The violence of refuge in Ecuador

“The Violence of Refuge in Ecuador” is an ethnography of the various forms of violence that Colombian refugees navigate and contest in Ecuador, a space of purported refuge. Building on 12 months of in-person and remote ethnographic research based in Quito, Ecuador between 2021 and 2022, this project contends that refuge is not synonymous with safety, security, or protection; rather, I argue that violence is integral to the experience of refuge. I demonstrate this through an ethnography of the socio-political violence that Colombian refugees confront in Ecuador, primarily the political persecution that some refugees experience after fleeing their homes and seeking protection in Ecuador. This dissertation also attends to the violence of the legal-bureaucratic system of refugee status in Ecuador, the criminalization of refugees’ informal street labor, an imperial resettlement system that attempts to contain refugees within the Global South, and the anti-Black and anti-Colombian racism that permeates all aspects of everyday life in Ecuador. I also attend to the ways that refugees enact forms of care, as well as strategies of mobility and immobility, in response to these intersecting forms of violence. This project contributes to fields of scholarship such as the anthropology of refuge and critical refugee studies by centering refugees’ narratives about their lived experiences of “refuge,” and by challenging commonsense understandings of violence, safety, and the state.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Anthropology

Grantor

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2025

Author dc:creator

• Ackerman, Alana

Contributors dc:contributor

• Orta, Andrew
• Rosas, Gilberto
• Moodie, Ellen
• Espiritu, Yến Lê
• Gómez, Carmen

• Refuge
• violence
• persecution
• the state
• Ecuador

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2025 Alana Ackerman

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/129576

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F129576