Exclusion and institutionalized criminalization: The case of forced displacement in Bogota, Colombia

Abstract

The Colombian government’s program for reception and support of forcibly displaced migrants is the main body for ensuring that the rights of these persons are guaranteed through the provision of appropriate assistance. Through extensive ethnographic fieldwork, this study examines the bureaucratic practice of the government aid program in Bogota and the processes that lead to the exclusion of specific categories of migrants. The research found that the classificatory and statistical procedures used resulted in the systematic and coordinated exclusion of certain groups of migrants. As opposed to being failures of a bureaucratic system, this practice operates to sustain and reify the political narrative that forced displacement and violence have significantly subsided. At another level, the study found that the bureaucratic practice of service provision is a principle social space for the production and reproduction of a social imaginary of the displaced migrants as needy, suspicious and potentially threatening.