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AbstractScholarship prompted by 40 years of mass repatriations has highlighted that repatriations and returns are shaped by social navigation and renegotiation of 'home'. This article argues that the original experience of displacement itself, and the interconnected social rupture or continuity, moderates this negotiation and has consequences for social distinction, class reproduction, and political emplacement as refugees return. Specifically, the article considers the diverse social implications of both refugee camp education and wartime militarization, and the mediation of their social consequences by the specificities of histories of initial displacement. We do this by exploring the first 10 years of socio-political struggles of men born in Southern Sudan in the 1980s who lived in Kakuma Refugee Camp (Kenya) in the 1990s and who returned to Southern Sudan after the 2005 peace agreement. The article contrasts experiences of those who were born in Greater Gogrial and Greater Bor as a way to take account of different histories of displacement.

Scholarship prompted by 40 years of mass repatriations has highlighted that repatriations and returns are shaped by social navigation and renegotiation of 'home'. This article argues that the original experience of displacement itself, and the interconnected social rupture or continuity, moderates this negotiation and has consequences for social distinction, class reproduction, and political emplacement as refugees return. Specifically, the article considers the diverse social implications of both refugee camp education and wartime militarization, and the mediation of their social consequences by the specificities of histories of initial displacement. We do this by exploring the first 10 years of socio-political struggles of men born in Southern Sudan in the 1980s who lived in Kakuma Refugee Camp (Kenya) in the 1990s and who returned to Southern Sudan after the 2005 peace agreement. The article contrasts experiences of those who were born in Greater Gogrial and Greater Bor as a way to take account of different histories of displacement.

Contemporary South Sudanese Nuer prophets play powerful roles in interpreting the moral limits of lethal violence and weighing the legitimacy claims of rival government leaders. Their activities remain largely invisible to external observers investigating the making and unmaking of fragile states. Focusing on South Sudan's tumultuous 2005–14 period, we reveal these hidden dynamics through analysis of the two most-powerful living western Nuer prophets. Gatdeang Dit, a male prophet of the divinity Deng, rejects all forms of violent aggression and fosters relations of peace and intermarriage with Dinka neighbors. Nyachol, a female prophet of Maani, inspires thousands of armed Nuer youth to retaliate against Dinka cattle raiders and other external threats while insisting on purification for Nuer–Nuer homicides. Despite their differences, both prophets invoke God's superior powers to push back against the simplified, secularized, and objectified forms of violence glorified by rival government elites. [prophecy, government, violence, legitimacy, uncertainty, Nuer, South Sudan]