someone does manage to get through
the initial barriers, the militias immediately set
in motion their mechanisms of control and
expel them from the neighborhood. (Pastoral
Social, 2001: 60)
If an armed group does not offer protec-
tion, or civilians decide they do not want to
increase their proximity to it, they can seek
out others similarly targeted. If a group of
civilians reaches a sufficient threshold, then
even in the context of ongoing violence, the
odds that a specific household will be the vic-
tim of direct violence decreases.12 As group-
level identifiers are more physically apparent,
12
This calculation depends on the assumption that armed
groups will not greatly vary how many people they target
for killing with the size of the population targeted, which
seems reasonable, given that violence is costly.
426 j o u r n a l o f P EACE R ESEARCH
households outside clusters will risk detection
and violence. In Colombia, because the main
cleavage of the war is not ascriptive, civilians
have a third option: they can try to establish
anonymity in larger communities.
Implications for Communities
and States
While Apartadó and the Urabá region
have particular histories of the civil war in
Colombia, my argument for generalization
is that the mechanisms underlying civilians’
decisions whether to leave and where to go
are likely to be operational in other contexts
as well. Depending on local and macro con-
ditions, they may combine to form different
aggregate patterns. In this section, I discuss
which mechanisms might be more likely in
urban and rural contexts, and in the context of
an ascriptive macro-cleavage. I highlight dif-
ferent expectations at different levels of analy-
sis, which can be tested in many contexts.
If the mechanisms outlined above explain
the difficult decision to stay or leave a com-
munity, and where to go, then community
characteristics should affect which are more
likely and how they interact to generate
aggregate patterns. In particular, whether a
community is rural or urban should change
households’ calculations for how to best to
reduce the likelihood of suffering violence.
Cities as large as Bogotá and Medellín may
be able to hold many enclaves, and either
moving to a stronghold of an armed group
or clustering with others may mean moving
across town. Rural communities, in con-
trast, are likely to become an enclave unto
themselves. Clustering with others in rural
communities may not sufficiently decrease
the odds that one’s family will be directly
affected by violence. Thus, leaving the com-
munity altogether may be a safer bet. The
effect of displacement choices, then, can
have an overall effect of intensifying polar-
ization in any given country, region, or city,
Downloaded from http://jpr.sagepub.com at YALE UNIV LIBRARY on June 7, 2009
volume 46 / number 3 / may 2009
while reducing it in particular communities
and neighborhoods.13 Electoral institutions
operating in this context could have negative
consequences for long-term democratic pros-
pects. Armed groups have incentives to influ-
ence elections, and one effective way to do so
is to displace civilians who may not comply
with voting instructions. I call this process
violent gerrymandering; to the extent that it
endures, wartime cleavages may be preserved
in party systems and voter choices.
We could imagine that those who decide
to stay in communities during and after
competition between armed groups fall on a
narrower range of attitudinal and behavioral
support for the dominant armed group, and
that over time, these preferences may become
stronger endogenously. On the other hand,
when those who leave cluster with others or
seek out a stronghold, this can both reflect
and/or strengthen individuals’ preferences
for a particular armed group. Once a decision
of such magnitude is taken, people may
adapt their preferences to justify their action
(Elster, 2007). In the receptor communi-
ties and neighborhoods, people might form
bonds with one another around the circum-
stances of their displacement, forming an
enclave endogenously. Enclaves could also
form as an armed group gains control. The
slums outside Bogotá in Altos de Cazucá are a
good example. In 2002, boundaries between
neighborhoods were carefully respected, and
outsiders needed accompaniment to travel
between them to avoid arousing the curiosity
of local gangs. While the displaced in the area
may not have consciously clustered together,
the neighborhoods became enclaves because
residents complied with whatever gang con-
trolled the area.
13
Communities remain vulnerable to fracturing, especially
as the control of one armed group or competition by sev-
eral shape the violence that they face. This provides incen-
tives to seek new alliances to increase security, which may
come at the expense of some segments of the population
(Gutiérrez, 2003).
