Urban subjects: Somali claims to recognition and urban belonging in Eastleigh, Nairobi

ABSTRACT

After more than a century of mutually constructed strangerhood, relations between the Somali community and the Kenyan state are strained. Following the concomitant developments of the devolution of power, an influx of refugees and a growing securitisation discourse, Somalis in Kenya today take up an ambiguous position between marginalisation and increasing political and economic visibility (Carrier & Lochery 2013; Scharrer 2018; Weitzberg 2017). Based on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork in Eastleigh, Nairobi, I will show how contemporary narratives of belonging and contribution are being presented by the Somali community on a variety of platforms. I will discuss the role of taxation in historical as well as contemporary claims to recognition and the significance of taking claims to formal Kenyan courts. I argue that these diverse practices all serve to create an urban Somali subjectivity in Kenya, as they seek to constitute Eastleigh as a central urban space from where the Somalis can make claims on the Kenyan state.

KEYWORDS:

• subjectivity
• recognition
• strangerhood
• belonging
• taxation
• claims-making
• state-making
• Somali
• Kenya

Note on contributor

Kirstine Strøh Varming is a PhD fellow at the Department of Social Science and Business at Roskilde University. She is an anthropologist with a broad research interest in Somalia, East Africa and Somalis abroad. Funded by Danida through the GOVSEA research project, her latest research explores relations between trade, taxation and state-making processes in Puntland and Nairobi.

Notes

1. This research was funded by the Danish Consultative Research Committee for Development Research (FFU) under the GOVSEA project.

2. He referred to a number of grenade attacks that took place in Eastleigh in December 2011, following the entry of Kenya Defence Forces into Somalia to fight Al-Shabaab.

3. This term denotes Somalis from Somalia (see also Carrier 2016).