‘There it will be better … ’: Southern Sudanese in Khartoum imagining a new ‘home’ away from ‘home’

Abstract

At the time of the research, Khartoum was a multi-ethnic and multinational metropolis of 8 million people. A considerable part of the population consists of Southern Sudanese migrants and displaced persons that came during the 20 years plus of civil war in South Sudan to the capital. These people were categorised after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), as displaced people regardless as to whether they come to the capital as labour migrants, students or because of the war to the capital. The notion of displacement assumes that they are people who are ‘out of place’: thereby assuming a former situation of being in place, a place that can be called ‘home’. After the CPA from 2005, this frequently only imagined home became a real place for the IDP’s to which they are supposed to go back. Yet, many migrants and displaced people are reluctant to move to Southern Sudan. Their decision about going to the South or staying in Khartoum depends not only on the opportunities and perspectives in their respective ‘home’ areas but also on the perceptions of belonging and identity. The imaginations and aspirations about the future life in South Sudan, which I analyse in this article, reflect this ambivalent positioning.

Keywords:

• South Sudan
• return migration
• home
• politics of place
• forced migration
• displacement

Notes

1. In this article, I will use the term ‘Southern Sudanese’ and not South Sudanese as at the time of the fieldwork, the article is based on there was no state of South Sudan and people coming from the Southern part of Sudan were called Southerners.

2. The IOM (2011) usually talks, for instance, about bringing people to their home: ‘IOM and the Southern Sudanese Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (SSRRC) have completed the return of more than 7000 Southern Sudanese from the North to their homes in Southern Sudan’. http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/media/press-briefing-notes/pbnAF/cache/offonce/lang/en?entryId=29442 [Accessed 15 April 2011].

3. For these women, the question of what is their ‘home’ is even more complicated. According to the patrilinear structure of the Bari, a woman belongs to the ethnic group of her husband. ‘Going home’ means in this situation to go to the place where the husband comes from, a place where most of the women have never been and which is mainly inhabited by people speaking a language they do not know and following customs they are not used to practice (see Schultz 2008).

4. Parts of the interviews have been conducted in English and the word ‘home’ is literally used. Other interviews have been translated from Arabic to English. In these interviews, ‘balad’ is often used.

5. This notion of a Bariland where all the Bari can feel at home is also referred to in many interviews I conducted in Juba, especially in the ones after the referendum. To reflect this is beyond the scope of this article.

6. The interviews which I conducted in the period from 2010 to 2012 indicate that there is change. Young educated men refer now frequently to their Bari belonging and the need to resist Dinka domination.

7. Malakal is the capital of Upper Nile and does not belong to Bariland.

8. Medani is the second largest city in Sudan and the capital of Gezira state, which is part of the North (administratively it belongs to Central Sudan).

9. El Fetihab is a suburb of Omdurman.

10. Hanna left Omdurman after the referendum in 2011 and lives now with her relatives in Juba.

11. The interview was conducted in English. Foni literally chose the word ‘normal’ to describe the place Juba.

12. Aragi is the local alcohol which many women from Southern Sudan do for earning a living in the Three Towns.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ulrike Schultz

ULRIKE SCHULTZ is Professor for Development Studies at the Adventist University of Friedensau, Germany.