In Urban Displacement, Gunvor Jónsson examines the social life of urban displacement in Dakar following the demolition of the Malian market at the city’s railway terminus in 2009. Rather than treating eviction as a moment of closure, Jónsson advances what she terms an “anthropology of endings,” an approach that focuses on what happens at the end of the demolition (11). The book argues that displacement does not dissolve markets, identities, or social ties; instead, it reshapes them, as traders reorganize economic and social life in ways still rooted in the destroyed market (3). The aim of the book is not to argue that “good things come out of destruction and displacement,” but rather to examine “what displacement produces” in everyday life (11). She uses this framing to acknowledge real loss while still showing how social life continues after demolition, as traders struggle to rebuild their livelihoods and collective identities long after eviction.
The book is grounded in long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted primarily in 2013 among Malian women traders displaced from the Terminus market. These ethnographic materials are complemented by historical sources, including colonial and postcolonial maps, policy documents, and secondary literature on the Dakar–Niger railway, migration, and trade. These sources were carefully used to explain how the traders understand loss, opportunity, and belonging after demolition, which helps situate the 2009 demolition within a longer history of displacement in the city.
Jónsson makes a clear historiographical intervention by challenging the narrow focus of urban displacement scholarship, noting that the urban displacement literature has neglected commercial and workspace displacement of traders and small business owners (18). When displacement is discussed, it is most often framed through residential eviction in cities of the Global North. She redirects attention to traders in Dakar and demonstrates why marketplaces matter for understanding how displacement actually works.
The book is organized chronologically, but with strong thematic chapters. Jónsson moves from the period before demolition, tracing the historical significance of the Dakar Terminus and its emergence as a place of Malian trade linked to the Dakar–Niger railway, to the moment of eviction, demolition, and its immediate consequences, examining eviction, uncertainty, and what she calls “evictability,” which is the condition of living with the constant possibility of removal, and finally, to the long aftermath of displacement. This structure allows her to show how traders’ experiences and strategies changed over time rather than treating displacement as a one-time event. The book, which comprises seven chapters, situates the market within histories of mobility, commerce, and colonial infrastructure.
A key discussion running through the book concerns the nature of the Terminus itself. Jónsson insists that the Dakar Terminus was not merely a physical location but a social world. “The Dakar Terminus was more than simply a train station; it was a marketplace and a hub for people of Malian background,” she writes (9). For traders, La Gare referred to the station, the market, and a broader network of relationships. This understanding becomes crucial after demolition. Even after the traders were scattered across multiple sites in Dakar, they continued to identify as “les gens de La Gare” (169). The market, in this sense, persisted as an imagined and relational space long after its physical destruction. Jónsson uses this insight to argue that displacement does not simply dissolve collective identities; it can also intensify them.
One of the book’s strongest chapters examines gender and trade in the aftermath of displacement. Jónsson shows that Malian women traders were central in regional commerce, many of whom were primary breadwinners. This economic independence, however, also produced tension. Women’s success in trade was admired, but it was also closely watched and sometimes criticized, especially when it appeared to challenge expectations about communal obligation (154–55). Through her ethnographic research, Jonsson captured these tensions. One woman explains her desire to continue trading even if remarried (154). Such moments illustrate Jónsson’s broader argument that displacement deepened existing gender struggles rather than creating new ones. The demolition of the Terminus exposed what she describes as “competing femininities,” and it revealed how fragile women’s trading networks had become in a more competitive and uncertain market environment (159–60).
The book makes a significant contribution to the study of African urban history, anthropology, and displacement scholarship, among others. Her close attention to women traders is especially valuable in bringing gendered economic practices to the center of debates about mobility, trade, and survival in African cities. Although the book addresses the role of the state and broader urban development and state action in the demolition of the Terminus market, its primary focus is on traders’ lived experiences and social networks. A full discussion of how eviction decisions were made, justified, and carried out by authorities would add another depth to the analysis. Overall, this is a carefully argued and rich book that will be of interest to urban historians, in addition to scholars of migration, gender, and political economy. It is particularly well-suited for graduate courses and for readers interested in how urban destruction reshapes social life.
