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This research group explores the entanglements of violence, labour exploitation and livelihood precarity in translocal settings of armed conflict and displacement. It seeks to answer how livelihoods and strong asymmetrical dependencies evolve under violent conditions, and which traces lived experiences of violence leave within societies.

The project builds on sociological theories and geographical concepts to better comprehend individual experiences of violence and livelihood precarity within the ‘extra-ordinary’ structures of violence in armed conflicts. We draw on insights from the sociology of violence, labour geography, livelihood studies and translocality, thereby enabling a multi-scalar and spatially attuned understanding of violence, coercion and dependency.

We combine qualitative and participatory research methods, including life-course interviews, livelihood and conflict analyses, and (im)mobility mappings in order to trace continuities of violence and their socio-economic and affective legacies in people’s lives and across places. Novel empirical research will be conducted in Nigeria, the Kenyan/Ethiopian and Bangladesh/ Myanmar borderlands, allowing for comparative analyses across conflict constellations. 

Contributing to BCDSS’ research agenda, most notably to Research Area C ‘Power – Violence – Trauma’, the research group will result in the production of two doctoral theses, multiple journal articles, an edited volume and visual outputs for academic and public dissemination.