“To not hate”: reconciliation among victims of violence and participants of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission

The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission (GTRC) was an intervention promoting reconciliation among the victims and community affected by the 1979 Greensboro Massacre in North Carolina. An exploratory qualitative research design was used, in which in‐depth, open‐ended interviews were conducted with victims of the Greensboro Massacre who subsequently participated in the GTRC (n = 17). Findings revealed a typology of reconciliation that includes cognitive–affective, behavioral and social reconciliation. Respondents displayed different orientations in how they prioritized reconciliation with the twin goals of seeking truth and justice. The GTRC did contribute to interpersonal reconciliation, and can be a useful model of communities working to recover from violence. The cognitive–affective, behavioral and social typology of reconciliation can be used to assess other interventions aimed at promoting reconciliation. Individuals’ personal orientations towards reconciliation can also be used to explain different reactions among people to restorative justice efforts.     

Buried voices: Mexican migrants’ views on the question of illegality

How do immigrant Mexican workers perceive the policies and social discourses that regulate their insertion into American society as noncitizens and illegals? Using ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews, evidence is presented that unauthorized Mexican migrants do not consider themselves lawbreakers but rather moral actors responding to difficult socioeconomic conditions. Informed by a keen understanding of the social forces oppressing them, these migrants articulate a discourse of social justice that works as a powerful counterpoint to the hegemonic ideas of citizenship, belonging, and illegality. A careful analysis of migrant social reflexivity offers a much-needed corrective to the prevailing top-down perspective typically offered among contemporary scholars. By looking at the ways in which migrants make sense of immigration policies and articulate their right to have rights, this examination departs from the widespread tendency among scholars and policy makers of analyzing the migrant’s social and civic status as a matter of assimilation and immigration control.     

Community‐based restorative transitional justice in Sierra Leone

Community‐based restorative transitional justice is an important feature of peace consolidation, maximizing access to justice and facilitating reconciliation. Examining post‐conflict Sierra Leone as a case study, the author draws on existing justice practices in Sierra Leone as examples of restorative responses to war criminality. Specifically, the traditional reintegration of former male and female combatants and the emergence of a new project, ‘Fambul Tok’ are detailed. The author discusses and compares the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to point to gaps in transitional justice that call for community‐based restorative strategies.