Diaspora Money, Uneven Belonging: Remittance Economies and Development Politics in Conflict-Affected States

Remittance flows and diaspora capital play a central role in sustaining households and shaping economic life in conflict-affected settings. In South Sudan, they do more than provide income: they reconfigure local governance and reproduce new forms of inequality within a transnational survival economy. This study examines how remittance-driven systems structure political order in the post-2013 conflict period, with comparative reference to Somalia and Haiti. Drawing on transnationalism, the political economy of remittances, and debates on aid versus private flows, the analysis combines household and remittance survey data, examination of hawala and mobile money systems, interviews with diaspora investors and officials, and cross-case comparison. The findings show that remittance economies are not temporary coping mechanisms but durable systems that reshape incentives, authority, and access to resources over time (Levitt 2001; Adams & Page 2005; Acosta et al. 2008; Gammage 2006). While they stabilise livelihoods, they also deepen distributional inequalities and shift governance functions toward transnational networks. Variation across cases reflects differences in financial infrastructure, diaspora organisation, and state capacity. The contribution lies in demonstrating how remittances operate as a parallel political economy that both sustains and transforms fragile states, highlighting that effective reform requires engaging the transnational structures through which resources and authority are actually organised (Lindley 2009; Hammond 2011; Page & Plaza 2006; World Bank 2023).