"This riveting book unpacks and unwraps the experiences of children in Colombia who had fought for the rebel FARC. As Colombia embarks on a fragile path towards peace, this book's recommendations and insights can help render that process more empathetic as well as more durable." (Mark A. Drumbl, Class of 1975 Alumni Professor and Director of the Transnational Law Institute, Washington and Lee University, USA) "A very fine account of the complex forces underpinning the recruitment and militarisation of children. Higgs makes a convincing case for the role of ethnography in gaining a deep understanding of children's lifeworlds and perspectives, arguing that this lens is also essential for developing appropriate policy responses. This book will appeal widely to researchers, students and policy-makers alike." (Jo Boyden, Professor of International Development and Director of Young Lives study, University of Oxford, UK) "Using children as soldiers continues to be a global trauma. In this book, Johanna Higgs takes the reader far beyond popular hackneyed ideas of the child soldier as simply forcefully recruited and in a powerful way shows how in zones of conflict children's lives become militarised and how their lifeworlds instrumentalize them for violent purposes.

It is a strong and important contribution to the field of conflict studies." (Mats Utas, Department Chair and Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University, Sweden) "Based on extensive fieldwork in Colombia, Johanna Higgs provides a detailed account of the lives and experiences of young and under-age combatants caught up in Colombia's civil war. Collecting their stories at the moment of transition from guerrilla to civilian life, allows Higgs to understand the lifeworlds of the child soldiers and gain new insights in the infamous FARC guerrilla movement, before narratives start to align themselves with post-war norms and political expectations." (Krijin Peters, Associate Professor of Political and Cultural Studies, Swansea University, UK) "In this timely book, Johanna Higgs sheds new light on the importance of identity dynamics in child soldiers, who enter spaces where violence is normalized. Using the analytic framework of lifeworlds, she shows how children who were recruited into the FARC in Colombia underwent profound internal and social transformations that militarized them. She shows how greater attention must be given to the identity challenges that former child soldiers face if they are to reintegrate successfully into civilian life." (Mike Wessells, Professor of Clinical Population and Family Health, Columbia University, USA).