Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Refugees – Sudan'

The prolonged civil-war and famine in the African nation of Sudan has displaced millions over the last two decades, many of these are women and children. Refugee women who are resettled to the US with their children must make profound adjustments to learn how to live in the American society and culture. Very little is understood about the factors and conditions that affect the health of immigrant and refugee populations who resettle to a host country.This ethnographic study investigates the influences to health and well-being in 10 refugee women from the Dinka tribe of southern Sudan who were resettled with their children to a Midwestern city in the United States (US). The in-depth interviews and participant observation that occurred over the one-year period of the study resulted in an interpretive theory of Well-Being in Refugee Women Experiencing Cultural Transition. Well-being in Dinka mothers is understood through the relationships between three major themes: Liminality: Living Between Two Cultures, Standing for Myself, and Hope for the Future. Liminality: Living Between Two Cultures describes how the women struggled to maintain a delicate balance between their traditional Dinka culture and the new American culture. The theme of Standing for Myself addresses how learning new skills and taking on new roles in the US, led to transformation of the refugee women. The third theme of Hope for the Future emphasizes the Dinka cultural values of communality and religious convictions that gave the women hope for a better future for their families and countrymen.The middle-range theory of transitions was used as a theoretical framework to guide the investigation of well-being of the refugee women and their families during resettlement. The study extends of the theory of transitions to refugee women from southern Sudan by developing a theoretical explanation for how refugee Dinka women attain well-being during transition. The results of this study strongly indicate that `cultural transition' be added as a distinct type of transition significant to understand the health needs of refugee women. The knowledge from this study will lead to the development of culturally competent interventions for resettled refugee families.

This is an ethnographic study of the lives and experiences of Eritrean refugee women in Um Gargur, a settlement in eastern Sudan established in 1976. It is based upon fourteen months of fieldwork and builds upon the findings of my 1985 M.Phil, thesis, "A Preliminary Study of the Position of Eritrean Refugees in the Sudan", for which I conducted two months of research in Urn Gargur. While the M.Phil, thesis was a comparative study of Um Gargur and two other cases of resettlement in Africa, here I am concerned primarily with questions of gender, everyday life, and how processes of change and realignments of power impact upon women in displaced heterogeneous societies. After more than a decade in exile the people of Um Gargur continue to be fiercely nationalistic and as unresigned to remaining refugees as they are to assimilating into Sudan. There is also a growing trend towards Islamic conservatism in the settlement. This, coupled with the fact that Um Gargur is composed largely of mistrusted "strangers", means that women experience more restrictions in Um Gargur than they did in their communities of origin. The aim of the thesis is to examine the effect of displacement and exile upon gender roles, social infrastructures, traditions and perceptions, as people of disparate origins, occasionally with conflicting beliefs and mores, negotiate a way of living together. The title "Mothers of Steel" is taken from a riot instigated by women when charges were introduced for water. As the women revolted, their children shouted "Our mothers are steel, our fathers are monkeys!" This represented the main crisis point between men and women. Yet although the title derives from this incident, women, as they feed, nurture, socialise their children and keep their families intact, have clearly become "mothers of steel" in the eyes of their children since they have lived in Um Gargur. Chapter One introduces an overview of the settlement and shows that women's deliberate exclusion from all formal institutions leaves them at a disadvantage despite the fact that over 50% of them are household heads for much of the year. The following chapters examine how categories as diverse as politics, honour, health, and economics, impinge on the lives of the refugee women and their families, and argue that in contexts of displacement, where social realities are constantly being redefined, these categories all have a moral dimension. In Chapters Three and Four I show how limited employment opportunities in Um Gargur have meant that the majority of men continuously resident in the settlement have lost their roles as providers while women's roles have taken on a new symbolic significance. The society attempts to compensate for men's loss of status by placing greater restrictions upon women. Women's reactions to this are varied, but significant numbers of them have redrawn the parameters of "honourable" behaviour to allow themselves more flexibility. Women establish ties, not unlike kinship bonds, which traverse ethnic and religious boundaries and offer limited economic power and physical and psychological support. In Chapter Five I explore the tensions between traditional beliefs and practices and "Western" models of health care. While society's notion of what constitutes honour has calcified in reaction to a situation of extreme social dislocation and jeopardisation of "male" and "female" behaviour patterns, I show in Chapter Six that the women of Um Gargur have recognised their common plight and responded by renegotiating their identity, whilst at the same time being the primary agents - through myths, songs, names, and stories about Eritrea - in the construction of their children's identities as Eritreans. In the Conclusion (Chapter Seven) I introduce the story of the aforementioned water riot to illustrate how radically women's perceptions of their own power have altered, and how their children now perceive them. I suggest that though the process of change has been slow, the pressures faced by the community have meant that women's reconceptualisation of their own roles has been inevitable.

