Youth at the Margins: Perspectives on Arab Mediterranean Youth 0429398980, 9780429398988

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Youth at the Margins

The 2011 Arab uprisings led to a great proliferation of studies on the situations in the Arab countries of the Mediterranean, with particular attention given to their young people, whose role was particularly central. Eight years on, in-depth exploration is still needed of the conditions in which millions of (mainly young) people demanded change. In this context, this volume examines the state and diversity of the forms of socioeconomic, political and cultural marginalization facing the region’s young men and women, as well as the strategies and routes of contestation by which they escape them. Through the interdisciplinary empiricism of this book, based on the results emerging from the SAHWA Project (funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme, grant agreement nº 613174), we aspire to build a complex description and analysis of the current situation of the Arab Mediterranean youth. The aim is to fathom out young people’s patterns, agency and living conditions, focusing on the relational character of the juvenile worlds actively constructed by themselves. The authors explore the main trends that are reflected in the social strategies, cultural constructions and changes within the Arab youth population, and whether the creation of new lifestyles and the emergence of youth cultures are an indicator of sociopolitical transitions. To answer all these questions the researchers have conducted a comprehensive study in five Arab Mediterranean countries: Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia. Based on mixed-method research the data collection is composed of two primary sources: the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017), in which 10,000 young people were interviewed; and the SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork 2015, involving more than 200 young people. Elena Sánchez-Montijano is Senior Research Fellow at CIDOB (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs) in the area of migration, and adjunct professor at the Political Science Department of Barcelona University. She was Scientific Coordinator of the SAHWA project. José Sánchez García is senior researcher at Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona). He was Ethnographic Coordinator of the SAHWA project.

Europa Regional Perspectives

Providing in-depth analysis with a global reach, this series from Europa examines a wide range of contemporary political, economic, developmental and social issues in regional perspective. Intended to complement the Europa Regional Surveys of the World series, Europa Regional Perspectives will be a valuable resource for academics, students, researchers, policymakers, business people and anyone with an interest in current world affairs with an emphasis on regional issues. While the Europa World Year Book and its associated Regional Surveys inform on and analyse contemporary economic, political and social developments, the Editors considered the need for more in-depth volumes written and/or edited by specialists in their field, in order to delve into particular regional situations. Volumes in the series are not constrained by any particular template, but may explore recent political, economic, international relations, social, defence, or other issues in order to increase knowledge. Regions are thus not specifically defined, and volumes may focus on small or large group of countries, regions or blocs.

The European Mainstream and the Populist Radical Right Edited by Pontus Odmalm and Eve Hepburn The Politics of Islam in the Sahel Between Persuasion and Violence Rahmane Idrissa Euro-Caribbean Societies in the 21st Century Offshore Europe on the Move Sébastien Chauvin, Peter Clegg and Bruno Cousin Parliamentary Institutions in Regional and International Governance Functions and Powers Andrea Cofelice Youth at the Margins Perspectives on Arab Mediterranean Youth Elena Sánchez-Montijano and José Sánchez García For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Europa-Regional-Perspectives/book-series/ERP

Youth at the Margins Perspectives on Arab Mediterranean Youth

Edited by Elena Sánchez-Montijano and José Sánchez García

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Elena Sánchez-Montijano and José Sánchez García The right of Elena Sánchez-Montijano and José Sánchez García to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Europa Commissioning Editor: Cathy Hartley British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sánchez-Montijano, Elena, editor. | Sánchez García, José, editor. Title: Youth at the margins : perspectives on Arab Mediterranean youth / [edited by] Elena Sánchez-Montijano and José Sánchez García. Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. | Series: Europa regional perspectives | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018045541 (print) | LCCN 2018052805 (ebook) | ISBN 9780429398988 (e-Book) | ISBN 9781857439663 | ISBN 9781857439663(hardback :alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Youth–Political activity–Arab countries. | Youth–Arab countries–Social conditions. | Youth–Arab countries–Economic conditions. Classification: LCC HQ799.A6 (ebook) | LCC HQ799.A6 Y68 2019 (print) | DDC 305.235/0974927–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018045541 ISBN: 978-1-85743-966-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-42939-898-8 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Taylor & Francis Books

Contents

List of illustrations Acknowledgements List of contributors Introduction. Youth at the Margins

vii ix x 1

ELENA SÁNCHEZ-MONTIJANO AND JOSÉ SÁNCHEZ GARCÍA

PART I

To be young in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon: case studies

11

1 Is becoming an entrepreneur the way out for young Moroccans?

13

CAROLINE MINIALAI, LISA BOSSENBROEK AND DRISS KSIKES

2 Youth civic and political participation in Algeria: Issues and challenges

30

MUSTAPHA OMRANE

3 Young Tunisian men and women, between marginalisation and recognition

49

SOUKEINA BOURAOUI, LILIA OTHMAN CHALLOUGUI AND SIHEM NAJAR

4 Revolt, re-marginalisation and co-optation: Youth political participation in Egypt

63

BAHGAT KORANY

5 “Born to be exported”?: The post-civil war Lebanese youth(s) and the rupture between education and employment RIMA MAJED

83

vi

Contents

PART II

An overview of Arab Mediterranean youth 6 Arab Mediterranean youth: Religion and politics

105 107

KEN ROBERTS, SIYKA KOVACHEVA AND STANIMIR KABAIVANOV

7 “Getting out from the shell of fear”?: Forms of youth political engagement and the impact of social inequalities in the MENA countries

