Borders and Spatial Imaginaries in the Kuwaiti Identity

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe Iraqi claims on and invasion of Kuwait have focused most of the scholarly attention on the drawing and defining of the Kuwaiti border. Issues of material delineation between the two countries have mattered a great deal for asserting sovereignty, but also for the exploration of oil and access to Gulf deep waters. Yet, the identity dimensions of the Kuwaiti border have often been overlooked. Building on the literature that sees more to the border than just a dividing line but seeks to include individual and collective narrative and experiences of borders, this article proposes to investigate the social–cultural perception of the Kuwaiti border and explores the complex connection between border and identities in the Kuwaiti case. Borders, it has been argued, have often played a significant role in identity building processes. Yet in the case of Kuwait where the border, contested by powerful neighbours, cuts across empty desert and tribal territories, the border seems to have played a limited one in shaping the national identity. This article investigates the interplay between the bordering process asserting sovereignty, on the one hand and the notions of identity and sense of belonging, on the other, resulting from a complex mix of socio-cultural legacies inherited from the pre-national period (the hadhar/badû dichotomy) and processes of ordering and othering enacted by the state and its welfare policies. Based on the analysis of the spatial imaginary as constructed by the Nationality Law of 1959, it argues that the urban core of the port-city or the interaction with it have remained the main benchmark of Kuwaiti identity, while the desert periphery has been imagined as culturally distinct and economically backward in the oil era – a representation that nevertheless provides a reservoir of symbols and narratives ready to be reimagined or appropriated.