In 2000, a small group of refugees from Sudan were sponsored by three local churches in Maryville, Tennessee. The churches worked with the Bridge Organization in order to orchestrate the refugees' departure from Africa to Maryville. At the time of their sponsorship, it was believed that the Sudanese population in Maryville would be self-sufficient within two years of arrival. This study uses one-on-one, open-ended interviews and a paper-pencil questionnaire with the Sudanese population and a focus group with the American sponsors to assess the extent that the Sudanese refugee population in Maryville has become self-sufficient. While individual success depends on multitude of variables, the results indicate that in general, the Sudanese community is still struggling with American norms and culture, and, as a result, has not become self-sufficient.

This dissertation examines the adaptation of Christian refugees from Southern Sudan—primarily Dinkas and mostly educated—to living in Ottawa, Canada, not historically a gateway immigrant city. The discussion is based on sustained observation, documentation and analysis of South Sudanese refugees between 2005 and 2009, including 32 recorded interviews of adults, as well as a focus group held with young adults. It examines the findings through the lenses of social capital, with its focus on trust and reciprocity, and segmented assimilation to study the South Sudanese refugees’ integration through their most important groupings: ethnic, gendered, racial and religious. The study also focuses on the cultural, gender and language dynamics of a nascent South Sudanese-focused congregation and a related East African congregation. The experiences of Anglican and Catholic congregations with Christian Sudanese refugees were also examined. The research suggests that inter-culturally competent ethnic and religious leadership is central to the ability of migrant groups in the Global North to have enough bonding social capital to mediate the adaptation process and to bridge or link to other groups. First-wave, mostly male, educated refugees often have the inter-cultural skills and agency to set up effective organizations, but a continued focus on their region of origin, facilitated by the Internet and cell phones, makes a sustained emphasis on organizational-supported living in Canada difficult. While the values of many Sudanese-born women and their children converge with those of mainstream Canadian society, men living within patriarchal value systems, supported by literal interpretations of Holy Scriptures, face challenges, and the resulting conflicts threaten family cohesion. Both the denominational and the ethnic churches, in supporting new migrants spiritually and socially, are caught between denominational parameters and goals of ethnic identity, culture and values maintenance, made more difficult by the Sudanese not having a common language. The dissertation also begins to analyze the impact for recent African Christian immigrants of a culture that emphasizes individual rights, including the effects of the increasing presence of openly gay leaders in the Canadian but not in the African Church.
Cette dissertation se penche sur l’adaptation des réfugiés chrétiens originaires du Sud du Soudan, en majorité d’ethnie Dinka et scolarisés, vivant à Ottawa, Canada. Les résultats de la recherche sur 5 ans suggèrent qu’une gestion adéquate des dynamiques ethniques et religieuses au niveau interculturel est capitale dans la capacité des groupes de migrants dans les pays développés pour générer suffisamment de capital social et faciliter le processus d’adaptation pour se lier à d’autres groupes. Les églises confessionnelles et les églises ethniques, en aidant les immigrants spirituellement et socialement, sont coincées entre des paramètres confessionnels et des objectifs d’identification ethnique, de maintien de valeurs et de culture, compliqués par l’absence d’une langue commune parmi les Soudanais. Cette dissertation tente aussi d’analyser l’impact pour les immigrants africains de fraîche date, d’une culture qui valorise les droits individuels, y compris l’émergence de chefs de file ouvertement homosexuels dans les églises canadiennes mais non dans les églises africaines.
University of Ottawa

