The use of “population” as a governmental dispositive to manage internal exile in Colombia

Abstract

This text seeks to problematize the use of “population” in the field of Forced Internal Displacement in Colombia. Inspired in the work done by Luis Alejandro Astorga Almanza (3) and enriched with the analysis of Carvajal and Yuing (4), it is about showing how Forced Internal Displacement becomes a field on which to deploy registration systems, mechanisms and devices; from which it is possible to justify the transition from a political and social problem to an economic problem. This transition is mediated by a demographic, pastoral and medical discourses that oscillate between what is healthy and sick.
In order to problematize the use of the “population” as a device used to measure people and groups in order to make them vulnerable, methodologically, a theoretical review of these technologies is presented. Likewise, it builds a grid that goes from laws, public policies, Judgments of the Constitutional Court and Systems, among others. This work allows to demonstrate the transits and configurations that made possible, to transform a political field, into a transactional space for business administration and management; which in turn, operates as a model and reason of the State to support a neoliberal form of government.
The use of the “population” as a grid to manage internal exile as Forced Internal Displacement, confirms the thesis that, since 2000 in Colombia within the framework of law and in relation to the phenomenon of exile, the device made possible the transmutation of a sociopolitical problem, such as war or violence; to an administrative-economic one, through other political technologies such as social risk management (5,6).