Mobile Urbanity (2019), edited by Neil Carrier and Tabea Scharrer: Somalis in the cities of East Africa

The book

Mobile Urbanity: Somali Presence in Urban East Africa is a volume edited by Neil Carrier, an anthropologist at the University of Bristol who has written an ethnography of Nairobi's Eastleigh district, and Tabea Scharrer, who studies Somali migrants in Kenyan and European cities at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle. It was published by Berghahn Books in July 2019 as volume 20 of the Integration and Conflict Studies series, with 264 pages and an afterword by the anthropologist Günther Schlee. A paperback followed in 2022. With support from the Max Planck Institute, it is published open access under a Creative Commons licence (Berghahn Books; Max Planck Institute).

Its subject

In recent decades a growing Somali presence has changed towns and cities across East Africa, a change that, in the editors' words, "has met with ambivalence and suspicion, especially within Kenya". The book sets out the history of Somali residence and movement in these cities, and the social, cultural and political forces behind Somali-led urban change. It presents this as a case study of how forced migration can transform cities, and of how living in cities and moving between them are bound together (Berghahn Books). See Somalis in Kenya and Somalis in Uganda.

What is in it

After an introduction by the editors and a personal piece by Yusuf Hassan on "being and becoming mobile", the chapters are (Berghahn Books):

• Urbanity: Hannah Whittaker on the history of Somalis in urban Kenya; Nereida Ripero-Muñiz on how Somali women in Nairobi and Johannesburg describe their identity; Neil Carrier and Hassan H. Kochore on Oromo residents of Nairobi's "Little Mogadishu".
• Economic networks: Neil Carrier and Hannah Elliott on the transformation of Eastleigh told through the goods traded there; John Mwangi Githigaro and Kenneth Omeje on how Somali refugee businesses in Eastleigh raise capital; Holly A. Ritchie on women's enterprise in Somali migrant communities in Nairobi; Tabea Scharrer on "Somali" shopping centres in Kenya.
• The politics of Somali mobility: Lucy Lowe and Mark Yarnell on Somali refugees "perpetually in transit" amid growing hostility; Joseph Wandera and Halkano Abdi Wario on how Muslim and secular newspapers in Kenya reported Operation Usalama Watch, the 2014 security sweep in Nairobi; Gianluca Iazzolino on whether a new "Little Mogadishu" is forming in Uganda.

The trade networks behind these districts connect with Hawala and money transfer companies and Somali refugees by the numbers.

How it was received

The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute found "significant ethnographic insights" into how migrants and cities remake each other and called it "a must-read for regionally focused urbanists". A review in Ethnic and Racial Studies described it as "well written and presented in a readable, scholarly, and entertaining style". The anthropologist Peter D. Little of Emory University wrote that it "corrects a misperception that Somalis are mainly pastoralists" by showing a long tradition of town life and trade (Berghahn Books).

Where to read it

The full text is free to read and download from Berghahn Books under its open access programme (Berghahn Books), and a paperback is in print. Related reading on Somali refugees in Kenya is Transnational Nomads by Cindy Horst and We Do Not Have Borders by Keren Weitzberg.