Jónsson’s Urban Displacement and Trade in a Senegalese Market: An Anthropology of Endings describes markets, their women traders, and the relationships between people and places. By the time she started her research, the Malian wholesale market that once occupied the Terminus station of the Dakar–Niger railway had been destroyed. It developed steadily over the course of the twentieth century, adapting to the many political changes that Senegal, and specifically Dakar, underwent during that era. In 2009, President Wade’s administration (2000–2012) bulldozed the market, warehouses, and all the goods the traders had stored in the warehouses. The park the administration planned to construct in its place never materialized. The lot remained largely empty, except for a few stalls. The traders who once dominated the Terminus market dispersed. They nevertheless maintained their ties as they moved to other markets in the area. Jónsson’s narrative is one of endings, but it is also one of shifting and adapting relationships.

Her book explores the human relationships and livelihoods that once gave the Terminus market life, from the perspective of how they reorganized post-bulldozing. She treats the space that had housed the Malian wholesale market not as an emptied-out shell, but as an active element within those relationships – a prominent node in their social network. She argues that destruction does not create “a clean slate, where identities, networks, and histories must be produced from scratch” (p. 3). Instead, the traders moved to new markets. They built social, economic, and place-based relationships that they consciously layered onto their existing networks.

By tracing both relationships and places, she discusses the traders’ migrations within a single city with the same analytical lens typically applied to a global diaspora. While the traders sometimes relocated just a few kilometers away from the original site, she argues that their new ties, and their continued attachment to the Terminus marketplace, are comparable to transnational migrations. In addition, their trading work had always demanded migration. For decades, they traveled thousands of kilometers between Mali and Dakar on the railway. They would import dried fruits, nuts, incense, textiles, and other goods from Mali to sell on the train and in Dakar. Through these multiple forms of migration, Jónsson emphasizes traders’ attachments to both mobility and place.

Jónsson’s book is organized thematically. The first chapter introduces the Terminus market. She also lays out her argument about displacement, emplacement, and social networks. She describes the politics, economies, and social ties that create each of these factors. The two following chapters explore the history of the Dakar–Niger railway and the Terminus market. They situate the market in economic, political, and social contexts, through the lenses of the people who created the market as their livelihood and social core. Chapter Two explores the market’s growth alongside Dakar’s booming urbanization in the twentieth century. Dakar became not only a populous and cosmopolitan capital city but also a destination for migrants from across Senegal and West Africa. The city and the urban towns that grew up around it became a magnet for trade as well as people seeking employment opportunities. Chapter Three focuses on the Wade administration, his policies, and the destruction of the Terminus market during that time. It also explores the Wade administration’s categorization of “informal” markets. A highlight of this chapter is Jónsson’s critical discussion of informality as a category. She draws on debates among traders, alongside state-level documents, to argue that the term is a strategic political tool.

Chapters Four and Five concern both spatial displacement and the creation of new spaces. Together, they show how women traders form relationships and create new economic and social spaces for themselves, even when they are highly mobile. In Chapter Four, Jónsson discusses products the women sell and how they transport and market them. Her explanation of imported and dyed bazin riche cloth shows how traders develop clients and add value to this popular commodity. Chapter Five focuses on gendered spaces and commerce, and women’s financial positionalities within their marketplaces and families.

Chapters Six and Seven ask what purpose marketplaces serve and what is at stake when they are disrupted by urban displacement. Chapter Six opens with a salient observation about place-making: outsiders to the Malian market, for the most part, were unaware of its destruction and the traders’ displacement. As mobile as the traders were, their space and the relationships they fostered there were highly localized. The traders’ efforts to build solidarity among themselves, Jónsson notes, was about more than just economic gain, both before and after their displacement. They also desired and fostered identity and belonging within their social network. They worked to maintain their network even when they became spatially dispersed. Chapter Seven, the conclusion, makes a final case for treating urban displacements and migrations through the same conceptual lens used for global diasporas. These analytical frameworks allow for understanding both the reasons why people disperse and what happens when they migrate, even if they stay in the same city.

Jónsson’s ethnography rests on her in-depth observations of how places change and how people interact within them. She leads readers on long bus rides and walks through alleys and crowded markets. Readers get a sense of empty expanses and overpacked buses and marketplaces. Her interviews with traders take place in homes, markets, and at bus stops. In these conversations, women traders offer brutally honest accounts of their livelihoods won, lost, and rebuilt. Jónsson privileges each person’s unique story and perspectives. The resulting ethnography portrays a social network that offers solidarity while recognizing diverse and sometimes competing interests.

By introducing readers to these places and people, Jónsson asks us to reconsider Dakar, and, indeed, other global cities, not only as points of departure or arrival for migrants, but as the nexuses that foster social networks. Dakar is often portrayed as the launching place for outmigration to Europe or the destination of rural to urban migration. Jónsson instead situates it in a larger spatial network within West Africa. Dakar, she posits, is a significant actor within those networks. By exploring the Terminus market, just one displaced social network, she pushes readers to think about all the other places and relationships that exist alongside it and overlap with it. That is, her specificity makes a good case for expanded notions of urban spaces and the diverse forces that affect both livelihoods and people within them.

Urban Displacement and Trade in a Senegalese Market would be a good reading for upper-level undergraduate or graduate courses on trade, urban economies, or, following Jónsson’s argument, global migration.