125

SIYKA KOVACHEVA, STANIMIR KABAIVANOV AND BORIS POPIVANOV

8 School-to-work transitions in Arab Mediterranean countries

144

LEONIE BACKEBERG, ANDREAS ETLING AND JOCHEN THOLEN

9 Political chronotopes of youth engagement: Towards more inclusive and enabling environments

162

SOFIA LAINE AND MARTTA MYLLYLÄ

10 The transformation of youth cultural norms and values: A gendered analysis

181

ILENYA CAMOZZI, DANIELA CHERUBINI, CARMEN LECCARDI AND PAOLA RIVETTI

11 The Euro-Med Youth Programme and young people in the Arab Mediterranean countries: A reality check

202

ASUMAN GÖKSEL AND ÖZGEHAN S¸ENYUVA

12 Youth demarginalisation strategies in the Arab Mediterranean countries

222

ELENA SÁNCHEZ-MONTIJANO AND JOSÉ SÁNCHEZ GARCÍA

Index

241

Illustrations

Figures 1.1 1.2 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 9.1 9.2

9.3

Entrepreneurs’ educational background Entrepreneurs’ socioeconomic background How much trust do you have in government in Egypt? How much trust do you have in political parties in Egypt? How much trust do you have in politicians in Egypt? Voting behaviour Political socialisation: how often do you discuss national political affairs in Egypt with your father? Political socialisation: how often do you discuss national political affairs in Egypt with your mother? Lack of employment as first concern: what is your personal situation? Would you accept a job even if it was … ? How did you get your current job? Evolution of state and private schools, 1944–2000 Why do you think you are unemployed? Are you insured by the Social Security system? If not, why not? Approaches used by unemployed youth(s) looking for jobs The main reasons pushing youth(s) to want to emigrate Current job situation by gender Current job situation by stratum of residence Current job situation by educational level of respondent Current job situation by educational level of respondent’s father Participation in different political activities at least once during the last 12 months in five countries Participation of young men and women in different political activities at least once during the last 12 months in four countries Attitudes towards the link between religion and institutional politics

19 19 66 66 66 67 69 69 76 77 77 88 90 91 92 96 152 153 155 157 165

166 171

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List of illustrations

Tables 2.1

2.2

2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 8.1 8.2 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6

Proportion of young people who had participated in political or civic association activities in the 12 months prior to the survey, by type of activity and gender Proportion of young people who had participated in at least one activity organised by civic associations or political parties in the 12 months prior to the survey, by type of activity and gender Distribution of young people by level of confidence in national institutions and gender Distribution of young people by level of confidence in international institutions and gender Distribution in percentage of young people by frequency of participation in elections and gender Proportion of young people who did not vote in the last national elections by reasons for not voting and gender Participation in protest activities Differences in political engagement by countries Percentages who were involved in different numbers of different kinds of political activities Mosque/church attendances Views on different political systems Opinions on different political systems by levels of religiosity Percentages who agreed strongly or agreed with propositions about religion and politics Percentages who agreed strongly or agreed with propositions about religion and politics Assessment of political participation by young people Main forms of political participation Cross-country differences in political participation Social inequalities as factors in political participation Employment in the public and the private sector Employment status Adopted framework for policy evaluation Unemployment, youth total The most important problem in your country—first problem Level of confidence in institutions Number of projects and participants in the Euro-Med Youth Programme Who benefits from cooperation with the EU

39

39 41 41 42 43 113 115 115 117 119 119 120 121 130 135 135 137 150 151 204 209 210 213 215 215

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our appreciation to all partners and members of the Consortium of the SAHWA Project and the Scientific Advisory Board; in particular we thank Moussa Bourekba, Santiago Villar and Clara Créixams for their contributions throughout the project. In the same vein, we express our gratitude to Bet Mañé for the Spanish edition of this publication. Finally we recognise the support of Jaume Tarragó and Kristin Eitel in the editing of this book. Of course, none of this this would be possible without the participation of the many young people, who shared their experiences in one way or other with the SAHWA project. We are grateful to all of them.

Contributors

Elena Sánchez-Montijano is Senior Research Fellow at CIDOB (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs) in the area of migration, and adjunct professor at the Political Science Department of Barcelona University. She holds a PhD in Political and Social Science from Pompeu Fabra University. Currently, she is co-director of the Migrant Integration Policy Index project (MIPEX) and researcher at the National Integration Evaluation Mechanism project (NIEM), which analyses refugee policies in the European Union (EU). Furthermore, she is researcher at the Common European Asylum System Evaluation project (CEASEVAL), funded by the Horizon 2020 programme. She was the Scientific Coordinator of the SAHWA Project (Researching Arab Mediterranean Youth: Towards a New Social Contract), funded by the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) of the European Commission. She was visiting researcher at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford, and the Centre for Ethnic and Migration Studies (CEDEM) at Université de Liège. Her main areas of interest are immigrant integration policies in Europe and the migrants’ transnational relations with their countries of origin; she is also interested on youth studies. José Sánchez García is senior researcher at Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona). He has a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology, with a thesis based on the study of youth cultures in the city of Cairo. His field experience was to analyse the processes of young identity construction in the Arab world from the case study of four neighbourhoods of Cairo, applying intersectional perspectives. He has researched the relationship between piety and music in Pakistani collectives in Barcelona; gendered identities in Gulf countries; youth political movements after 2011 in Spain and Egypt; and youth de-marginalization strategies in Egypt. He was Ethnographic Coordinator of the SAHWA Project (www.sahwa.eu). More recently he has combined youth studies, social movements and post-colonial approaches in North Africa and Europe. He has published several articles and book chapters on social movements in Spain and North Africa, and has been visiting lecturer in several major European universities.

