Drawing on the personal narratives of 72 internally displaced people in Colombia, gathered between December 2013 and August 2014 for a PhD research project by Luis Eduardo Perez Murcia at the Global Development Institute, the below story describes how human rights abuses and displacement shape people’s ideas of home.
The selected narratives illustrate the experiences of losing home after conflict and displacement, the material and emotional impacts of living without a place called home, and the process of remaking home following conflict and displacement. Participants are quoted using pseudonyms.