Doctoral Dissertation Research: Returning to the South: Building the New South Sudan

大规模移徙对移徙者前往的社区造成巨大压力，无论是临时收容难民的营地，还是冲突或灾难结束后人们返回的家园社区。自2005年苏丹北部和南部达成和平协议以来，估计已有200万人返回苏丹南部。这些回返者是许多代表他们的政治和政策干预的对象，已经花费了巨大的精力来努力跟踪、清点和监测回返进程。尽管作出了这些努力，但关于他们如何在当地经历返回的人种学数据很少。目前正在向苏丹南部回返的移民提供了一个令人信服的机会来审查地方归属如何通过其与独立问题的关系而进入更加政治化的舞台。通过关注日常生活实践，这一博士论文研究项目将研究大量回流移民如何改变东部琼莱州博尔镇及其周围当地地方的社会空间组织。博士生将通过各种方法收集深入的定性数据，以探索如何调动记忆来对当地和关于当地提出主张。她将寻求确定留下来的人和返回的移民将含义映射到地方的微观做法；她还将记录返回的移民在确保苏丹南部民族独立国家的政治项目中的作用。通过结合档案研究、扩展访谈和参与者观察，学生将提供关于不同登记册的回报数据，包括政策文件的技术登记册、自我陈述登记册和日常生活实践登记册。预计返回的移民和留下来的人会以不同但可延展和流畅的方式利用记忆来划定内部和外部的界限。此外，调查人员预计，这种边界的建立将产生深远的物质和政治影响，将在冲突后的苏丹南部发挥关键作用。这项研究的目的是从理论上探讨空间和标量过程在建设一个新兴的苏丹南部国家中的作用。它还将分析苏丹南部一个小镇冲突后政治环境的空间特征，重点是记忆经验、有争议的日常做法和特定地点之间的关系。该项目预计将有助于填补现有关于遣返问题的研究空白，纳入关键人口群体的观点，如回返移徙者、境内流离失所者和冲突期间留在原地的人，他们的生活都深受回返移徙的影响。通过在回返移徙发生时进行研究，该项目将有助于捕捉回返的关键早期阶段，而文献中对这一阶段的研究较少。它将提供关于共同居住的空间实践如何结合的过程，以及如何通过它们来定义归属感的新见解。这项关于大量回返移徙对收容社区最初影响的民族志研究还将提供有关这一过程中遇到的问题的重要定性数据，并指出避免加剧未来遣返和回返努力中紧张局势的方法。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立研究事业。

Large-scale migration creates enormous pressure on the communities to which migrants head, whether they are camps that must temporarily accommodate refugees or the home communities to which people return after conflicts or disasters have ended. An estimated 2,000,000 people have returned to southern Sudan since the 2005 peace accord between the northern and southern parts of that nation. These returnees are the objects of numerable political and policy interventions on their behalf, and enormous energy has been expended in efforts to track, count, and monitor the returns process. Despite these efforts, very little ethnographic data exists regarding how their return is experienced on the ground. The ongoing return migration to southern Sudan presents a compelling opportunity to examine the processes through which local belonging is brought into a more politicized arena through its relation to the question of independence. By focusing on the daily practices of living, this doctoral dissertation research project will examine how high-volume return migration transforms the socio-spatial organization of local places in and around Bor, a town in the eastern state of Jonglei. The doctoral student will collect in-depth qualitative data through a variety of methods in order to explore the ways in which memory is mobilized to make claims to and about local places. She will seek to identify the micro-scale practices through which meaning is mapped to places by those who stayed and by return migrants; and she will document the way in which return migrants figure in the political project of securing an independent state for the southern Sudanese nation. By combining archival research, extended interviews, and participant observation, the student will provide data about returns across registers, including the technical register of policy documents, the register of self-representation, and the register of daily, lived practice. It is expected that return migrants and those who stayed make use of memories in distinct but malleable and fluid ways to delineate boundaries of interiority and exteriority. Furthermore, the investigator expects the making of such boundaries to have profound material and political effects that will play a critical role in post-conflict southern Sudan.The research aims to theorize the role of spatial and scalar processes in the construction of an emergent southern Sudanese nation. It also will analyze the spatial characteristics of the post-conflict political environment in a southern Sudanese town by focusing on the relationship between memory experience, contested daily practices, and particular places. The project is expected to help fill a gap in existing research on repatriation by including perspectives of key population groups, such as return migrants, internally displaced people, and those who remained in place during the conflict, all of whose lives are deeply affected by return migration movements. By conducting research as return migrations occur, the project will help to capture the critical early stages of return, which have been less studied in the literature. It will provide new insights regarding the processes through which spatial practices of co-inhabitance coalesce, and how belonging comes to be defined through them. This ethnographic study of the initial impact of high volume return migration on receiving communities also will provide critical qualitative data about problems encountered with the process and point to ways to avoid exacerbating tensions in future repatriation and return efforts. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.