This presentation introduces my book project, The Hotels’ Republic: Elite Internationalisation and State Territorialisation in Wartime Yemen. It analyses how the frontiers of the state are remapped in the midst of violence, by looking at how the ongoing war transforms Yemen’s ruling class. The book draws on a sociology of the political elite, many of whom are now based or in transit between Cairo, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Muscat, Amman, and Istanbul. Since the beginning of the war in 2014, new elites have risen to power, propelled by military capital and regional support, while pre-war elites have seen their positions destabilised. I examine how these transformations unfold both inside and outside Yemen, as political actors navigate the fragmentation of territory, the multiplication of competing authorities, and the shifting value of different forms of capital (political, social, military, and economic). Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the homes and hotel lobbies where these elites gather and circulate, I demonstrate, for instance, how pre-war elites convert their resources, diversify their activities, and activate their notability across borders through extensive sociabilities and patronage. I also examine how they negotiate their position within a transnational political arena where regional sponsors act as hosts to the Yemeni state.
BIOGRAPHY
Marine Poirier is a CNRS researcher in political science at the Institute of Research and Study on the Arab and Muslim Worlds (IREMAM), Aix-Marseille University, France. She studies the trajectories of Yemeni political elites and focuses on the transformations of the ruling class since the outbreak of the civil war in 2014. Among her publications: “Dismantling the Party to Rebuild the Regime. The transnationalization of a political party in the war in Yemen (in French),” Revue française de science politique, 2024, 74(3): 525-550; “Reviving parliament in war-torn Yemen. Struggles for legitimacy and representation (in French),” Mondes arabes, 2022, 2: 21-45; and "Politics despite the war: Yemeni political elites in Cairo," Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies, 2022. She co-edited in French Yemen. The Revolutionary Turn, Paris, Karthala, 2012 and Campaigning Here and Elsewhere: Electoral Mobilizations and Ordinary Political Practices, Paris, Karthala, 2016.
