Seeking Safety: Avoiding Displacement and Choosing Destinations in Civil Wars
| Author | Abbey Steele |
| Date | 01 May 2009 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343309102660 |
| Published date | 01 May 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
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vol. 46, no. 3, 2009, pp. 419–430
Sage Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi,
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DOI 10.1177/0022343309102660
Seeking Safety: Avoiding Displacement
and Choosing Destinations in Civil Wars*
ABBEY STEELE
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
Violence has shifted in intensity and in kind
over the 25 years that María has lived in
Apartadó, a city in northwestern Colombia.1
‘Of course we thought about leaving. We
wanted to leave many times’, she told me.
In 1994, her son was killed in a massacre
of 35 residents during a block party in their
neighborhood. Yet María stayed, and never
left. The number of those fleeing the region
was alarming at the time, but they would
be only the first wave, as millions more fol-
lowed throughout Colombia over the last
14 years.
María’s decision to stay raises two ques-
tions. Why did she stay in spite of the
violence? And, if she were to leave, where
would she go? These questions tend not to
be the focus of academic and advocacy work,
which is understandable, given the suffer-
ing caused by displacement. Between 1990
and 2007, approximately 26 million people
worldwide were internally displaced (IDPs)
(IDMC, 2008). Mortality surveys have
shown that the bulk of civilian deaths in
places like Congo and Darfur were caused by
* Acknowledgements: I thank Laia Balcells, Stephen Engel,
Patricia Justino, Stathis Kalyvas, Matthew Kocher, Dominika
Koter, Ryan Sheely, Susan Stokes, Elisabeth Wood, partici-
pants of Yale University’s Comparative Politics Workshop,
and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments.
I am indebted to all those who agreed to be interviewed.
This project has been supported by the Centro de Estudios
sobre Desarrollo Económico (CEDE) at the Universidad de
los Andes, a National Science Foundation Graduate Stu-
dent Fellowship, a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation
Research Abroad grant, and a dissertation grant from the
MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale
University. Email contact: abbey.steele@yale.edu.
1 Names of interviewees have been changed.
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