Drawing upon qualitative and quantitative data from Uganda and South Sudan, in this presentation, I discuss how, due to gradual reductions in aid and the lack of livelihood opportunities in Uganda, South Sudanese refugees travel back to their homeland in order to financially support their relatives who remain in exile. Return movements of refugees, even when gradual or temporary, are often understood by scholars as well as development actors as part of a process of full repatriation or as an empowering ‘strategy’ for leveraging socio-economic opportunities across borders. But for many South Sudanese, cross-border movements and the splitting of households are responses to severe hardship and are deployed to sustain life in exile rather than to prepare for return. While cross-border movement enables refugees to access subsistence opportunities and cover basic household needs, it underscores how refugees must now find their own means to ‘fund’ their refugeehood, given ongoing reductions in international assistance for protracted displacement.
Dr Yotam Gidron is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at KU Leuven. His research examines how new communication and financial technologies influence and are influenced by indigenous notions of personhood and social mediation and pre-existing mechanisms of sharing and redistribution among displaced South Sudanese. More broadly, his work has mostly focused on the history and anthropology of religion, political culture, economic life and forced migration – particularly in Ethiopia, Uganda, South Sudan and their borderlands.