Diaspora Studies in a Neocolonial Era : Integrating the Study of a Reciprocal Relationship between South Sudan and India

In many regards, the development of diaspora studies has been a powerful tool in the post-colonial era for scholars to capture the agency of communities that moved abroad, whether forcibly or voluntarily, and the lives that they have created for themselves. At this juncture in the field of study, it warrants revisiting how the study of diasporas has been approached, and identifying voids in our knowledge that are evident. Within the field of diaspora studies, particularly literature that focuses on Indian and South Sudanese communities, published literature usually follows two trends: 1) in-depth case studies of particular diasporic communities or 2) comparative practices that examine parallel transnational dynamics. To expand the discourse on diaspora studies, this article pushes to examine a third dynamic: that of reciprocal diasporic relationships between two countries, which often function on inequitable terms that go unchallenged. Specifically, this article will focus on the reciprocal diasporic relationship between the countries of South Sudan and India, to both document and highlight the inequities that prevail in this binary that has been created through migration. The examples presented in this article are not reflective of systematic or institutional efforts of engagement between the two countries, but rather are organic initiatives that occur at the individual or group level. They are drawn primarily from my time in South Sudan in 2014 and 2015, when I traveled to five different states in the country as a researcher. These observations are supplemented by media articles and foreign policy documents that are publicly available. I analyze the examples within the areas of food and clothing to illustrate how inequitable reciprocal relationships manifest within the cultural spheres of people's everyday lives. By presenting an overview of where the relationship between these two countries as it stands today, this article will begin a conversation about the cultural and diasporic dynamics that is direly needed