Place-making and the everyday lives of children born into the Lord’s Resistance Army

Abstract

After decades of war in northern Uganda, children born of forced marriage in the rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) struggle to feel belonging. Based on data collected through a longitudinal study in the urban centre of Gulu town in northern Uganda with 29 children born into the LRA, this article offers a way to understand why the children are stigmatized in the places of their everyday lives. Stigmatization in the local postwar context is defined as having a moral dimension in which the children embody the insecurity and immorality of the war. Drawing on their stories about school and church, the article argues that stigmatization of the children can be understood as a place-making mechanism in people’s efforts to reclaim former places of violence, which results in the children’s sense of exclusion. The article concludes with a reflection on the importance of research with children born of war.