xvi, 360 p. : ill. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.
This dissertation is a comparative, ethnographic study of Southern Sudanese and Bosnian refugees and social service organizations in Fargo, North Dakota. I examine how refugee resettlement staff, welfare workers, and volunteers attempted to transform refugee clients into "worthy" citizens through neoliberal policies aimed at making them economically self-sufficient and independent from the state. Refugees' engagement with resettlement and welfare agencies and volunteers depended on their positioning in social hierarchies in their home countries and in the United States. Refugees had widely variable political, educational, cultural, and employment histories, but many had survived war and/or forced migration and had contact with many of the same institutions and employers. Bosnians in Fargo were either white, ethnic Muslims (Bosniaks), or Roma (Gypsies), who had a darker skin color and were stigmatized by Bosniaks. By interrogating intersections of race, class, gender, and culture, I explain why social service providers and the wider public deemed Bosnian Roma as some of the least "worthy" citizens in Fargo and black, Christian Southern Sudanese as some of the worthiest citizens. In so doing, I highlight the important roles of religion, hard work, education, and civic duty as characteristics of "good" citizens in Fargo. The dissertation is based on a year of ethnographic research in Fargo (2007-08). It also builds on previous research with Roma in Bosnia (1998-2000) and employment with a resettlement agency in South Dakota (2001-2002). I relate this analysis to anthropological theories of the state with a particular focus on refugee resettlement in the context of the neoliberal welfare state. Following Harrell- Bond's argument that refugees are often portrayed as mere "recipients of aid," I argue for a more nuanced understanding of refugees as active citizens in Fargo. I view refugee resettlement organizations, welfare agencies, and volunteers as powerful actors in shaping refugees' lives, but I also take into account the ways in which refugees in turn shaped these actors. I show how refugee resettlement called into question hegemonic forms of citizenship in the relatively culturally and racially homogenous city of Fargo.
Committee in charge: Carol Silverman, Chairperson, Anthropology; Sandra Morgen, Member, Anthropology; Lynn Stephen, Member, Anthropology; Susan Hardwick, Outside Member, Geography

Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work
Robert K. Schaeffer
The United States has resettled unaccompanied minors before. In the 1960s and 1970s, minors from Indochina were resettled in the United States. In the 1970s, the U.S accepted 14,000 unaccompanied minors from Cuba through Operation Peter Pan. Many of these Cuban minors, aged five to eighteen, were sent to the United States by parents fearing their children would be indoctrinated in communist schools. In the case of these minors, they arrived in the United States with the consent of their still-living family members. In contrast, about 3,500 Sudanese Lost Boys were resettled in the United States in 2000, and more recently in 2010, 53 “lost children” from Haiti were brought to the United States following a devastating earthquake. This study investigated the integration and assimilation patterns of the Sudanese Lost Boys in the Kansas City area with the purpose of understanding the sociological impact on these Boys from their own perspective. As opposed to previous studies done on these Boys in Kansas and other areas in the United States, the present study used interview-based research and analyzed data using both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. The study concluded that the Lost Boys were both “Lost” and “Found” in complex ways. The study found that unaccompanied refugees labeled as minors at the time of resettlement integrated more “successfully” than those resettled as adults. Minor Boys received certain advantages over Boys who were labeled legal adults. Over time, those resettled as minors accumulated more social capital relevant in American society, while those resettled as legal adults fell behind. The findings highlighted problems associated with age-based treatment of refugees, especially in the case of the Boys who were arbitrarily classified as adults. Assigned ages significantly impacted their assimilation process into American society. Unlike those Boys resettled as minors, legal adults did not have access to structure and immersion opportunities afforded by foster families, formal education, and social activities. This study concluded that age-based disadvantage was evident in the case of the Lost Boys.

My dissertation research was a 14-month ethnographic study of the post-repatriation experience of forced migrants in South Sudan. It was designed to determine if alterations to gender norms and relations that refugees experienced during asylum differed as a function of the asylum environments and if these modifications remained intact upon the refugees’ return. The forced migrants in my sample, the Dinka of Bor from South Sudan, encountered two different asylum environments and experiences: Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya and Khartoum, in northern Sudan. After 10-15 years in asylum, these forced Dinka Bor migrants returned to South Sudan. I compared the pre-flight and post-repatriation behavior of these two groups of returnees to determine to what extent gendered behaviors could be attributed to each asylum location. I found that various global forces encountered during asylum were instrumental in forging new ways of life by changing gendered livelihood practices and gendered access to status, power, and resources after return. In addition, the resettlement context played an equally critical role in the gendered behaviors after return.

