Smugglers, Speculators & the City in the Ethiopia-Somalia Borderlands
Hybrid event: Webinar registration link below.
Book launch & discussion with the author, Daniel K. Thompson (UC Merced).
For a century, the Ethiopian city Jigjiga was known as a dusty hub of cross-border smuggling and a hotbed of rebellion on Ethiopia’s eastern frontier. After 2010, it transformed into a post-conflict boomtown, becoming one of Africa’s fastest-growing cities and attracting Somali return-migrants from across the globe. This study examines Jigjiga’s astonishing transformation through the eyes of its cross-border traders, urban businesspeople, and officials. Daniel K. Thompson follows traders and return-migrants across borders to where their lives collide in the city. Analysing their strategies of mobility and exchange, this study reveals how Ethiopia’s federal politics, Euro-American concerns about terrorism, and local business aspirations have intertwined to reshape links between border-making and city-making in the Horn of Africa. To understand this distinctive brand of urbanism, Thompson follows globalized connections and reveals how urbanites in Africa and beyond participate in the ‘urban borderwork’ of constructing, as well as contesting, today’s border management regimes.
www.cambridge.org/core/books/smugglers-speculators-and-the-city-in-the-ethiopiasomalia-borderlands
Dr. Daniel K. Thompson is ⁠Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Merced. His fieldwork in eastern Africa and the US explores how migration, border-making, and urbanization shape economic strategies for dealing with uncertainty. His work has featured in journals including African Affairs, Urban Geography, and Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
Date: 4 June 2025, 16:00
Venue: 13 Bevington Road, 13 Bevington Road OX2 6NB
Venue Details: Seminar Room, African Studies Centre
Speaker: Daniel K. Thompson (UC Merced)
Organising department: Centre for African Studies
Organiser: Jason Mosley (University of Oxford)
Part of: Northeast Africa Forum seminar series
Booking required?: Recommended
Booking url: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/6ac692ae-300f-42b9-92c6-e2e86fc2ea05@cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91
Audience: Public
Editor: Jason Mosley