Temporality of experiencing and overcoming stigma for children born in captivity (CBIC) in northern Uganda

This article explores the significance of understanding the experiences of time in the reception and integration of children born in captivity (CBIC) into their kinship groups and local communities in Northern Uganda. The paper adds to research on the integration experiences of children born in captivity (CBIC) during the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and cattle raiding conflicts in Northern Uganda. It considers aspects of temporality in the reception and integration experiences of these children upon returning to their maternal kinship groups after escaping hostilities. Methodologically, the paper is based on a secondary analysis of qualitative data (focus group discussions [FGDs] and interviews), collected as part of a study of ‘Film-in-Participatory Action Learning (FPAL)’, in which the authors explore the effectiveness of film in a development intervention aimed at groups on the margins in northern Ugandan communities, particularly CBIC. FPAL studies critical themes that intersect with the concept of time, and which are shown to impact on the lived realities of children whose births are associated with conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). The paper argues that themes of space and time emerging from FGDs are illustrative for how CBIC typically experience life and in particular how experiences of stigma and discrimination are rooted in individual and community perspectives of a generational identity that defines an individual as being located in a specific geographical and generational (thus temporal) space. Using the experiences of CBIC and perspectives of members of the local communities within which they are raised, the paper investigates how perceptions and experiences of time affect the individual's and community's responses to being a CBIC or living with CBIC. Specifically, it unpacks how 'generational time' that links an individual to their ancestry and descendants affects the CBIC's place within the local kinship group, how CBIC themselves experience the passage of time since they have joined their maternal clans, and how this passage and the different life stages from childhood through adolescence to adulthood with their specific rights and responsibilities within their local communities are understood by the CBIC themselves.