ABSTRACT

In this chapter, I discuss the intersection between the political history of the region and patterns of mobility. By exploring this link, I highlight the inherent political dimension of mobility and argue that ongoing returns are an expression of the way mobility has developed over time in order to cope with the growing interconnectedness of a globalised world. Building on this political and historical contextualisation, I also expose in further details the key Somali concept of qurbajoog – diaspora – and explore the ways this term has come to represent a way of establishing and reproducing new internal frontiers based on different modalities of mobility.