Upbringing in a Context of Prolonged Collective Violence: Lived Experiences of Caregivers in Northern Uganda

Abstract

Given the far-reaching and long-term impact of collective violence and the post-conflict setting on the entire social ecology of children, this doctoral research explores how caregivers experience and negotiate the changes in children’s upbringing during and after collective violence, and how they receive support therein. Semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were conducted with 59 caregivers and eight social workers living in post-conflict Kitgum District, northern Uganda, between 2014 and 2016. We gained important insights about the ways individuals, families and communities had coped with and adjusted their individual and communal worlds as a result of living under protracted war and armed conflict, spanning different generations and settings (i.e., forced displacement and encampment, captivity and post-war villages). We further illustrate how post-conflict return and reintegration following forced displacement, encampment and/or captivity can be regarded as complex and ongoing processes, which play out on different relational and structural levels and take place in a changed and changing social landscape.