Contesting double displacement: internally displaced <i>campesinos</i> and the social production of urban territory in Medellín, Colombia

Abstract

Abstract. This article offers an empirical account of the emotionally charged processes involved in the social production of territory. I draw from ethnographic interviews with displaced leaders of socio-territorial movements in Medellín, Colombia, who are resisting what I call double displacement. First, they were displaced from the Colombian countryside due to conflict and now, decades later, they are again being displaced, this time from their informal settlements due to urban development. Founders of settlements are now leaders of social movements, who reside on the periphery of the city and make claims to their neighborhoods using the slogan that they have a “right to the territory”. I examine this case of double displacement to demonstrate the emotional and political aspects of re-territorialization by non-state actors at the urban scale. I argue that by applying a socio-territorial approach to examining the impact of double displacement, we recognize non-state territorialization as a realization and expansion of social power.