Negotiating Informality in Mombasa

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Dillon Mahoney

Published:

2017

Publisher:

University of California Press

Traders in Kenya’s handicrafts industry, which developed in the 1960s and 1970s with significant government support, often viewed themselves as members of Kenya’s “informal” or <italic>jua kali</italic> sector. How traders understood their rights and economic opportunities affected their strategies as they negotiated the economic instability and haphazard regulation of the 1990s and 2000s, particularly following the kiosk demolitions. Detailed ethnographic examples and economic histories demonstrate the effects of government attempts to license and tax coastal handicrafts traders and tourism operators. Stories from Mombasa’s North Coast demonstrate the dangers that can accompany making international connections, including the potential for human trafficking. While largely immobile Kenyans were finding new ways to use digital technologies to conduct business and communicate over long distances, they also recognized that new forms of mobility and new connections came with a host of new risks.

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