 Abbey Steele A VOIDING D ISPLACEMENT 427

Wars with different macro-cleavages Conclusion

should also generate enclaves. In those wars
The goal of this article is to identify and
in which identifiable characteristics link
explain some patterns of displacement in civil
individuals and communities to a higher
wars. In the process, I have tried to highlight
likelihood of collaboration with one armed
the importance of micro-level research strat-
group or another (e.g. wars in which a cen-
egies to more effectively study the phenom-
tral cleavage is ethnic or religious), I would
enon. This effort involves situating civilians
expect two observable differences in dis-
and armed groups in contexts of communities
placement at the subnational level. Enclave
and at specific phases of civil war contesta-
formation will occur more quickly and occur
tion in order to understand decisions. While
at higher levels of geographic aggregation;
not systematic, the examples of displacement
in other words, regions associated with one
in Urabá provided here point to dynamics
group should emerge. Segregation should
that shed light on cleavage formation and
occur more quickly because households
warfare during civil wars. People decide to
will be more easily identifiable than in non-
stay or leave a community when confronted
ascriptive cleavage settings, restricting alter-
with the possibility that they or their loved
natives such as ‘passing’, even for the wealthy.
ones will suffer violence.15 The ‘new’ com-
Ascriptive identity also provides a visible
munities – those formed by the arrival and
(or at least detectable) short-cut for armed
reshuffling of the displaced in urban areas
groups which should set in motion the logic
and those composed of households remain-
of clustering to reduce the odds of household
ing in rural areas – are likely to become
victimization. Further, when the cleavage is
enclaves. Further, these patterns in neighbor-
ascriptive, armed groups tend to emerge that
hoods and communities can have a perverse
are associated with protecting such groups.
effect: even though living in an enclave may
Thus, in these wars, regional strongholds are
reduce an individual household’s likelihood
more likely to be established and reinforced
of suffering violence, the community may
through households moving to an area of
be more endangered as it is perceived to be
potential protection. This dynamic can be
affiliated with one armed group or another.
crucial to strengthening or even creating
This then leads to a cycle of targeting and
nationalist separatist demands.14 Segregation,
displacement, which has important implica-
then, should happen on a broader scale,
tions for the development of warfare.
while the same household-level mechanisms
My two questions – whether people stay
described above – seeking protection by an
and where they go if they are displaced – leads
armed group and hiding with others – would
to a series of questions about the communi-
be consistent with such aggregate patterns.
ties they form where they resettle. Where and
how people settle and constitute communi-
14
The war in Iraq is an unfortunate illustration. In Iraq, ties is a crucial element of how order is estab-
levels of displacement increased tremendously after the
February 2006 Samarra Mosque bombing, which seemed lished at the local level, by the state or by
to intensify the sectarian cleavage. Further, the patterns of other actors. If we want to understand how
displacement, especially the destination of the displaced,
appear to have shifted; UN and USAID refer to ‘old’ dis-
placed (pre-February 2006), and ‘new’ displaced (post- 15
Some communities have avoided permanent displace-
February 2006). At the regional level, whereas Sunnis move ment by seeking protection of unarmed groups, such as the
towards Anbar province, Shiites tend to leave it. Before the international human rights community in the case of the
massive violence around the sectarian cleavage led to this Peace Community of San Jose de Apartadó, or a regional
type of internal displacement, it was much more difficult rights group in the case of indigenous communities in the
to claim that the country should be split into three autono- region. These advocacy organizations lobby state agencies
mous or independent units (e.g. Biden & Gelb, 2007). and the military for protection or intervention.

