Disengagement from Political Violence and Deradicalisation: A Narrative-Dialogical Perspective

This article explores the change processes involved in moving from engagement with to disengagement from an armed militant group, as well as from radicalisation to deradicalisation. Dialogical analysis was employed to explore a former militant’s narrative account of three periods of time of the life-cycle of involvement with an armed organisation in Portugal – engagement, life within and disengagement. The findings underline the interplay between different push and pull factors at individual, organisational and societal levels which played a role in the processes of deradicalisation and disengagement from politically motivated violence in each of the three periods of time. The dialogical framework allows conceptualizing the development trajectory as relationships between a variety of positions of the self (I-positions), which generate different personal meanings involved in processes of disengagement and deradicalisation. In light of these findings, the potential of dialogical analysis as a valuable tool to access violent activists’ narrative accounts is discussed. This knowledge may open the path to interventions focused on identity transformation, thereby increasing the chances of a successful disengagement from politically violent activities, as well as deradicalisation.