Social networks and the dead: learning from South Sudanese military-widows in exile in Khartoum (Sudan).

Matot  Yien; Naomi Pendle

doi:10.1093/jrs/feaf043

Social networks and the dead: learning from South Sudanese military-widows in exile in Khartoum (Sudan).

Matot Yien
, Naomi Pendle

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Social networks play a key role in people’s coping strategies during humanitarian crisis and exile. However, so far, scholarship on these social networks has tended to ignore the continued role of the dead in social networks and the profound socio-economic obligations to the dead that can exist and impact the living, their ability to cope, their relationships and the moral
economies that shape supportive exchange. Specifically, we focus on the powerful, ongoing obligations that military widows can have to their deceased husbands, and we critically consider how this impacts these widows’ abilities to cope and protect their children. We draw on interviews conducted between 2021 and 2023 with South Sudanese military widows who were living in Khartoum, some of whom had recently been widowed and others who had been widowed in the 1980s and 1990s. The article is based on long-term observations, as well as sixty life history interviews.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	636-654
Number of pages	19
Journal	Journal of Refugee Studies
Volume	38
Issue number	3
Early online date	28 Jul 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/feaf043
Publication status	Published - 1 Sept 2025

Acknowledgements

This article is dedicated to the memory of the article’s co-author—Matot Yein. I (the other author) met him when he was working in Juba. He was a professional, clever, multi-lingual (in English, Arabic, Nuer and Amharic), faith-filled man who was navigating the complexities of contemporary South Sudan. He was also an incredibly proud young husband and father to a beautiful daughter—Nyadak. He loved speaking of his family and how he had prospered because of his mother, despite her widowhood. The research project that resulted in this article gave him many opportunities to share with me how thankful he was for his mother and the life she had given him. We are all devastated by his death and the non-sense of it.

We were both primarily incredibly grateful to Matot's mother who inspired this piece of research. Plus, we were also both thankful for the widows that gave their time to speak to us, and the vulnerability that they were willing to share with us. Matot enjoyed speaking to people he knew and loved having the time to listen to them more carefully. The Safety of Strangers (SoS) project (based at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa at the London School of Economics and Political Science and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office) made this research possible. Professor Tim Allen was the mastermind behind that project and many of us owe our academic careers to his desire to keep asking questions and speaking truth to power. Our work on SoS was also enriched by the active, supportive engagement of Tom Kirk.

Funding

The Safety of Strangers (SoS) project (based at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa at the London School of Economics and Political Science and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office) made this research possible. Professor Tim Allen was the mastermind behind that project and many of us owe our academic careers to his desire to keep asking questions and speaking truth to power. Our work on SoS was also enriched by the active, supportive engagement of Tom Kirk. The work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council - grant number AH/T007524/1.

Funders	Funder number
Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa
Arts and Humanities Research Council	AH/T007524/1

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Geography, Planning and Development
Political Science and International Relations

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10.1093/jrs/feaf043Licence: CC BY

Cite this

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Social networks and the dead: learning from South Sudanese military-widows in exile in Khartoum (Sudan).

Abstract

Acknowledgements

Funding

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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