Description
This paper explores reintegration imageries in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and engages with former child soldiers’ experiences of (re)making home after war. Specifically, it interrogates how they visualise their reintegration and critically engages with wider Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) scholarly discourse. Resting on short films produced by former child soldiers in the DRC, it critically emphasizes a failure to engage with the complexities of life after civil war, particularly its assumption of a “return” to a home that has been lost and the “remaking” of home among sometimes unwelcoming communities.
To situate the research, it first establishes the limitations of DDR in addressing questions of displacement, trauma, and stigma. It then presents five visual histories of reintegration produced by former child soldiers in Goma, DRC, that broadly explore themes of survival, hope, belonging, and community. In doing so the paper proposes pushing our scholarly gaze to go beyond the boundaries of reintegration and toward the “new” space of return and homecoming that results from it. Lastly it suggests visual histories as a valuable avenue of inquiry in researching homecoming and reintegration as an approach to theorise beyond the boundaries of DDR. By focusing on these visual histories produced by former child soldiers themselves, this research shifts academic focus to those who live through the legacy of reintegration programmes.
