Tribal Diasporas: Neopatrimonialism, Migration and the Civil War in Yemen 2011-2019.

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The on-going civil war in Yemen and the resulting security and humanitarian crises have attracted attention worldwide. While there is a tendency to frame the conflict as Houthi rebels vs. fragmented government, or Shafi Sunni vs. Zaydi Shia, such binary distinctions often lack nuance and ignore a complex matrix of identity politics, tribal allegiances and economic well-being that links diaspora communities to the ongoing conflict. This thesis sets out to explore how three distinct Yemeni diaspora communities in Oman, Qatar and the UK have leveraged social power and political influence with kith and kin in a country where the very idea of 'stateness' remains bitterly contested. It reaches beyond traditional frameworks of diaspora relations that often assume the existence of a legal-coherent nation-state. Rather, it sets out to examine how tribal fidelities, long shaped by neopatrimonial order that moulded patterns of engagment and power across Yemen for almost four decades, now configure the role that Yemeni disporas play in shaping and reshaping Yemen's contested political dispensation.