Bottom-up geopolitics: Everyday geopolitics during the Channel Islands fishing row

While media coverage often focuses on large geopolitical events, geopolitics are part of everyday life and are received, articulated and altered through seemingly mundane activities. Despite bringing attention to geopolitical processes operating outside of international relations, the field of critical geopolitics has not yet fully incorporated mundane knowledge into the core of its discourse. Consequently, there is limited attention to the multi-scalar nature of geopolitical processes, thereby hindering our understanding of the everyday nature of geopolitics. Taking a methodological stance rooted within the Cultural Political Economy approach, this research will study how geopolitics are received, lived and altered by ‘common’ people affiliated with the fishing industry near the British Channel Islands in the context of French-British territorial disputes after Brexit. Using a qualitative research approach that centers on in-depth interviews and participatory observations, this study will unravel the very practical ways by which residents and local politicians mobilize geopolitically through mundane activities of work and leisure. By doing so, this project will contribute to critical geopolitics by highlighting how high-tension, international geopolitical discussions and disputes not only affect but also are shaped from the bottom-up, by people who define coping strategies and search for geopolitical power in their daily activities and actions.