Geopolitical boundaries and urban borderlands in an Ethiopian frontier city

Abstract

Recent approaches to urban borderlands employ border studies theories to analyze urban socio-spatial differentiation. Such approaches highlight how patterns of segregation generate not only social divisions, but also new interactions and connections. This article moves beyond analytic parallels between geopolitical borders and urban borderlands by tracing connections between changing border regimes and urban landscapes in Africa. Drawing on fieldwork in eastern Ethiopia, we show how shifting meanings and enforcement practices at Ethiopia’s international and subnational borders reshaped the socio-spatial landscape of Jigjiga, capital of Ethiopia’s Somali Regional State. The re-drawing of Ethiopia’s internal borders through federalism in 1991 altered spatial enactments of identity in the ethnically-divided city. Since 2010, new approaches to border governance have driven a shift from urban ethnic polarization toward class-oriented differentiation. We mobilize a trans-scalar analytic that theorizes geopolitical borders and urban borderlands as intertwined milieus where groups create and regulate connections, mobilities, and resource circulations.