This dissertation examines the specific forms of embodied suffering war and its refugee aftermath brings to female Sudanese refugees currently living in post-revolution Cairo, Egypt in order to illustrate the suffering and healing enacted within everyday life. These women, displaced from the Second Sudanese Civil War, are what I label Sudan's `Lost Girls.' The theoretical framework I employ in order to discuss their lives is a critical medical anthropology perspective based on the mindful body. I engage anthropological literature on the body in order to better understand the embodied suffering, sexual violence, and refugee aftermath of war. My research seeks to do this through distinctly gendered analyses and equally importantly, visual analyses. The research draws on historical news data collected through content analysis, contemporary qualitative data collected during fieldwork in the form of observation and interviews, with a particular emphasis on photovoice methodology. The work proposes that the humanizing aspect of emotions revealed by Lost Girls' photography of their everyday lives in urban Cairo allows for critical analysis of the many and varied ways in which women's `ordinary' experiences of war have been hidden, the implications of this for international responses to their suffering, and areas for exploring new, non-emergency refugee policies based on more ethnographically informed, gendered contextualizations of `extraordinary' violence.

The main aim with this thesis has been to understand how the resilience process could be enhanced for South Sudanese unaccompanied and separated children, USC, resettling in Nairobi, Kenya. The aim has further been to provide primary empirical data in order to bridge the gap on resilience research specifically related to this target group, within a non-western refugee context. The research has been carried out using a single case study design, with qualitative methods including an extensive literature review, and semi-structured interviews, as well as a questionnaire for qualitative purpose with 16 South Sudanese youth, arriving in Kenya unaccompanied or separated. Within this thesis, the concept of resilience has been approached from mainly a childhood perspective, focusing on research from the field of child psychology. As a complement, one specific model from the salutogenic research field on health promotion has also been used.   Through the case study, a variety of internal and external protective factors were identified, that could enhance the resilience process for South Sudanese USC. The most occurring were: a belief in God; focus, hard work and discipline; the desire to help family and people in need of support; education; support from others; and to understand and accept the new culture. In addition, the senses of meaningfulness, comprehensibility and manageability worked as important tools to further understand the protective factors that had enhanced resilience for the South Sudanese participants. The findings of this research have also included risk and vulnerability factors that could challenge the resilience process for the target group, including severe human suffering and stressful events; violence; lack of basic needs; loss of family and relatives; lack of mentor/advisor; and separation from family. The thesis ends with providing practical recommendations for humanitarian and development actors on how they best can support South Sudanese USC in the East Africa region.

Aim: To explore the experiences of Sudanese women and Eritrean refugee women in Sudan when seeking healthcare after being subject to gender-based violence. Background: In Sudan there is a general assumption that anyone who is subject violence, including gender-based violence, must first go to the police department to file a report and be given “Form Eight”, a legal document, which they must present to the healthcare provider before they receive any care. Without this form healthcare providers are, supposedly, by law not allowed to treat the person. This complicates an already vague system of services for women subject to gender-based violence. Methods: A qualitative study using semi-structured interviews of eight Sudanese women and seven Eritrean refugee women. Data was analyzed through a framework analysis (a form of thematic analysis). Results: Women had to bring Form Eight before they received any help, this led to a delay in the time to receive care. There was a general lack of cooperation by police officers. Some women feared the consequences of help seeking, apparent amongst those subject to domestic violence and the Eritrean refugee women. Generally, the healthcare provided to these women was inadequate. Conclusion: This study concludes the experiences of all the women in this study when seeking healthcare after being subject to gender-based violence were far from international standards. A lot needs to be done in order for women to know the clear answer to the question posed in the title of this study; “Who do I turn to?”.

The main purpose of this thesis is to test a communications solution for the second to largest refugee settlement in the world, Bidi Bidi. A solution where it is possible to inform the refugees with necessary information, for example that the water at a specific location is currently contaminated or that food is provided at another location. The idea is to use nRF24L01+ modules which operate in the 2.4 GHz frequency band and send information through various ways. This includes turning LEDs' on and off, sending text Strings and streaming audio. The results showed that the modules are too unreliable for a refugee settlement. They also showed that it is not possible to send other types' of data while streaming audio, but there could be workarounds. It is clear that more knowledge and further investigations are needed.

