Diasporas as Conflict Actors: Remittances, Lobbying, and the Internationalization of Civil War in South Sudan

This article develops diaspora conflict brokerage as an analytical lens for understanding diasporas as conflict actors: political mobilisation, remittance flows, and the internationalisation of african civil wars. It argues that diasporas are not external spectators but political actors that move money, narratives, and lobbying power across borders, thereby shaping the duration, framing, and international reach of civil wars. Drawing on multi-sited ethnography in juba, nairobi, washington dc, and sydney; financial flow analysis using hawala transaction data and ngo financial reports; content analysis of diaspora social media political mobilisation during the 2013 crisis; structured interviews., the paper links the theoretical debates identified in transnationalism (vertovec; portes); diaspora politics (shain; adamson); conflict economics (collier & hoeffler's 'loot-seeking' extended to diaspora). develops a typology of diaspora conflict roles across the mobilisation, resource provision, and political lobbying dimensions. to a comparative and historically grounded reading of South Sudan and the related cases assembled in the research design. The article advances three core claims. First, diaspora communities helped sustain household survival while also channeling selective support toward armed constituencies and elite narratives linked to home-region cleavages. Second, lobbying and narrative work in Washington, London, and Canberra internationalized South Sudans war by shaping how policymakers and humanitarian actors interpreted responsibility, urgency, and legitimate interlocutors. Third, diasporas support peace when network leaders can redirect authority toward broad civic platforms, but they intensify polarization when remittance circuits and political identity remain