Reintegration programs form an integral part of peace and state building processes worldwide. Zooming into three regional scenarios of ex-combatant reintegration to civilian life in Colombia, I seek to understand how reintegration workers and former guerrilla and paramilitary combatants transform the social order of 'post-conflict' Colombia at the micro level, by negotiating their political subjectivities in the everyday space of reintegration practices. A feminist analysis of empirical data constructed during more than a year of qualitative in-depth fieldwork highlights the gendered nature of these ground-up state building processes: ex-combatants emerge as queering figures—self-described ‘butches’ and ‘sissies’—that disturb the binary gender orders of ‘peace’ through their perceived ‘gendered inbetweenness’. As reintegration workers seek to normalize ex-combatants’ gendered performances towards envisioned social orders of ‘peace’, they likewise negotiate and transform their own gendered, raced and classed subjectivities. Producing empowerment but also stigmatization and marginalization, the micro-level negotiations, resistances, contestations, and submissions observed in reintegration make visible contradictions in bottom-up constructions of the ‘post-conflict’ country that involve redefinitions but also reaffirmations of difference along multiple axes. How can self-reflexive feminist writing reflect these empirically emerging themes accordingly?

Biographic note

Mia Schöb is a fourth-year PhD candidate in International Relations/Political Science and a PhD Affiliate at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. In the framework of her PhD research, she has been a visiting researcher with the University of the Andes and the University of Antioquia in Colombia and is currently an Affiliate Researcher at the Latin America and Caribbean Centre at the London Schools of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Within the Gender Seminar Series

The purpose of this seminar is to offer a platform of exchange for students, doctoral students in particular, whose work encompasses a gender perspective. During this monthly series, students will have the opportunity to discuss their work, meet peers from different disciplines at IHEID, as well as interact with guest speakers and faculty members.