South Sudanese Displacement and State-Making

This book examines the experiences of the South Sudanese displaced during the latest civil war, which caused a quarter of South Sudan’s population to flee their homes. It considers how these experiences relate to the ways in which the identities, rights and sense of belonging of displaced citizens are scrutinised by local authorities and contested by the individuals and communities inhabiting the South Sudanese-Ugandan borderland.

Drawing on extensive original research documenting the personal accounts of people displaced to Uganda’s settlements and urban centres, this book pushes the conceptual boundaries of what being ‘displaced’ or a ‘refugee’ entails in a borderland region. The book introduces the concept of ‘multi-site living’ to explore public and private efforts to coordinate settlement life and mobility across borders. The book goes on to consider what the disruptive nature of violence and insecurity in South Sudan means for modern politics and State-making processes in the world’s youngest country.

Engaging with important questions across both the social and political sciences, this book will appeal to university students, scholars and researchers working on displacement, mobility, borders, and identity politics, both within South Sudan and beyond.