Projekt

The aim of the project is to investigate the processes of identity, nationality and citizenship changes for a group of South Sudanese people resident in Khartoum since the independence of South Sudan in 2011, and a comparison to the situation of ex-Khartoum South Sudanese returnees to Juba. The emphasis on the study will be on the everyday experiences and practices of South Sudan communities in Khartoum and Juba in obtaining and using nationality documents, and the specific rights and duties generated from such legal status. This will also examine the extent that nationality and citizenship processes reflect certain ideas of national identity sponsored by the state. The main feature of Sudanese (i.e. Sudan and South Sudan) studies is the concentration on the issue of ethnic identity and its relation to the armed conflicts and social/political instability. However, very little attention has been paid by either scholars or policy practitioners to the relationships between identity, nationalism and citizenship, apparently because South Sudan became independent recently, and it is the first time that a part of Sudan has become an independent state. Questions of a lack of South Sudanese national identification and commonality have escalated recently following the December 2013 political crisis and ensuing violent conflict in South Sudan. There is an urgent need to embark on in-depth research to investigate how exactly the construction of the national identity is translated in people's daily lives, and how the practices of nationality and citizenship rights shape the relations between the people and the new states of Sudan and South Sudan.

• Prof. Dr. Mamadou Diawara

  Universität Frankfurt am Main
  Zentrum für interdisziplinäre
  Afrikaforschung (ZIAF)
  Campus Westend
  Frankfurt am Main
  

• Mohamed Bakhit

  Universität Bayreuth
  International Graduate School of African Studies
  Bayreuth
  

• The citizenship dilemma of Southern Sudanese communities in the post-secession era in Khartoum