The Lost Boys and Girls of Sudan: ‘Lost’ in the Age of Globalisation

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 47, 2, 2022 © The Maghreb Review 2022 This publication is printed on FSC Mix paper from responsible sources THE LOST BOYS AND GIRLS OF SUDAN: ‘LOST’ IN THE AGE OF GLOBALISATION ‘We are a generation of war. My grandfather and father fought the First Civil War. My brother is fighting the Second Civil War. I was actually born in war. I was a child soldier.’ A Lost Girl of Sudan, 2018 AMAL MADIBBO* INTRODUCTION This article draws on the sociology of globalisation and the sociology of race and ethnicity to analyse how ‘global forces’ hindered the global trajectory of the Lost Boys and Girls of Sudan (LBGS), who fled South Sudan and embarked upon a long journey to Canada. Ritzer and Dean (2015) conceptualise global forces as ‘processes that affect, and structures common to, large portions of the world today’ (p. 56). They posit colonialism and post-colonialism, imperialism and Westernisation as global forces that are both empowering and constraining. Actors at the two levels of globalisation, ‘globalisation from above’ and ‘globalisation from below’ (Bauman, 2011), use global forces to achieve goals and engage in social life. Globalisation from above, which takes place through macro structures and actions, advantages dominant groups. By implication, it disadvantages actors of globalisation from below, macro and marginalised social groups. Since globalisation is not a one-way street, neither global forces nor levels of globalisation are fixed. There are interactions between the levels of globalisation, a ‘middle ground’, that encompasses ‘global flows’ – multidirectional movements of people, objects, and information (Martell, 2017). The flows echo dominance, but also agency of marginalised groups who reject and seek to improve the constraints of globalisation. Some movements are voluntary, but many are forced, because some are triggered by constructive linkages, i.e., social justice, and others by inequities such as wars and refugee displacement. The middle ground of globalisation is not static either, because the global flows occur within this space, creating a ‘glocalisation’ through which every global aspect can envelop a local factor, and every local phenomenon has a global facet. The interdependence between the local and the global (the glocal) can be problematic, when a level internalises subordination from the other, and empowering when a level extends its constructive aspects to the other. I agree with scholars that globalisation is a complex, but dynamic set of processes of empowerment and constraints, and devote this article to the subordination that globalisation from above subjects marginalised groups to. I * University of Toronto 124 AMAL MADIBBO engage colonialism and post-colonialism as forces of globalisation from above that consolidate power differentially to benefit dominant groups. Like globalisation, this process is not unidimensional, since a lingering colonial legacy created constraints that glocal post-colonial actors internalise, shaping the lives of the LBGS in multiple locations. The sociology of race and ethnicity corroborates that race and ethnicity are not inherently a problem but become divisive when social actors manipulate them to fuel antagonism or fear (Opondo, 2003). This phenomenon is the politicisation of ethnicity, which signals that people construct ethnic attributes, skin colour (race), language and religion, by associating them with specific meanings. This construction is differential because it mobilises actors according to perceived differences in a manner that pits groups against one another. Such manipulation of ethnicity compartmentalises groups and identities, which juxtaposes the self and an ‘Other’. These sedimentary dichotomies overshadow, and reject, any positive approach to ethnicity, i.e., appreciating and extending the benefits of ethnic diversity. Hameso (1996) opines that ‘people, if they so choose, to positively associate themselves with their fellow ethnic members…ethnicity…encourages them to provide for each other’s security’ (p. 6), enabling them to inculcate a ‘balance between continuity and change’ (p. 4). The balance holds people together in periods of agitated change, such as colonialism and wars. When the politicisation of ethnicity distances the self from an ‘Other’, it ruptures the balance, the smooth and steady transition between continuity and change, and turns constructive ethnoscapes (Appadurai, 1996) into sites of hostility. Social actors cease to perceive their co-ethnics as an extension of the self and project them as ethnic others. Although the politicisation of ethnicity is not...

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