Hollstegge, Julian Matthias

Research Interests:

Political Geography

Geographical Area:

Sudan

Current Project:

Geographies of border-making in South Sudan's southern borderlands

The project explores contemporary social and political processes of border-making in post independence South Sudan. lt aims to understand multi-actor negotiations over the ways borders and their management are variously enacted, problematised and contested in this specific setting, and is guided by the following key questions:
How do multiple actors (state agents of various kind, international organisations, experts, bureaucrats and consultants; ordinary people, migrants and citizens) relationally constitute, contest and reshape the border and its management practices? and which effects do those practices have, and which relations between different actors, practices and sites can be identified?
These questions are addressed through the research on three objectives and associated fields of research. The project seeks to (1) trace the circulation of global bordering technologies (which refer to sets of ideas, policies, standards and norms, infrastructures and material techniques) developed primarily by organisations in the "Global North" (e.9. IOM in the field of migration, the World Bank in the field of trade) which travel and are implemented in concrete projects in the "Global South" and South Sudan. The project then seeks to (2) understand everyday state bordering practices on different levels (central, local, etc.) of state authority in South Sudan, and measure effects of these circulations on state agency. ln a third step the project (3) maps borderlanders' and mobile populations' experiences and identifies everyday tactics and strategies of border crossing and dealing with authority at the border.