The past 15 years have seen overlapping crises restructure the social and economic conditions of the Sudan-South Sudan borderlands, creating new class exploitation dynamics and deepening inequality. War, floods, droughts and inflation have eroded the social and financial security systems of the already poor and newly impoverished. As a consequence, they have been driven across the landscape, leading to many becoming trapped in camps, towns and drier highlands where taxes, travel costs and rents delimit onward opportunities.
Climate disasters, taxation and market access, alongside the use and threat of violence, are instrumentalised by the armed authorities operating in the borderlands. War and industrial collapse in Sudan’s cities and commercial farms have cut off vital sources of seasonal paid work. This has created a useful labour trap for the extractive commercial economy and its security apparatus, which benefits from a displaced and urbanised population reliant on low-paid piecework. The wage-depressed labour market provides the manpower needed to securitize the oilfields, farms, mines, markets, businesses and compounds, as well as the cheap manual work needed in farms, transport systems and markets, all at a low cost and high returns for investors.
What work are people turning to in order to survive in this changing land? How do rising taxes get paid? What work are people investing in, and where, now that better-paid migrant work options in Sudan are no longer available or at least extremely risky?