Recognition of demobilized youth from the armed groups in Colombia: Transitions and challenges for school practices

Abstract

This article examines how the models of social recognition contribute to the school practices of demobilized young people from the organizations involved in the armed conflict in Colombia, who decide to return to the educational system. Results of this reflection are presented in four sections. The first section deals with the structure of social recognition through three models or stages of intersubjective recognition according to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Axel Honneth and Paul Ricoeur. The second section includes the study of emotions as main elements for interpreting the moral actions of young people who take on the challenge of reintegrating into civilian life. The third section explains how these young people demobilized are constituted as subjects that participate in scenarios of ethical and political socialization. The fourth section investigates memory and narrative, as necessary conditions for demobilized youth, to help them recognize themselves as main actors of their own history, and with the ability to reorient and reconstruct their individual and collective lives.