14:00 - 15:30
Room: Muirhead – Room 121
Stream: Open Stream
Everyday mobility in the midst of the conflict
Emmanuelle Veuillet
Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Paris

In 2015, the whole Western Equatoria region has witnessed several violent crises. This year is a watershed for the local population who had felt, until then, relatively protected from the on going civil war in comparison with parts of South Sudan.
The focus of my research is to understand how this conflict has transformed everyday lives of people in the region, at a time of fighting and in the aftermath, creating a distinct environment characterized by a new set of threats, representations, and limitations. Speaking about a chronic or continual state of crisis might hide specific discontinuities brought by the current conflict that determine in turn the fabric of daily life. I want here to describe how individuals and groups have reacted to this changing context, how they developed specific strategies and made all necessary daily adjustments in order to stay alive and to re-enact a semblance of “ordinary life” (Kelly T., 2008, Das V., 2007).
To illustrate these changes, I decided for this presentation to look at territory and mobility. Indeed, the conflict has visibly entered spaces, both towns and rural areas. According to where they lived and stayed during the fighting, people give different accounts of the situation, as residential areas were not affected in the same way and with the same intensity.
Thus, territories inherited different stigmas and conflict histories that shape in turn representations and perceptions hold by people. The “territorialisation” of the conflict, that materializes within space through tangible signs (abandoned neighbourhoods, burnt houses…) and within mentalities, drastically transformed people’s mobility and their relation to territory. Up to now people suffer from mobility restrictions as they could be prevented from going outside town, moving to their garden, visiting their relatives, going to the market… Any daily activity has been subject to change. So my paper will argue that the process of conflict territorialisation is key to understand both the reordering of society at the local level and the consecutive adjustments people were forced to make in times of crisis. People’s perceptions, as well as their daily practices of mobility unveil specific social and territorial divisions that did not exist prior to the conflict. What are the different representations people have about the different neighbourhoods, areas around their town? What do these representation and perceptions tell us about the conflict? In the aftermath of the fighting, which areas are considered safe, unsafe? After displacement, do people return to their home areas? What are the constraints on mobility? How mobility differs from one group to another? Who lost and who gained in terms of mobility? This paper is based on empirical research and fieldworks I carried out in Maridi and Yambio in 2017 and 2018 that are part of a larger PhD project.


Reference:
Tu-OS1 South Sudan 2-P-002
Presenter/s:
Emmanuelle Veuillet
Presentation type:
Panel
Room:
Muirhead – Room 121
Date:
Tuesday, 11 September
Time:
14:15 - 14:30
Session times:
14:00 - 15:30