Social Sciences

This book will argue that lodging is a hugely ignored, largely invisible but critical sector of housing provision and economic contributor of burgeoning African cities. It further connects the rural and the urban, challenging traditional definitions of locationally-bound communities. Lodgers create micro, local and translocal communities and the lodging system offers livelihood strategies. Rather than engage in the dominant portrayal of rural-urban as binary, dichotomous space, we maintain that lodging represents and supports the translocal community and relational networks of the extended family as it seeks to maximize access to resources.