Neighbours on the fringes of a small city in post-war Chad

Drought and war are important reasons for migration to small urban centres in Chad, and those who are forced to migrate are often the poor who find they can no longer survive in their villages. The central question in this chapter is whether these people group together once in town and form a distinct neighbourhood. Such a neighbourhood can hardly be based on exchanges of material goods because these people have virtually nothing to share. The chapter looks at the settlement of migrants in one of the peripheral quarters - Secteur Quatre - of Mongo, the country's fifth largest town, and the kind of neighbourhood that developed there. It shows that not only people from outside Mongo have found shelter in Secteur Quatre, but also impoverished families from Mongo itself. The majority of the inhabitants of Secteur Quatre are women who share a common history of war and drought. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Book abstract]