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Coming Home: The Unmaking of a Child Soldier

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Abstract

The final chapter of this thesis looks at what happens to children when they demobilise from the guerrilla groups. The chapter describes the process of re-entering the civilian worlds and explores the challenges that they face during this process. It will also show the challenges of ‘taking out the violence’ of young people which shows that ‘putting in the violence’ is an essential part of creating a guerrilla identity. This chapter shows how it is necessary to explore the deep-seated elements of child recruitment and militarisation to know how to safely bring children home and to encourage them into new lifeworlds that are not wracked by violence and danger but instead are rich with opportunity and possibility.

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Higgs, J. (2020). Coming Home: The Unmaking of a Child Soldier. In: Militarized Youth. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23686-1_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23686-1_7

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-23685-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-23686-1

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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