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Leonie Backeberg is a research assistant and doctoral candidate at the University of Bremen. She received her BSc in Economics from Heidelberg University and her MSc in International Political Economy from University College Dublin. Prior to coming to the University of Bremen, she worked for the German-British Chamber of Industry and Commerce and the British Embassy in Berlin. Her work focuses on the nexus between public finance and social policy. Recent publications have appeared in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and the Journal of Youth Studies. Lisa Bossenbroek obtained her PhD in 2016 in rural sociology at the University of Wageningen (the Netherlands). As part of her research she studied the role of young people in agrarian dynamics and the interactions of processes of agrarian change and gender relations. She is particularly interested in how young people challenge power relations and negotiate space to realize their aspirations, resulting in alternative futures and modes of development. Currently, she works as a postdoc in the Faculty of Governance, Economics and Social Sciences (EGE-RABAT), Morocco. Soukeina Bouraoui is a Tunisian professor of law. Her areas of expertise are criminal law, civil law, environmental law, women/human rights and gender justice. Dr Bouraoui has authored international scholarly publications on the environment, economic law, citizenship and women’s rights, and has been a visiting professor at various international universities. Since 2000, she is a member of the International Court of Environment Arbitration and Conciliation (ICEAC), Vice-President of the International Center of Comparative Environmental Law (CIDCE), as well as a board of advisers member of the International Development Law Organization (IDLO). Dr Bouraoui founded and directed (1991–97) the Tunisian Centre for Information, Documentation, Studies and Research on Women (CREDIF) and was a founding member of the Fondation des Femmes de l’Euro-Meditérrannée. Since 1999, she has been Executive Director of the Center of Arab Women for Training and Research (CAWTAR). Ilenya Camozzi is Associate Professor of Sociology of Culture in the Department of Sociology and Social Research of the University of MilanoBicocca and Assoziierte Mitarbeiterin at the Institut für Sozialforschung, J. W. Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main. Her research interests include: everyday multiculturalism, migrants’ political participation, second-generation youth mobility, and transition to adulthood. Amongst her latest publications are: “The Strength of Memory and the Weakness of Recognition: Italian associations in Germany”, in Ethnic and Racial Studies (forthcoming); “Normas y valores de los jóvenes en el Mediterráneo árabe: un análisis de género” (with D. Cherubini, C. Leccardi and P. Rivetti), in Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals, 118, pp. 201–224 (2018); “Young People on the Move. Cosmopolitan Strategies in the Transition to

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List of contributors Adulthood”, in Feixa, C., Leccardi, C. and Nilan, P. (Eds), Youth, Space and Time. Agoras and Chronotopes in the Global City. Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2016, pp. 44–64.

Daniela Cherubini, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Sociology of Culture at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, where she teaches Methodology of Social Research and Sociology and Politics. She is currently a researcher in the ERC project “DomEQUAL. A global approach to paid domestic work and global inequalities” (principal investigator S. Marchetti, 2016–20). She is also part of the “Otras perspectivas feministas en investigación social” research group at the University of Granada, Spain. Previously, she was postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Milano-Bicocca and part of the EU-FP7 research project “Researching Arab Mediterranean Youth: Towards a New Social Contract—SAHWA” (2013–16). She holds a PhD in Sociology and Social Research Methodology and in Women’s and Gender Studies (2010). Her research focuses on youth condition, gender, migration and citizenship, care and domestic work, gender-based violence and intersectionality, mainly from a qualitative and mixed-method perspective. Her most recent publication is the book Nuove cittadine, nuove cittadinanze? Donne migranti e pratiche di partecipazione. Meltemi: Milano, 2018. Andreas Etling, PhD, is a research assistant at University of Bremen. His research interests are in the field of migration studies and labour market policies. Recent publications include (with Leonie Backeberg and Jochen Tholen, 2018) “The political dimension of young people’s migration intentions: Evidence from the Arab Mediterranean region”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2018.1485093. Asuman Göksel is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration of the Middle East Technical University, Ankara. Her research interests cover Turkey-EU relations, EU policies beyond the EU, youth studies and youth policy, and current issues in labour market and employment policy. She has been involved in a variety of research projects including the FP7 SAHWA Project (Researching Arab Mediterranean Youth: Towards a New Social Contract) (www.sahwa.eu) as the local project coordinator; the FP6 FESSUD project (Financialisation, Economy, Society and Sustainable Development) (fessud.eu) as a researcher; and Horizon 2020 FEUTURE project (The Future of EUTurkey Relations: Mapping Dynamics and Testing Scenarios) (feuture.eu) as a researcher. Her latest publications include “Transforming Turkey? Putting the Turkey-European Union Relations into a Historical Perspec. tive”, Uluslararası Ilis¸kiler, 14(56), pp. 23–37 (with G. L. Yalman, 2017); and “Child Poverty and Youth Unemployment in Turkey”, Poverty and Public Policy, 10(3), pp. 390–413 (with M.K. Bayırbag˘ and C. Çelik, 2018).

