ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the agency of internally displaced women in establishing and reestablishing their livelihoods and highlights the importance of the transformative nature of agency. The chapter analyses representations, realities and livelihoods pursued by internally displaced women in two different internal displacement contexts in Sri Lanka. It challenges the general assumption about women’s passivity in an internal displacement context (Rajagopalan 2010). The study was undertaken in System H of the Accelerated Mahaweli Development Project, focusing on development-induced displacement, and in Vavuniya, focusing on displacement induced by war and natural disaster. Internal displacement generally has serious consequences for those affected. The material losses created by internal displacement are one aspect. However, when the repercussions of internal displacement are examined from a gender perspective, the depth and magnitude of displacement particularly affect women, who may lose their individual and collective social identities. Sometimes these women are assisted and sometimes hindered by existing structures and processes in the new places to which they are displaced. This present study shows through collected narratives how internally displaced women use their agency in establishing or reestablishing their livelihoods in new places and emphasizes the transformative nature of agency.
