Agency and Empowerment under Unlikely Conditions: Exploring How Wartime Displacement Can Promote Community Development

Abstract

Scholars agree that violent conflict is a major obstacle to development. Wars destroy physical infrastructure, disrupt communication and transportation, encourage capital flight, and discourage foreign and domestic investment. And most important, wars inflict incalculable losses on human populations due to death or displacement. While war is undoubtedly devastating, current research largely fails to explore how wartime displacement can create institutional opportunities to exercise agency, on both an individual and a community level. This paper, based on fieldwork that spans nearly a decade in Guatemala—both during and after the end of its civil war—investigates the conditions under which the tragedy of war can be a catalyst for community development. In particular, refugee testimonies demonstrate that their forced migration contributed to positive outcomes, namely the formation of international relationships and intra-group social bonds, the acquisition of education, useful skills and material goods, and the development of political savvy. The refugee voices featured here give us a different picture of the relationship between community development and war, showing us how—quite counter-intuitively—a situation defined by force and coercion can become one that enables agency and empowerment. For Guatemalan refugees, their displacement to Mexico created an unprecedented opportunity to exercise agency. This, in turn, facilitated the development of social, political, and human capital—three foundational ingredients for successful community development.