In a setting of political instability, recurrent natural disasters and economic restructuring, marked by increasing privatization, foreign investments and market liberalization, the livelihood options for many – especially rural - people have deteriorated. In the past decades pastoral nomadic people were subject to such dynamics, which impacted their access to and the quality of natural resources, forcing them to alter elements of their pastoral production systems. This paper investigates how Rashayda pastoralists in northeastern Sudan responded to livelihood challenges in a context of scarce resources, political marginalization and successive environmental disruptions. Thereby the Rashayda represent a peculiar case, due to their late immigration to Sudan and the maintenance of strong ties to the Gulf. This paper will contribute to the discourse on the role of diverse mobilities in current livelihood systems. Based on fieldwork from early 2009, four biographies will be presented identifying the livelihood strategies of individual households, their responses to crisis and the respective political and socioeconomic outcomes.