The study asks two core questions: First, how do residents in the borderlands of South Sudan seek survival, welfare and better lives in the economies and cross-border migrant pathways available to them? Second, how do young men and women navigate the risks of migrant and military work across South Sudan, Sudan and further afield?

Northern Bahr el-Ghazal, like much of South Sudan, is in a protracted state of social and economic crisis, rooted in generations of armed conflict, forced resettlements, and a shift towards a cash and market economy. Since the 1980s, family units and livelihoods have been destroyed, displaced or reworked by conflict and most people have been forced to engage in precarious work for survival.…