Decentring EU Foreign Policy Analysis Through Ethnography: The Heuristic Virtue of Fieldwork Relocation

The decentring agenda has gained traction in the literature on EU foreign policy over the past fifteen years. While debates have largely focused on normative and epistemological questions, methodological and fieldwork-related issues have been overlooked. This article emphasizes the potential contribution of ethnography to further operationalize the decentring agenda. We argue that the relocation of the site of observation from Brussels-based institutions to the ground of intervention – in Niger – reveals the agency of African actors and their influence on EU foreign policy. Following an inductive approach, ethnography also serves as a heuristic device connecting bodies of literatures that examine EU interventions in Africa from different perspectives (international relations, foreign policy analysis, sociology of EU integration, and African studies). The first part of the article discusses what ethnographic research entails and its added value to the decentring agenda. The second part reflexively introduces the conditions under which it might be possible to conduct fieldwork research and observations, building on the case of Niger. The third part explains how the empirical material produced and collected on the field provides insights that contribute to the decentring of EU foreign policy.