Abstract

Eritrea and Ethiopia have now been at war with each other for twenty-eight years. While the longest armed struggle in Africa's modern history remains deadlocked in a stalemate, more than a half million refugees have been forced to resettle in the eastern region of Sudan. This article conceptualizes the positions of unassisted refugees in the social relations of production which structure agrarian society in eastern Sudan and then examines the underlying mechanisms of impoverishment and accumulation that create and perpetuate the process of social differentiation among them. This study concludes that: 1) it is misguided to view rural refugees as an homogeneous, undifferentiated entity; and, 2) it is critical to place refugee resettlement within the context of larger social processes which operate in agrarian societies like Sudan.

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