Downloaded from http://jpr.sagepub.com at YALE UNIV LIBRARY on June 7, 2009

428 j o u r n a l o f P EACE R ESEARCH
displacement may affect state-building and
post-conflict order, we need to study these
settlement patterns. By focusing on the inter-
active dynamics characterizing displacement
rather than just on the victims themselves,
we will be better able to grasp how, why, and
under what conditions IDPs are more likely
to join or support groups offering protection
or to associate with a group for safety. An
advantage to further study of the Colombian
case is the possibility of gaining insight into
the endogenous effects that clustering pat-
terns can have on future settlement and secu-
rity issues. If households and armed groups
do interact in these ways, then displacement
patterns will have important implications for
cleavages and political behavior at the end of
the war as well as for the likelihood of foster-
ing and maintaining stability.
References
Ball, Patrick; Wendy Betts, Fritz Scheuren, Jana
Dudukovic & Jana Asher, 2002. ‘Killings
and Refugee Flow in Kosovo, March–June
1999: Analysis and Conclusions’, Report
to the International Criminal Tribunal for
the Former Yugoslavia. Washington, DC:
American Association for the Advancement
of Science.
Biden, Joseph R., Jr. & Leslie H. Gelb, 2006.
‘Unity Through Autonomy in Iraq’, New York
Times, 1 May.
Cohen, Roberta & Francis M. Deng, 1998.
‘Introduction’, in Roberta Cohen & Francis
M. Deng, eds, Forsaken People: Case Studies
of the Internally Displaced. Washington, DC:
Brookings Institution Press (1–14).
Crisp, Jeff, 2000. ‘Who Has Counted the Ref-
ugees? The UNHCR and the Politics of
Numbers’, in Stephen C. Lubkemann, Larry
Minear & Thomas G. Weiss, eds, Humanitar-
ian Action: Social Science Connections. Provi-
dence, RI: Watson Institute for International
Studies (33–62).
Davenport, Christian A.; Will H. Moore & Steven
C. Poe, 2003. ‘Sometimes You Just Have To
Downloaded from http://jpr.sagepub.com at YALE UNIV LIBRARY on June 7, 2009
volume 46 / number 3 / may 2009
Leave: Threat and Refugee Movements, 1964–
1989’, International Interactions 29(1): 27–55.
Elster, Jon, 2007. Explaining Social Behavior:
More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Engel, Stefanie & Ana María Ibañez, 2007. ‘Dis-
placement Due to Violence in Colombia: A
Household-Level Analysis’, Economic Develop-
ment and Cultural Change 55(2): 335–365.
Gutiérrez Sanín, Francisco, 2003. ‘Heating Up
and Cooling Down’, paper presented at the
Obstacles to Robust Negotiated Settlements,
Santa Fe Institute (http://discuss.santafe.edu/
files/obstaclestopeace/programa030528.pdf).
Ibañez, Ana María & Pablo Querubín, 2004.
‘Acceso a Tierras y Desplazamiento Forzado
en Colombia [Land Access and Forced Dis-
placement in Colombia]’, Bogotá: Univer-
sidad de los Andes, Documentos CEDE, No.
2004–23 (http://economia.uniandes.edu.
co/es/content/download/1970/11422/file/
d2004-23.pdf).
Ibañez, Ana María & Andrea Velásquez, 2006.
‘El Proceso De Identificación De Víctimas De
Los Conflictos Civiles: Una Evaluación Para
La Población Desplazada En Colombia [The
Process of Identifying the Victims of Civil
Conflicts: An Evaluation of the Displaced
Population in Colombia]’, Bogotá: Universidad
de los Andes, Documentos CEDE, No. 2006-26
(http://economia.uniandes.edu.co/es/content/
download/2150/12859/file/d2006-36.pdf).
International Crisis Group (ICG), 2005. ‘The
Congo’s Transition is Failing: Crisis in the
Kivus’ (http://www.crisisgroup.org/library/
documents/africa/central_africa/091_the_
congo_s_transition_is_failing_crisis_in_the_
kivus.pdf).
