Paper short abstract:

Drawing on the heuristic lens of the practices of informal cross-border traders, this paper presents some issues pertaining to the role of mobility in the configuration of new, underexplored principles organizing the socio-spatial life in cities.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates the relationship between mobility and urban space in Sub-Saharan Africa through the lens of the mukhero practice, name given to the informal trades which span Mozambican borders. Born as a traditional survival practice, the mukhero is today well-blended with global logics and has a relevant, as underestimated role in shaping spaces and urbanity. Mukheristas, i.e. the people doing the mukhero, deploy movement as a livelihood strategy to carve out space in the everyday life of the city, in so connecting heterogeneous spaces and networks across transnational distances and translocal geographies.

The paper reports the findings of a multi-situated ethnographic exploration on the tracks of mukheristas between Johannesburg and Maputo, with the aim of unveiling the socio-spatial agency implicit in their practices. Mobility makes space. Through the 'mukhero prism' the paper presents some first reflections on how mobility actually makes city in the African urban context. Being it inextricably bound up with other spatialities and a fundamental 'source of capital', it is useful to unveil and interpret new organizing principles of the African urban life.