Project 1e
Gendered ‘Return Home’: Sudanese Refugees are Coming Back

Summary
The forced migration and conflict literature predominantly treats issues of refugees from a gender-blind perspective. At best, it focuses selectively on issues of women often in conjunction with children (‘womenandchildrean’ phenomenon) treating them as victimized and disempowered population and pays little attention to the gender dynamics of refugee experience. Often referred to as ‘vulnerable population’ women experience forced migration and exile in a complex manner whereby their traditional roles, identities and their position in the family, community and society at large undergo transformation. Similarly, the experience of conflict and exile has significant consequences for the masculine identities and the traditional roles ascribed to men at home and in the society. These changes can be traced back to the experience of war and conflict, where often ‘war is increasingly waged on the bodies of unarmed civilians’. Although in exile these changes partly reflect economic, political and social contexts in the host country, they may also endure as refugees return, with direct impacts on the development and reconstruction of post-conflict societies.

This study examines the intersection of gender, violence and displacement, and their consequences for contemporary involuntary migration flows as well as the impact of these experiences on the reconstruction of post-conflict societies. In particular, through the use of gender analysis the study will focus on the experience of ‘return’ of Sudanese refugees to South Sudan and the impact of the returnees and their changed gender relations on the traditional society back home.

Gender relations determine the social, cultural, economic and political exchanges between women and men in different arenas and institutions (household, community, the state). Gender plays a central role in negotiations over societal roles and responsibilities, access and distribution of resources and enjoyment of rights for both women and men. Allocation and control over resources as well as access to decision making are highly dependent on gender relations embedded in both ideology and practice. I will investigate gender through a social relations analysis and examine how gender relations are deconstructed and reconstituted in the gendered return of population and its impact on society back home.

Key Research Questions

	How are local gender identities (femininities and masculinities) reconfigured during the time of conflict and exile?
	How do women and men cope with displacement? What is the impact of the exile conditions on the gender relations? What are the factors influencing changes in gender relations?
	How do women and men construct narratives of home and ‘return’? In what way is the process of return gendered? How do women and men experience ‘returning home’?
	How are institutionalised categories of ‘returnees’ and ‘stayees’ are gendered? What is the impact of changed gender relations of returnees on these of stayees?
	How are gender identities and relations reconstructed after ‘return’? How do changed gender relations manifest themselves in the access to and control over resources, access to decision making, division of labour and enjoyment of rights?
	What is the role of outsiders in influencing changes as part of reconstruction and development efforts?