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Stanimir Kabaivanov, PhD, is Associate Professor in Econometrics at Plovdiv University, Bulgaria. His research interests are in finance, artificial intelligence, and application of computational methods in social sciences. He is also an active software developer and interested in the application of econometric models. His publications include: (with V. Markovska, 2017) “Modelling environment changes for pricing weather derivatives”, Scientific Annals of Economics and Business, 64(4), pp. 423–430, DOI: 10.1515/ saeb-2017-0031; (with Siyka Kovacheva and Ken Roberts, 2018) “Education to employment transitions in South and East Mediterranean countries”, International Journal of Social Sciences and Economic Research, 3 (2), pp. 532–559, ISSN 2455-8834; (with Siyka Kovacheva and Ken Roberts, 2018) “Interrogating waithood: Family and housing life stage transitions among young adults in North-West Africa countries”, International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, DOI: 10.1080/ 02673843.2018.1430595. Bahgat Korany is Professor of International Relations and Political Economy at the American University in Cairo (AUC) and Director of the AUC Forum. He is an honorary professor at the University of Montreal and, since 1993, an elected member of Canada’s Royal Society. He has also been a visiting professor at various universities, from Sciences Po (Paris) and Oxford to Harvard and Algiers. In addition to media activity and public talks, Professor Korany has published 12 books and some 125 book chapters/articles in specialized periodicals from Revue Française de Science Politique to World Politics, some of which have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Chinese and Japanese. His 2010 The Changing Middle East has been noted by CNN as indicating the “Arab Spring” a year before it happened. Lead Author of the 10th Anniversary special volume of the United Nations Development Programme’s Arab Human Development Report, in 2015 he received the International Studies Association Award “Distinguished Global South Scholar” for lifetime achievement, succeeding the late Dean of African Studies Ali Mazrui, and was the first from the Arab world to receive this award. Siyka Kovacheva, PhD, is Associate Professor in sociology and social policy at Plovdiv University, Bulgaria. Her research interests are in the field of youth transitions to employment and parenthood, and civic participation. She has been the national coordinator of more than 20 research projects in cross-national perspective. Her publications include: (with Stanimir Kabaivanov and Ken Roberts, 2018) “Education to employment transitions in South and East Mediterranean countries”, International Journal of Social Sciences and Economic Research, 3(2), pp. 532–559, ISSN 24558834; (with Stanimir Kabaivanov and Ken Roberts, 2018) “Interrogating waithood: Family and housing life stage transitions among young adults in North-West Africa countries”, International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, DOI: 10.1080/02673843.2018.1430595; (with Petar-Emil Mitev,

xiv List of contributors 2014) Young People in European Bulgaria. A Sociological Portrait. Sofia: Friedrich Ebert Foundation; (with Claire Wallace, 1998) Youth in Society. The Construction and Deconstruction of Youth in East and West Europe. London: Macmillan. Driss Ksikes has been Director of ECONOMIA, HEM Research Center since 2007. Among his recent scientific articles are: “The Life Span of Alternative Media: Cases of Lakome and Mamfakinch in Morocco” (with Fadma Aït Mous), Jaddaliya.com (2018); and “The media in Morocco: A highly political economy, the case of the paper and on-line press since the early 1990s” (with Dominique Marchetti and Abdelfattah Benchenna), Journal of North African Studies (2017). As a non-fiction writer, he was awarded the Grand Atlas prize in 2015 for his book, Le métier d’intellectuel (with Fadma Aït Mous). In this arena, he has been called “one of the most innovative writers in Morocco today”, and was named “one of the six best African playwrights” by the National Studio Theatre in London. He is the author of numerous plays and novels. As curator and citizen activist, he is co-founder of Dabateatr Citoyen (2009–12), co-organizer and curator of La Nuit des philosophes in Rabat and Casablanca (since 2014), and co-founder and coordinator of Fatema Mernissi Chair (since 2015). Sofia Laine is a Senior Researcher at the Finnish Youth Research Network and an adjunct professor in Youth Studies at the University of Tampere, Finland. Her multidisciplinary research has focused on young people, political engagements and democracy in multiple European and global settings. One of her recent research projects focused on volunteering among refugees (www.livingmemories-era.net). She is a member of the Pool of European Youth Researchers in the Youth Partnership between the Council of Europe and European Union. In 2012–17 she was part of two research projects that examined youth political engagement in North Africa: YoPo (http://blogs.helsinki.fi/yopo-africa/) and the SAHWA Project (www.sahwa.eu). In the SAHWA Project she worked as a team leader for the Finnish Youth Research Network (FYRN) team, and as a Work Package coordinator on a work package of youth mobilization and political participation. Carmen Leccardi is Professor of Cultural Sociology and Director of the PhD programme in Applied Sociology and Methodology of Social Research at the University of Milan-Bicocca. From 2013 to 2015 she was President of the European Sociological Association. She has researched extensively in the field of social time, youth, gender and generations, and processes of cultural and social change. From a methodological point, she is interested in qualitative research methods, in particular hermeneutical approaches. Among her latest books are: Youth, Space and Time. Agoras and Chronotopes in the Global City, edited with C. Feixa and P. Nilan. Leiden: Brill, 2016; Sociologías del tiempo. Santiago, Chile: Finis Terrae, 2015.

