For Somali merchants in eastern Ethiopia, border securitization seems to be driving urban inequality. Ethiopia’s governing elites have instrumentalized borders, offering exclusive import–export licenses to political supporters, including diaspora return-migrants. In turn, the beneficiaries of these trade schemes speculate in sectors such as urban real estate. The “informal” kontarabaan (contraband) markets in Jigjiga are a seeming locus of resistance to these new elite collaborations. In contrast to the securitized checkpoints around the city, officials rarely try to regulate smuggling within the dense urban market. But is this really an issue of governance versus informality, political elites versus lower-class traders, and border security versus urban tolerance? Looking closely at people’s transactions in urban space, this chapter shows how expectations about obligation and reciprocity crosscut apparent social divisions in the city. In their daily interactions, both merchants and government regulators often draw on ideals of Somali nonhegemonic or “egalitarian” ethos to explain and justify their activities. Yet the way these egalitarianisms function in the city looks different than the idealized “egalitarian society” of anthropological lore. I show how people’s practices of reciprocity and exchange are spatial work that affects how “transformations of space” including walls, streets, and borders operate in daily life.