Book excerpt: The book explores the history of a minority group, the Gaboye, in Somaliland, and, using a historical ethnographic approach, addresses two main issues. First, the analysis addresses the transformation and reproduction of the social boundary which separates an ascribed status-based minority group within the society: what symbolic, political, economic and social apparatuses have articulated the boundary and the belonging to this minority group? How have these apparatuses changed? Second, the analysis adopts the trajectory of the minority members in the town of Hargeysa as a perspective on the history of north-western Somali society: from the point of view of an ascribed status-based minority group, what can we see of the social, economic and political changes which occurred during the decades of slow colonial penetration into the area, of urban expansion, of postcolonial state consolidation and collapse, civil war, mass displacement, peace building, and the contemporary waves of diasporisation of this society?