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Rima Majed is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Sociology, Anthropology and Media Studies Department at the American University of Beirut. As a political sociologist, her work focuses on the fields of social inequality, social movements, social identities, sectarianism, conflict and violence. Dr Majed completed her PhD at the University of Oxford where she conducted her research on the relationship between structural changes, social mobilization and sectarianism in Lebanon. Prior to that, she worked as a Programme Assistant and a Senior Researcher at the United Nations Development Programme—Arab States Bureau. Dr Majed is the author of numerous articles and op-eds. Her work has appeared in Mobilization, Global Change, Peace & Security, Idafat: The Arab Journal of Sociology, Al Jumhuriya, and Al Jazeera English. Caroline Minialai has been an associate researcher at ECONOMIA, HEM Research Center since 2009. She graduated in 1990 from EDHEC Business School in Lille, and obtained—after eight years working as an auditor and a financial director—an agrégation in economics and finance. She obtained her PhD in Management Science in 2013. Her thesis was “Succession in Moroccan family SMEs: a family system approach”. Her research is now dedicated to entrepreneurship and family firms in Africa. Martta Myllylä works as a researcher at the FYRN in Helsinki, Finland. She is a sociologist and has a Master’s degree in social sciences. Her fields of expertise include migration, ethnicity, gender and inequality. She worked as a statistical research assistant on a work package of youth mobilization and political participation in the SAHWA Project. Sihem Najar is a socio-anthropologist at the Higher Institute of Human Sciences of Tunis (ISSHT), University Tunis el-Manar. Her work focus is on identity negotiations in a changing social environment (based on gender relations, uses of ICTs, daily interactions). She has published and edited several books on the uses of social networking and cyber activism in the Maghreb and the Mediterranean, including: Identification process in the Mediterranean: Reconfiguration of social bonds and identities. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2014; Social networks on the Internet at a time of democratic transitions. Paris: IRMC—Karthala, 2013; and Cyber activism in the Maghreb and in the Arab world. Paris: IRMC—Karthala, 2013. She coordinated the Ch’an Research Project, 2014–17: “Young people, legitimacy and social recognition in socio-political processes in Tunisia”, a Tunisian/ Canadian project of the National Youth Observatory funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and coordinated by the National Observatory of Youth (ONJ). Mustapha Omrane is a sociologist and demographer. Dr Omrane is Lecturer at the University of Khemis-Miliana, and associated researcher in the Centre de Recherche en Economie Appliquée pour le Développement (CREAD) in Algeria. He is a specialist in population and development in

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developing countries. He has written numerous works on various subjects: demographic dividend; adolescence and vulnerability; youth and political participation; and health and demographic dynamics in Africa. His most recent publication is “Sociodemographic pressure on land in Madagascar”, in Petit P. (Ed.), Population Studies and Development from Theory to Fieldwork (Demographic Transformation and Socio-Economic Development 7). Springer, 2017, pp. 109–132. Lilia Othman Challougui is a Clinical Psychologist at the Higher Institute of Human Sciences of Tunis (ISSHT), University Tunis el-Manar, a trainer and supervisor, and a member of the committee of the Association of Research and Study in Psychology (AREPSY). She is co-editor of a book (with Sihem Najar) entitled Writing about Women: Reflective return on a research experiment. Paris: CAWTAR-IRMC-L’Harmattan, 2014. She coordinated a quantitative survey on the digital activities of young Tunisians, “Ethics and Values” (August 2016) in the Ch’an Research Project, 2014–17, “Youth, legitimacy and social recognition in socio-political processes in Tunisia”, funded by Canada’s IDRC and coordinated by the ONJ. Boris Popivanov, PhD, is Associate Professor of Political Systems and Ideologies at Sofia University “St Kliment Ohridski”, Bulgaria. He is co-working on research projects with Plovdiv University and New Europe Centre, Plovdiv. His main areas of research include history and theory of leftist ideas, political socialization and public opinion of youth, migration mobilizations and European mobility. Recent publications in the sphere of youth studies are: The Bulgarian Youth of 2018: A Sociological Portrait (co-ed. with P.-E. Mitev). Sofia: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2018; “Youth Policy in Arab Mediterranean Countries in Comparative Perspective” (co-authored), in S. Kovacheva (Ed.), Young People and Social Change and South and East Mediterranean Countries. Plovdiv University Press, 2017. Paola Rivetti is Assistant Professor in Politics of the Middle East and International Relations, Dublin City University, Ireland. She was awarded the Early-Career Researcher of the Year Prize in 2018 by the Irish Research Council. Her research interests range from the government of societies and polities in the Middle East and North Africa, to social mobilizations, migration, precarity in academia and academic freedom. She has authored numerous scientific as well as non-academic publications on these topics, published in several languages. She is also involved in activist and nonacademic outreach activities, engaging both the media and public speaking. In 2018 she delivered a TED talk for Trinity College Dublin. Her most recent publication is the co-edited volume Islamists and the Politics of the Arab Uprisings: Governance, Pluralisation and Contention. Edinburgh University Press, 2018.

