Casting the security net a relational reading of how Chinese residents create, perform and experience security in Juba (South Sudan)

This PhD begins from the observation that Chinese migrants in Juba live in volatile, high-risk environments, yet do not perceive themselves as risk-takers, nor do they consistently adopt conventional risk-mitigation strategies. To address this paradox, the thesis develops the first ethnographic study to apply a Chinese-grounded relational IR framework—derived from Qin’s theory of relationality—to the everyday security practices of Chinese migrants abroad, here in conflict-affected Juba. It shows that Chinese approaches to security are predominantly relational: constructed through embeddedness in social networks in internally logical and contextually coherent ways, rather than primarily through the institutionalised mechanisms more familiar in the IR literature. In so doing, the thesis complements materialist readings of security by situating them in everyday life, demonstrating the importance of relationally embedded and situationally contingent practices. The principal contribution lies in operationalising relational IR theory ethnographically, testing its applicability beyond elite diplomacy and state strategy to the lived practices of migrants. In doing so, the study also contributes—by extension—to wider debates: it engages with discussions over whether Chinese IR should be understood as a complement or corrective to dominant theories, and it helps bridge ethnographies of insecurity in war and post-conflict zones with fragmented accounts of Chinese security practices abroad. The analysis draws primarily on participant observation, complemented by nearly 100 semi-structured interviews with Chinese business owners, migrant workers, and informal intermediaries in Juba, alongside regional stakeholders in PRC security efforts. These data are situated within Juba’s fragmented, militarised governance environment, illustrating how relationality emerges as a key modality alongside, and sometimes in tension with, rational(ist) logics. Theoretically, the thesis contributes to critical security studies by offering an empirically grounded critique of rational assumptions and demonstrating that, for Chinese migrants in Juba, security is constructed less through formal institutions than through everyday relational networks.