Mobile Urbanity

Neil Carrier is an Associate Professor in Social Anthropology at the University of Bristol. He has worked on a number of themes related to transnational trade and commodities, and to the impact of migration on East Africa. His most recent book is an ethnography of Nairobi’s Eastleigh estate, home to a large proportion of Kenya’s urban Somali population.

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations



PART I: INTRODUCTIONS



Introduction: Mobile Urbanity: Somali Presence in Urban East Africa

Tabea Scharrer and Neil Carrier



Interlude: Being and Becoming Mobile

Yusuf Hassan



PART II: URBANITY



Chapter 1. The Somali Factor in Urban Kenya: A History

Hannah Whittaker



Chapter 2. The Port and the Island: Cosmopolitan and Vernacular Identity Constructions among Somali Women in Nairobi and Johannesburg

Nereida Ripero-Muñiz



Chapter 3. Being Oromo in Nairobi’s ‘Little Mogadishu’: Superdiversity, Moral Community and the Open Economy

Neil Carrier and Hassan H. Kochore



PART III: ECONOMIC NETWORKS



Chapter 4. Demanding and Commanding Goods: The Eastleigh Transformation Told through the ‘Lives’ of Its Commodities

Neil Carrier and Hannah Elliott



Chapter 5. Capital Mobilization among the Somali Refugee Business Community in Eastleigh, Nairobi

John Mwangi Githigaro and Kenneth Omeje



Chapter 6. Challenging the Status Quo from the Bottom Up? Gender and Enterprise in Somali Migrant Communities in Nairobi, Kenya

Holly A. Ritchie



Chapter 7. Reinventing Retail: ‘Somali’ Shopping Centres in Kenya

Tabea Scharrer



PART IV: THE POLITICS OF SOMALI MOBILITY



Chapter 8. Perpetually in Transit: Somalian Refugees in a Context of Increasing Hostility

Lucy Lowe and Mark Yarnell



Chapter 9. Framing the Swoop: A Comparative Analysis of Operation Usalama Watch in Muslim and Secular Print Media in Kenya

Joseph Wandera and Halkano Abdi Wario



Chapter 10. Beyond Eastleigh: A New Little Mogadishu in Uganda?

Gianluca Iazzolino



Afterword

Günther Schlee



Glossary

Index