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Ken Roberts is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Liverpool. He has a long record of research and writing on the sociology of youth and the sociology of leisure. After 1989 he coordinated a series of research projects into young people in former communist societies. His books include Surviving Post-Communism: Young People in the Former Soviet Union (2000), Youth in Transition: Eastern Europe and in the West (2009), Class in Contemporary Britain (2011), Sociology: An Introduction (2012), The Business of Leisure (2016), and Social Theory, Sport, Leisure (2016). His next book will be Youth in Saudi Arabia. Özgehan S¸enyuva is an Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations of the Middle East Technical University, Ankara. He works extensively on public opinion, Turkey-European relations and the politics of European football. He has extensive experience in research projects, and was the principal investigator for the FREE: Football Research in an Enlarged Europe (free-project.eu), a pioneer FP7 project that was completed in 2015. He was also part of the FP7 SAHWA Project (Researching Arab Mediterranean Youth: Towards a New Social Contract) (sahwa.eu), working on youth in the Arab-Mediterranean countries. He is currently one of the principal investigators of a large-scale Horizon 2020 research project: FEUTURE—The Future of EU-Turkey Relations: Mapping Dynamics and Testing Scenarios (feuture.eu). His book (co-authored), Turkish Public and Elite Perceptions on Turkey-NATO Relations (in Turkish) was published by Bilgi University Press in 2014. S¸enyuva is also a member of the Pool of European Youth Researchers of the European Commission and the Council of Europe. Jochen Tholen, MA in Managerial Economics (Diplom-Kaufmann) and in Sociology (Diplom-Soziologe), Dr. rer.pol., is professor at University of Bremen/Institute of Labour and Economy. His research activities are related to youth, the labour market, transformation societies, and sectoral studies (e.g. maritime industries). Among his latest publications in youth studies are: (with L. Backeberg and A. Etling, 2018) “The political dimension of young people’s migration intention: Evidence from the ArabMediterranean region”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Taylor & Francis, DOI 10.1080/1369183X.2018.1485093; (with L. Backeberg, 2018) “The frustrated generation. Youth exclusion in Arab Mediterranean societies”, Journal of Youth Studies, 21(4), pp. 515–534, DOI: 10.1080/ 13676261.2017.1394996; (with B. Busse, M. Ferrer-Fons, R. Grimm, S. Ulezic and K. Wolnik, 2017) “Does History Matter for Young People’s Political Identity? The Role of Past Authoritarianism in Germany and Spain”, in H. Pilkington, G. Pollock and R. Franc (Eds), Understanding Youth Participation Across Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 265–291, ISBN 978-1-137-59006-0.

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Introduction. Youth at the Margins Elena Sánchez-Montijano CIDOB (BARCELONA CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS)

José Sánchez García UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA

In Arab Mediterranean societies, until the first decade of the 21st century, youth was an independent variable in the analyses of education, employment, engagement, gender, policies and mobility in several disciplines (El Messini, 1974; Rough, 1987; Singerman, 1995; Early, 1997; Denis, 2000; Hirschkind, 2001; Haenni, 2005; Jacob, 2007; Scheele, 2007; Newcomb, 2009). Nonetheless, few works were produced that focused on youth conditions, practices, patterns and expectations in Arab Mediterranean countries as a principal variable. The so-called “Arab Spring” gave rise to a boom in research on youth social dynamics in the region, as well as a far-reaching change of approach in Arab studies. Several authors demand attention be placed on youth material culture, negotiation of a youth space, gender relations, economic and political participation, and youth social construction of reality (Assaad and Roudi-Fahimi, 2007; Schielke, 2009; Koning, 2009; Peterson, 2011; Sukarieh and Tannok, 2008; Salehi-Isfahani and Dhillon, 2008; Haenni, 2009; Al-Momani, 2012; Ibrahim and Hunt-Hendrix, 2011; Deeb and Winegar, 2012; Swedenburg, 2012; Agrama, 2012; Floris, 2012). Through the interdisciplinary empiricism of this book, based on the results emerging from the SAHWA Project,1 we aspire to build a complex description and analysis of the current situation of the Arab Mediterranean youth. Our aim is to fathom out young people’s patterns, agency and living conditions, focusing on the relational character of the juvenile worlds actively constructed by young people in the Arab Mediterranean countries. We explore the main trends that are reflected in the social strategies, cultural constructions and changes within the Arab youth population, and whether the creation of new lifestyles and the emergence of youth cultures are an indicator of sociopolitical transitions. The delay in accessing social adulthood suffered by young Arabs consigns them to a liminal space in which they are neither children nor independent, autonomous adults (Singerman and Amar, 2009; Abaza, 2009; Bayat, 2012a; Koning, 2009; Sukarieh, 2012; Ghannam, 2013). They are waiting to be adults. Thus, young people in Arab Mediterranean countries are placed at the “margins” of society. In our view, marginalisation is a process in which some attitudes, ideologies, values, practices and beliefs are “excluded” from

