Geopolitics at the margins - Exploring emergent political orders across the Red Sea

The Red Sea Region is at the centre of new geopolitical intrigue: from significant investments in infrastructure projects to the establishment of military bases, to increased labour migration: the scope of current political, economic and security interactions between the states in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa is unprecedented.

Conventional explanations point to national interests that drive actors in the Middle East to project their power into the Horn of Africa--a view that casts African actors as mere spectators in a geopolitical game.

Instead, this project´s point of departure is that Middle Eastern and African actors are co-designers of their relations.

Building upon the field of critical geopolitics, we suggest that political interaction between states are not merely driven by given (geopolitical and geoeconomic) interests but rely on the establishment of a common ideational ground. Those “geocultural” narratives build, for example, on the construction of shared pasts or joint futures.

Hence, the project asks: How are the narratives that inform the political, economic and social interation across the Red Sea negotiated, established and justified?

Exploring three cases of intense engagement, namely (i) peace and security, (ii) infrastructure and (iii) labour migration, this project aims at rendering visible the formation and settling of narratives that constitute the common ground on which new political formations are built in the region.