Disaster solidarities: displaced women’s activism among layered disasters in Colombia
Topics: Social Geography
, Hazards, Risks, and Disasters
, Gender
Keywords: Disaster, solidarity, activism, violence, gender, film-making
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 58
Authors:
Rachel Pain, Newcastle University
Sonja Marzi, London School of Economics
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Abstract
This paper focuses on activism and solidarity amongst women experiencing multiple, intersecting, ongoing disasters. We report from participatory action research with two groups of displaced women making new lives in Bogotá and Medellín, Colombia in the face of endemic disaster and trauma, both from their places of origin and in their new situations. Initial discussions around finding employment, making a living and settling in the city with their families came into sharp focus as Covid-19 hit, and the women began to describe their individual and collective empowerment, activism and solidarity. This activism has to transcend the sites and scales of disasters; inventive, resourceful, experimental, it continually changes shape to fit the spatial contexts that women find themselves in, and the constraints of time, labour, caring, and ongoing rather than singular disasters.
Using online discussion groups and participatory film-making, the research has charted the ways that women work across private and public spheres to engage in domestic activism, participatory planning, community organising and mutual aid. Covid-19 has heightened their lived experience of disasters connected to displacement and other violences, it disrupts and strengthens their activism, and has accelerated their solidarity. We build on the concepts of disaster patriarchy and disaster anarchy to analyse the gendered disaster solidarities that frame the women’s ongoing struggles.
Disaster solidarities: displaced women’s activism among layered disasters in Colombia
Category
Virtual Paper Abstract
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