Internal Displacement Monitoring Cen-
ter (IDMC), 2008. Internal Displacement:
Global Overview of Trends and Developments
in 2007 (http://www.internal-displacement.
org/8025708F004BE3B1/(httpInfoFiles)/
BD8316FAB5984142C125742E0033180B/
$file/IDMC_Internal_Displacement_
Global_Overview_2007.pdf).
Kalyvas, Stathis, N., 1999. ‘Wanton and Sense-
less? The Logic of Massacres in Algeria’, Ratio-
nality and Society 11(3): 243–285.
 Abbey Steele
Kalyvas, Stathis N., 2006. The Logic of Violence
in Civil Wars. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
Kalyvas, Stathis N. & Matthew Adam Kocher,
2007. ‘How “Free” is Free Riding in Civil
Wars? Violence, Insurgency, and the Collec-
tive Action Problem’, World Politics 59(1):
177–216.
Kunz, Egon, 1973. ‘The Refugee in Flight: Kinetic
Models and Forms of Displacement’, Interna-
tional Migration Review 7(2): 125–146.
Lubkemann, Stephen C., 2005. ‘Migratory Cop-
ing in Wartime Mozambique: An Anthro-
pology of Violence and Displacement in
“Fragmented Wars”’, Journal of Peace Research
42(4): 493–508.
Lubkemann, Stephen C., 2008. Culture in
Chaos: An Anthropology of the Social Con-
dition in War. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Melander, Erik & Magnus Öberg, 2007. ‘The
Threat of Violence and Forced Migration:
Geographical Scope Trumps Intensity of
Fighting’, Civil Wars 9(2): 156–173.
Moore, Will H. & Stephen M. Shellman, 2006.
‘Refugee or Internally Displaced Person?
To Where Should One Flee?’, Comparative
Political Studies 39(5): 599–622.
Morrison, Andrew R. & Rachel A. May, 1994.
‘Escape from Terror: Violence and Migra-
tion in Post-Revolutionary Guatemala’, Latin
American Research Review 29(2): 111–133.
Pastoral Social, 2001. El Desplazamiento Forzado
en Antioquia. Tomo 9: Valle de Aburrá.
Bogotá: Pastoral Social.
Petersen, William, 1958. ‘A General Typology
of Migration’, American Sociological Review
23(3): 256–266.
Downloaded from http://jpr.sagepub.com at YALE UNIV LIBRARY on June 7, 2009
View publication stats
A VOIDING D ISPLACEMENT 429
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), 2005.
‘Destroyed Livelihoods: A Case Study of
Furawiya Village, Darfur’ (Preliminary Brief-
ing) (http://www.phrusa.org/research/sudan/
pdf/darfur_briefing.pdf).
Schmeidl, Susanne, 1997. ‘Exploring the Causes
of Forced Migration: A Pooled Time-Series
Analysis, 1971–1990’, Social Science Quarterly
78(2): 284–308.
Stanley, William Deane, 1987. ‘Economic
Migrants or Refugees from Violence? A Time-
Series Analysis of Salvadoran Migration to
the United States’, Latin American Research
Review 22(1): 132–155.
Weiner, Myron, 1992. ‘Security, Stability, and
International Migration’, International Secu-
rity 17(3): 91–126.
Weiner, Myron, 1996. ‘Bad Neighbors, Bad
Neighborhoods: An Inquiry into the Causes
of Refugee Flows’, International Security
21(1): 5–42.
Zolberg, Aristide R., 1989. ‘The Next Waves:
Migration Theory for a Changing World’,
International Migration Review 23(3):
403–430.
ABBEY STEELE, b. 1979, MA, MPhil, PhD
Candidate, Political Science, Yale University;
National Science Foundation Graduate Fel-
low; Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation
Research Abroad Fellow, Colombia; Junior
Associate, Households in Conflict Net-
work; Student Associate, Program on Order,
Conflict, and Violence, Yale University.