This thesis analyzes how children and youth being resettled from Kenya and Sudan were prepared for their upcoming resettlement to Sweden, through cultural orientation programs (COPs). COPs are held for refugees who have been granted permanent Swedish residence and are undergoing resettlement to Sweden. The Swedish Migration Board, in charge of resettlement, carries out COPs as a means to inform and prepare refugees for the move to Sweden. This thesis is based on ethnographic work carried out during COPs held in Kenya and Sudan in 2011. Through video-based observation of the meetings between the Swedish delegations and children and youth, current thesis examines what notions of resettlement and refugeeness inform the delegations work, and how does the children’s agency come about during these meetings? The thesis includes three articles. Article 1 examines how the delegations make use of images in order to establish certain ideas of Sweden and the ideal citizen specifically tailored for the group being resettled. Article 2 explores children’s agency within the COPs, focusing on how the children and youth manage the meetings and sometimes resisting being positioned in certain ways by the delegations. Article 3 analyzes how notions of gender equality are drawn upon by the delegations during their work, a topic frequently highlighted by the delegations in various implicit and dilemmatic ways. The thesis shows how the delegations’ work is carried out in paradoxical ways. Their quest to bring forth the ideal future as a means to instill hope among the children simultaneously ends up categorizing them as different and as others. The representatives draw  n ideas that the children need to be socialized in order to be incorporated into another “us”.
Avhandlingen undersöker hur barn och ungdomar förbereds inför sin vidarebosättning genom så kallade Sverigeprogram. Avhandlingen är baserad på en etnografisk studie där video observationer genomförts av Sverigeprogram som hölls utav Migrationsverket i Kenya och Sudan för familjer som var på väg att vidarebosättas till Sverige. Som ett led i vidarebosättningsprocessen informeras och förbereds flyktingar inför flytten till Sverige. Syftet är att informera och presentera Sverige, skapa dialog och verka för flyktingarnas aktiva medverkan i sin vidarebosättningsprocess. Sedan några år tillbaka har speciella program genomförts för barn och ungdomar. Avhandlingen visar hur de två delegationerna arbetar med bilder och information med syftet att presentera en positiv bild av Sverige i ett led i att inge barnen hopp. Praktiken av att presentera idealbilden av Sverige hänger samman med socialiseringsprocess av barnen som stundtals positioneras som avvikande från svenskheten. Delegationernas arbete med att presentera bilden av den fria individen går hand i hand med en vilja att inkorporera barnen i en ny gemenskap, ett nytt ”vi”. I artikel ett undersöks hur delegationerna arbeter med bilder som visas upp genom olika praktiker för att förmedla en viss bild av Sverige samt den ideala medborgaren som ansvarstagande och aktiv. Artikel två fokuserar på barns agens och hur de under mötena med delegationerna förhandlar och gör motstånd mot stereotypifiering men också ställer egna frågor om framtiden när utrymme ges. Artikel tre fokuserar på hur delegationerna pratar om jämställdhet med unga tjejer som deltar i programmen med utgångspunkt i att stärka tjejerna och informera de om rättigheter men hur arbetet med att presentera ett liv i frihet går hand i hand med att även presentera hur detta liv bör se ut vilket paradoxalt nog positionerar tjejerna som ojämställda och annorlunda.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2008. Graduate Programme in Women's Studies.
Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 274-288). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:NR39005

