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.

‘In this compelling account, Daniel K. Thompson shows how Somalis in the Ethiopia-Somaliland borderlands and beyond, from Minneapolis to Guangzhou, catch hold of even as they are ensnared by border surveillance regimes that remake cities, clans, commerce, and transnational connections. Spotlighting the relationships of reciprocity that complicate the quest for material gain, Thompson deftly guides the reader through the crossroads of solidarity and schism in urban and diasporic identities that are connected as much as divided by territorial borders.'

Bill Maurer - University of California, Irvine

‘Daniel K. Thompson takes us into the highly securitised streets of the Horn of Africa where few urban scholars travel – literally or intellectually. This brave account brings to life the complexity of everyday urban negotiations that derive from multi-scalar power dynamics, determining who gains what in conflict-riddled settlements.'

Susan Parnell - Universities of Cape Town and Bristol

‘In this analytically elaborate and empirically rich monograph, Daniel K. Thompson connects the urban fabric of Ethiopia's Somali Region with territorial borders and sites of diaspora life abroad. The book beautifully weaves together the cultural economy of borderland economies, planetary urbanization, and political identity, and, in this sense, it offers a key reading for geographers, anthropologists, and historians interested in the reconstitution of the political from the global margins.'

Timothy Raeymaekers - Università di Bologna