On June 30, 2023, Nubia Esperanza Frasser-Thompson presented her doctoral thesis “Uprooted lives: Afro-descendant women, identities, territory and armed conflict in Colombia” at the UB. Interuniversity Doctorate Program in Gender Studies: Cultures, Society and Politics, Interuniversity Gender Institute. Thesis directed by Núria Benach Rovira (UB) and Anna Ortiz Guitart (UAB).
This doctoral thesis aims to demonstrate and describe the processes through which black/AfroColombian women, who are victims of forced displacement, live and (re)construct their ethnic identities and their multiple spaces of identity, within the specific context of the armed conflict in Colombia, considering the concept of identity articulations developed by Stuart Hall and the concept of multiterritorialities proposed by Rogério Haesbaert. In order to unveil these processes, an ethnographic study was conducted in the cities of Bogotá and Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. The data collection was carried out through participant observations and biographical methods. It is based on the premise that ethnic identities are dynamic and mobile both in their construction within different contexts, and in their activation. These identities are subject to territorial processes and processes of translocation and are in constant articulation with categories such as race, class, gender, sexuality and religion. This articulation in turn accounts for the different forms in which women build and perceive themselves, but also the agency and subjectivity with which they organize collectively, demand policies and influence the creation of local and global actions.