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society, in contrast with the hegemonic procedures (Foucault, 2004; Bayat, 2012b). Therefore, as marginality is not limited to material considerations, it also seems to favour feelings of distrust of social institutions, which are expressed by distancing from dominant initiatives and constituting a distinct identity (Bush and Ayeb, 2012; Bayat, 2012a). In this sense, the questions we seek to answer are: Does this distrust dispute the dominant values in Arab Mediterranean societies? Do work, school and family remain privileged places for young people to anchor their identities and acquire recognition? What are the main landscapes and scenarios of being young in Arab Mediterranean countries? Here, the notion of “marginality” refers to a state of poverty, deprivation and subordination but it can be extended to also include the economically well off, those well positioned in the political sphere, in the domain of lifestyles or in their social position as members of a particular age group, gender, ethnicity, religion, political perspective, social class or sexual orientation (Creenshaw, 1993; Yuval-Davies, 2012). This allows diverse social positions of inferiority to emerge as a result of the hegemonic discourses, law and institutions (Wacquant, 2012). In this sense, marginality means distance from the mainstream. But which factors place the individual trajectories and experiences of young people in this liminal position? How do they differ according to the different social locations of young people along, for example, the lines of gender, class, urban/rural origin, place of residence, ethnic and religious belonging and sexual orientation? What are the specific social contradictions experienced by young women in Arab Mediterranean countries who subsequently construct different identities and subcultures? The marginalised positions assigned to individuals as members of a social group permit us to locate the innovative and creative ways young people manage their current diverse situations using their marginalised position to their advantage. In this regard, young people are “navigating” between the marginal and the mainstream. The marginal domains can facilitate an opportunity to develop alternative social arrangements, economic organisation, modes of life and governability. Young people in the Arab Mediterranean region have differing degrees of knowledge with which to operate within the mainstream but they do not possess all the necessary material, social, cultural and political knowledges to operate successfully in it (Bayat, 2003). In this regard we want to analyse if we can identify some prominent dimensions that seem to have a key role in the formation of specific youth practices, knowledges and representations. Nevertheless, what kind of impacts result from new social and cultural trends in managing to be young in everyday life in both microeconomic entrepreneurship and in fuelling social movements in these countries?

1 Analytical and methodological approach To answer all these questions, this book is based on the analysis carried out in the framework of the SAHWA Project funded by the European Commission

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under the Seventh Framework Programme. The project has conducted a comprehensive study in five Arab Mediterranean countries: Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia. Based on mixed-method research the data collection is composed of two main sources: the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) and the SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork 2015. The survey was conducted from October 2015 to March 2016, and the ethnographic fieldwork from April 2015 to November 2015, in the five countries mentioned. Hence, the SAHWA Project established the age cohorts and the selection of locations in which to perform the survey and the ethnographic fieldwork and ensure the representativeness of the data collected. The age cohort was established (both survey and ethnographic) as young people aged between 15 and 29 years old. As a result, a multi-country survey was carried out among 10,000 young people—2,000 per country—to take the pulse of the Arab youth in these countries.2 In the case of the ethnographic fieldwork, 25 focus groups, 24 life stories and 12 focused ethnographies were conducted involving more than 225 young people from the region. This data collection will be the basis on which the current situation of young people is analysed and the main questions mentioned previously are answered. The advantage of using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods is, on the one hand, that we are able to answer the classical descriptive quantitative questions “how much” and “how common”; and on the other hand, we are able to delve into specific questions related to the young people’s perception of their own reality. At the same time, by mixing quantitative and qualitative data in the analysis, we are able to estimate causal relations and how socioeconomic, spatial, political, gender and ethnicity variables affect and correlate with attitudes towards expectations, employment, education, political participation and lifestyle. Moreover, our aim is to establish a paradigm through an encounter between decolonial theories, youth studies and empirical data to make a significant contribution to our knowledge of emerging youth knowledge, practices, opportunities and representations in Arab Mediterranean countries. Furthermore, it allows us to make visible the young people’s responses to changing processes of definition as a dispersed set of narratives produced through a multiplicity of power relations and figure out young people’s strategies for reclaiming a way of belonging in the Arab contemporary world.

2 A kaleidoscope of Arab Mediterranean youth For our purposes we consider five main dimensions of youth life in the region: education, economy, engagement, culture and migration. First, education is considered as a process of socialisation that plays a role in an individual’s development from childhood. It is based on the transmission of values and knowledge of the culture where the process develops. However, education is understood from two different perspectives. On the one hand we consider education as a unidirectional process of “training”, as a transmission of

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values and knowledge from adults towards children and young people. Moreover, we consider education as a personal growth process that is open, integrated (physical, psychological and social) and multidirectional, which contributes to the balanced development of the personality and inclusion in community life. Therefore, education is not only what is taught in educational institutions (school, colleges and universities); we also speak of informal education, which is developed in the individual’s everyday activities without organisation, through their interaction with the immediate environment and, nowadays, also through interaction with the broader, global context that information and communications technologies allow. It is also our aim to note the knowledges acquired in both formal and informal education, and opportunities that young people embody to manage their relations and practical backgrounds in their everyday life. Secondly, economies are defined as the activities related to serving the achievement of material and immaterial goods in an economy, independently of whether this is managed by official markets (a formal economy) or by the activities of people (an underground economy). In the case of economies we analyse the knowledges, practices and opportunities of young people and the economic current situation at different levels (region, country or municipality), with special focus on the access to the labour market as a form to obtain economic capital and independence in the process of transition to adulthood. The third subject is engagement, defined as the knowledges, practices, opportunities and representations young people have at their disposal to form, preserve, oppose, disrupt and improve the general rules under which they live. These relations take in the conflicts between the individuals, groups, classes and age groups that make up civil society. In this sense, several youths remark on their understanding of politics as a way to transform society through their enrolment in civil society (Al-Momani, 2012). The term “civil society” has been defined as a political community, a society governed by law under the authority of the state—this is a form of government. More commonly, it is distinguished from the state, and the term is used to describe institutions that are independent from government and organised by individuals in pursuit of their own interests. The fourth issue, youth cultures, refers to how youth social experiences are expressed collectively through the formation of distinctive lifestyles. It is the culture that youths develop among a group of peers, the cultural world of young people and adolescents, which is independent and even opposed to the adult one. In this sense, as Gillis remarked, “the discovery of youth belonged to the middle classes, who monopolized it until the early twentieth century (…) Then, simultaneously in every Western country, the concept of youth was democratized, being offered, or rather, being required to all adolescents” (Gillis, 1974, p. 165). In Arab societies, Bayat (2012a) remarks that young people influenced by the current socioeconomic situation delay marriage and start to “reclaim youthfulness” through certain practices that permit them

