Description
Civilians are often constrained by the informal or formalised boundaries established by conflict actors. These geospatial delineations defined by specific ethnic groups or the supposed territorial control of armed actors shape how communities can interact and how civilians move through space. Yet civilians may also contribute to how borders and boundaries are formed, and how they mutate, as civilians navigate fragmented and dangerous territories. The necessities of coexistence with conflict actors lead civilians to develop context-specific approaches to avoid, challenge, or transform these violent landscapes. How do individuals and communities react and interact to the enclavisations of their space during armed conflict and violence as a strategy of self-protection? This paper presents the initial findings from an exploratory analysis of six communities in Colombia, Northern Ireland, and Lebanon, based on in-depth interviews with individuals, including civilians, community leaders, and former combatants in urban neighbourhoods and rural areas. The position and identities of different individuals interact with these borders and boundaries to generate different ‘activations’. We identify across these three different conflicts important distinctions and commonalities in how borders are traversed, boundaries established, and barriers erected to better understand agency and relationships between civilians and conflict actors in violence-affected spaces.
