Growing up in contexts with armed conflict: Individual exposure to large-scale violence and differences in emancipative values in Colombia and Mexico

Abstract

This paper investigates the legacies of growing up in a country with large-scale armed conflict on individuals’ emancipative values. We used a most-similar case research design to analyze these consequences of armed conflict. We selected Mexico and Colombia as cases to compare, because they were similar in variables related to emancipative value preferences at the onset of our comparison. These two cases, however, varied, later on, in the level to which individuals of similar age-cohorts were exposed to largescale political violence. The results show that individuals who have grown up in a country with high levels of armed conflict tend to endorse less emancipative values in adulthood.