This paper moves beyond the humanitarian perspective that tends to frame the understanding of the internal displacement in Colombia, which, by 2011, had affected between 8.5% and 11% of its national population. We investigate how outmigration creates connections between the rural place and its urban Colonias through social and political exchanges that configure a trans-local community bound by its struggle for the right to territory. By examining the case of the afrodescendant community of La Toma in Colombia, the paper aims to rethink contemporary dynamics of social governance in ethnic communities, whose building process binds socio-political spaces beyond de-territorialisation. In this respect, we argue that social and normative categories such as ‘displacement’ and ‘ethnic territories’ need to be reinterpreted to include the interactive political ideas and actions that connect societies forced into motion.