The main purpose of my thesis is to understand, from the perspectives of Southern Sudanese themselves, their resettlement experiences in Australia, to provide knowledge about how their experiences of exile reshape their thinking of home, place, identity, gender roles, and traditional practices, to explore the extent of their resettlement and integration into Australian society, and to inform policy on the resettlement of refugees and the settlement services offered to them. The thesis explores the range of interactions and relationships among Southern Sudanese and between them and their Australian hosts. It demonstrates how these interactions and relationships shaped and reshaped the Southern Sudanese sense of identity and belonging in resettlement in Australia. The thesis also provides insights into the relationships between the war that forced them out of their homeland, their flight, life in refugee camp or in exile, and how these affected their ability to resettle. To understand these, I have listened to how they described their lives before and during the war, while seeking refuge, and of their present and future life in Australia. From this I will show how they reproduce and maintain some aspects of their culture within the context of the Australian society, as well as how they are adapting to some aspects of life in that society. In this thesis I also explore the concepts of place, home and identity. In order to understand these concepts and how fluid they are in the current transnational era, I follow Thomas Faist’s (2000) thinking about the causes, nature and the extent of movement of international migrants from poorer to richer countries (also Cohen 1997; Kaplan 1995; Appadurai 1995). Faist in particular examines the process of adaptation of newcomers to host countries and the reasons why many migrants continue to keep ties to their home or place of origin. These ties, according to Faist, link transnational social spaces which range from border-crossing families and individuals to refugee diaspora. In this, I argue that resettlement involves complex interactions between newly arrived Southern Sudanese and members of Australian society. These complex interactions include firstly an array of social interactions occurring between Southern Sudanese and the staff of support organisations delivering settlement services to them. I show how the Southern Sudanese perceived the services they receive vis-à-vis the staff’s perceptions of Southern Sudanese as recipients of their services. Secondly they include various kinds of social interactions, relationships and networks among the Southern Sudanese and between them and members of Australian society through making friendships, home visitations, joining social and cultural clubs, and becoming involved in professional associations and churches which are predominantly Australian. I show how these social relations and networking are being enacted and maintained and/or fall apart over time. I ascertain whether these relationships have enhanced their resettlement or not. Thirdly, the thesis shows the impact of a shift in gendered roles and intergenerational conflicts between parents and children on family relationships and how these in turn affect their actual settlement. This thesis is based on these themes and on the analysis drawn from detailed qualitative ethnographic research which I conducted over a period of fourteen months between January 2006 and March 2007 and from the literature. In keeping with the traditions of ethnographic fieldwork practices, I carried out structured and unstructured in-depth interviews and Participant Observation of informants during the fieldwork. The subjects of this thesis are the Southern Sudanese refugees who resettled in South Australia and some staff of organisations which delivered settlement services to them. The fundamental questions which these ethnographic explorations attempt to answer are how do the Southern Sudanese experience resettlement in Australian, interact with members of their host society, construct their identities in relation to their notions of home and place, and negotiate shifting gender roles and relationships in the family. I show how their previous life experiences in Southern Sudan, their plight, their flight from war, their life in refugee camps and/or in refugee settings in other countries, their personal socio-economic and historical backgrounds, have affected their resettlement in Australia. I also explore their current and ongoing relations with their homeland and other Southern Sudanese diaspora and show how this perpetuates their identity as Southern Sudanese. I argue that success or failure in resettlement hinges mostly on the Southern Sudanese ability or inability to understand and speak the English language, their access to employment and stable housing, relationships with Australians, and the quality and quantity of settlement services which they access and receive. I assert that the interplay between/among these factors have combined to influence significantly the settlement processes and the extent of integration of Southern Sudanese into Australian society. Furthermore, I assert that these factors are inseparable and need to be examined and explained in relation to one another as they tend to be interwoven into the daily life experiences of Southern Sudanese.
http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1373733
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 2009

The main purpose of my thesis is to understand, from the perspectives of Southern Sudanese themselves, their resettlement experiences in Australia, to provide knowledge about how their experiences of exile reshape their thinking of home, place, identity, gender roles, and traditional practices, to explore the extent of their resettlement and integration into Australian society, and to inform policy on the resettlement of refugees and the settlement services offered to them. The thesis explores the range of interactions and relationships among Southern Sudanese and between them and their Australian hosts. It demonstrates how these interactions and relationships shaped and reshaped the Southern Sudanese sense of identity and belonging in resettlement in Australia. The thesis also provides insights into the relationships between the war that forced them out of their homeland, their flight, life in refugee camp or in exile, and how these affected their ability to resettle. To understand these, I have listened to how they described their lives before and during the war, while seeking refuge, and of their present and future life in Australia. From this I will show how they reproduce and maintain some aspects of their culture within the context of the Australian society, as well as how they are adapting to some aspects of life in that society. In this thesis I also explore the concepts of place, home and identity. In order to understand these concepts and how fluid they are in the current transnational era, I follow Thomas Faist’s (2000) thinking about the causes, nature and the extent of movement of international migrants from poorer to richer countries (also Cohen 1997; Kaplan 1995; Appadurai 1995). Faist in particular examines the process of adaptation of newcomers to host countries and the reasons why many migrants continue to keep ties to their home or place of origin. These ties, according to Faist, link transnational social spaces which range from border-crossing families and individuals to refugee diaspora. In this, I argue that resettlement involves complex interactions between newly arrived Southern Sudanese and members of Australian society. These complex interactions include firstly an array of social interactions occurring between Southern Sudanese and the staff of support organisations delivering settlement services to them. I show how the Southern Sudanese perceived the services they receive vis-à-vis the staff’s perceptions of Southern Sudanese as recipients of their services. Secondly they include various kinds of social interactions, relationships and networks among the Southern Sudanese and between them and members of Australian society through making friendships, home visitations, joining social and cultural clubs, and becoming involved in professional associations and churches which are predominantly Australian. I show how these social relations and networking are being enacted and maintained and/or fall apart over time. I ascertain whether these relationships have enhanced their resettlement or not. Thirdly, the thesis shows the impact of a shift in gendered roles and intergenerational conflicts between parents and children on family relationships and how these in turn affect their actual settlement. This thesis is based on these themes and on the analysis drawn from detailed qualitative ethnographic research which I conducted over a period of fourteen months between January 2006 and March 2007 and from the literature. In keeping with the traditions of ethnographic fieldwork practices, I carried out structured and unstructured in-depth interviews and Participant Observation of informants during the fieldwork. The subjects of this thesis are the Southern Sudanese refugees who resettled in South Australia and some staff of organisations which delivered settlement services to them. The fundamental questions which these ethnographic explorations attempt to answer are how do the Southern Sudanese experience resettlement in Australian, interact with members of their host society, construct their identities in relation to their notions of home and place, and negotiate shifting gender roles and relationships in the family. I show how their previous life experiences in Southern Sudan, their plight, their flight from war, their life in refugee camps and/or in refugee settings in other countries, their personal socio-economic and historical backgrounds, have affected their resettlement in Australia. I also explore their current and ongoing relations with their homeland and other Southern Sudanese diaspora and show how this perpetuates their identity as Southern Sudanese. I argue that success or failure in resettlement hinges mostly on the Southern Sudanese ability or inability to understand and speak the English language, their access to employment and stable housing, relationships with Australians, and the quality and quantity of settlement services which they access and receive. I assert that the interplay between/among these factors have combined to influence significantly the settlement processes and the extent of integration of Southern Sudanese into Australian society. Furthermore, I assert that these factors are inseparable and need to be examined and explained in relation to one another as they tend to be interwoven into the daily life experiences of Southern Sudanese.
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 2009

