South Sudanese Diaspora in Australia and New Zealand: Reconciling the Past with the Present

Year of Publication
2013
Document Publisher/Creator
Jay Marlowe, Anne Harris and Tanya Lyons
NGO associated?
Summary
On the 9 July 2011, the world witnessed the birth of its 193rd country –
the Republic of South Sudan, which has since been engaged in the work of
establishing itself as an independent state from Sudan after enduring
almost five decades of civil war since 1956. The protracted conflict
between north and south Sudan has created one of the largest populations
of displaced people in the world. This volume considers the diverse and
growing Sudanese and now celebrated as the South Sudanese diaspora in
Australia and New Zealand, thus making a significant and timely
contributing to the recent literature on current issues facing Africans in the
diaspora from a global perspective.1 Over the last three decades, there has
been steadily increasing numbers of African immigrants to Australia and
New Zealand, ranging from those with refugee backgrounds, to
educational, political and economic migrants, and to those who have come
through the circuitous routes of international resettlement programs under
humanitarian auspices. The vast ethnic, cultural and economic differences
between many South Sudanese Australians, and the range of other African
immigrants, have largely gone unrecognised until now. This diversity has
largely remained unacknowledged both in the popular media and within
research and scholarly fields, particularly in this region of Australasia.
2 Chapter One
Nonetheless, there has been an increasing interest among scholars in
researching the growing population of African Australians and New
Zealanders, in particular those from former-refugee backgrounds, because
of the unique circumstances of their humanitarian entrances to Australia
and New Zealand and their subsequent settlement issues.
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