The Arabian Peninsula has been profoundly shaped by its strategic position, colonial encounters, and the discovery of oil. During the twentieth century, it underwent two major territorial reconfigurations: first, the creation of modern states and borders between the 1930s and 1960s, which redefined affiliations beyond kinship and tribal ties; and second, the formation of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in 1981, which

consolidated a regional space marked by intense immigration flows. These transformations have fostered new dynamics of identity and belonging, as citizens and expatriates negotiate cultural hybridity, shifting territorial imaginaries, and the interplay between national and regional frameworks. In parallel, renewed engagement with pre-Islamic and pre-state pasts, through archaeology and cultural production, reflects a desire to anchor present identities in deeper historical narratives.

 

This interdisciplinary event, co-organised by the CEFREPA, Sorbonne Nouvelle and Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi, brings together scholars from history, literature, anthropology and linguistics to discuss how geographic, sociocultural and symbolic borders are imagined, negotiated, and crosses, and how they shape the Peninsula as a dynamic site of interaction and identity formation.