This thesis contributes to the understanding of a small group of South Sudanese refugee students in Adelaide secondary schools by examining their learning, both in their homeland context in southern Sudan prior to its independence and in their mainstream schooling and life experiences in the Adelaide context. School leaders and teachers in Australia have generally known little about the Dinka speaking refugees’ family and community interaction, cultural background, home languages and learning experiences against the backdrop of almost constant war in southern Sudan. Similarly, their formal classroom learning experiences, feelings and attitudes, aspirations and challenges in the new learning context of English speaking schools in Adelaide have very rarely been explored in personal terms. This qualitative study focussed on the significant research gap in understanding the cultural and survival issues facing the South Sudanese secondary refugee students, commencing in war-torn southern Sudan and moving into the complexities of adapting to life and learning opportunities in the new safe locale and formal schooling environment of Adelaide in South Australia. The aims of the research were to investigate the prior learning experiences and perspectives of the South Sudanese refugee students in southern Sudan and compare and contrast these with their life and mainstream schooling experiences in Adelaide. Open-ended interviews in English were used to allow the twenty-one South Sudanese participants, nineteen secondary students and two teachers, to talk about their learning journey in as natural a manner as possible. The qualitative theories of humanistic sociology and symbolic interactionism were used to develop a theoretical framework, linking social relations and the learning of cultural meanings, for analysing the interviews in the two main contexts of their lives. The first highlighted the participants’ close relationships and everyday interactions with members of their family and community, church and school in southern Sudan. What the participants learned through these personal relationships was analysed thematically according to the cultural meanings or values, related to areas such as family life, moral, religious, linguistic, educational, sense of identity and aspirations. These early learning experiences were set alongside their relationships and learning in the new (second) context of schools in Adelaide where they related in a much more formal way to teachers and fellow students, in order to gain new educational and linguistic meanings through the school curriculum. The participants provided evidence of their adaptation through their ongoing relations with their South Sudanese family and community, alongside their participation in the expected patterns of school life, and mainstream Australian values in the third context of overlapping cultural experiences in Adelaide. These dual influences shaped their sense of personal identity and aspirations for the future. Through their learning in Australian schools, these participants had gained literacy in English which grounded the equivalent achievement in Dinka for many, enabling their successful completion of Year 12, with a number going on to university studies. The study concludes by drawing out the significant findings of these implications to further support the South Sudanese refugees and help teachers and administrators understand the refugee students in their schools. While most developed a successful intellectual identity as a student, these young refugees from South Sudan appeared to strengthen and maintain the sense of their home identity, based in part on their visibility, and many expressed their desire, once their academic and professional studies were complete, ‘to go back home’ and give service.
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Education, 2017.