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to take advantage of certain opportunities. Also, we cannot forget that contemporary Arab young people are affected by the influence of global cultures that face entirely new forms of socialisation, where they find no prototypes in previous generations. The production of this youth cultural construction happens at school, at work, at play, in the street, in relation with friends, teachers, parents, siblings and leaders. We cannot forget the mainstream representation and self-representation of youth cultures in the area when building an image of the Arab youth. Finally, in a broad sense, migration refers to the movement of people from place to place to solve determined situations of marginalisation. Our focus is on economic mobility and diasporic political displacement. First, it is a form of spatial mobility caused mainly by economic factors. The rate of migration is directly proportional to the available opportunities at the places of origin and at the place of destination. Second, political mobility is related to the diasporic displacements of people caused by conflicts. These are the movements of great masses of people because of inhumane conditions and feelings of abandonment. These kinds of contemporary mobility are affected by global forces and flows in the new global cultural economy understood as a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order. In this process, transnational practices emerge along with new subjectivities and theories about American cultural imperialism and cultural homogenisation that prove inadequate given the myriad and often surprising ways in which local cultures and peoples redefine and reshape themselves according to local necessities and markets, ideas and products which arrive from outside. There was a need, therefore, to rescue the local from the global, valuing the capacity of the populations inhabiting what, in effect, are subaltern or peripheral positions in the global system. In this sense the practices and opportunities related to migration will be considered.

3 The chapters3 This book is composed of two main parts containing 12 chapters in total that focus on the main subjects of the project: education, the labour market, political and civic engagement, youth cultures and values, migration and policy assessment. The first part of the book will focus on national case studies. These chapters are the result of a combined analysis at national level in which the data obtained by the survey and ethnography are examined in order to draw a picture of one of the main themes of the project—an illustration of the lives of young people in the five countries surveyed. Case studies may, therefore, be unique in terms of the geographical location, substance or nature of the activism involved. Part I opens with a chapter devoted to Moroccan youth entrepreneurs. Caroline Minialai, Lisa Bossenbroek and Driss Ksikes describe the entrepreneurial behaviours of young people in urban and rural environments. The chapter shows the strategies undertaken by young Moroccans to turn their

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“marginalized” positions in society into entrepreneurial ventures. The document illustrates that even if young Moroccans are able to launch and develop their businesses, either agricultural, cultural or commercial, they remain extremely vulnerable. In Chapter 2 Mustapha Omrane analyses youth civic and political participation in Algeria. In the Algeria case, as in other countries in the region, participation appears to be more than going to vote or performing activities in a humanitarian association. The chapter encompasses young people’s living conditions, the sociopolitical and economic history of the country, and the relationship between society and the state. The next chapter, by Soukeina Bouraoui, Lilia Othman Challougui and Sihem Najar, moves us to Tunisia. Starting from the confirmation that young women are those most exposed to the different forms of injustice and inequality in different spheres, the text seeks to understand the way young people in general and young women in particular react to the different forms of exclusion, inequality and marginalisation to which they are exposed; specifically, to experiences of marginalisation understood in terms of lack of recognition. The Egyptian case study in Chapter 4 focuses on youth civic-political engagement. Bahgat Korany’s text reveals a paradox: on the one hand, youth seems to be at the centre of government attention; on the other, data show alienation, marginalisation and withdrawal. The chapter demonstrates that youth in Egypt constitute many groups that lack coordination and political machinery to rank youth priorities and coordinate behavioural strategies. The final chapter of Part I is devoted to Lebanon. In this case, Rima Majed explores the conditions of youth marginalisation through studying the relationship between structural changes and youth unemployment in Lebanon. The chapter discusses how unequal access to quality education led to social reproduction, limited the chances for social mobility and deepened the marginalisation of the youth. Therefore, instead of speaking of a mismatch between education and employment in Lebanon, the chapter argues that there seems to be a complete “rupture” between the two. This rupture has mainly been treated through migration, which has become the main escape from unemployment for a large section of Lebanese youths. Part II of the book goes beyond the local and national levels to make comparisons at the regional (Arab Mediterranean countries) and transnational (Euro-Mediterranean relations) levels. Our objective is the synthesis of cases to produce interpretations that increase explanation and understanding over and above the original analysis. When we use the term “synthesis”, we are referring to the process of synthesising data from local/national teams. This synthesis does not replace local/national-level analysis. It provides an additional layer of understanding that is added value when conducting multiple case studies in a large number of national and local contexts, taking into consideration the main axis of our analysis: education, economies, engagement, youth cultures and mobility.

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This part opens with the contribution of Ken Roberts, Siyka Kovacheva and Stanimir Kabaivanov. The chapter presents a study of the degree and types of political and religious participation—as well as the links between one and the other—of young people in the region. The text argues that levels of religiosity did not influence political participation, since even the most religious were in favour of separating politics and religion. Siyka Kovacheva, Stanimir Kabaivanov and Boris Popivanov’s chapter searches for explanations for young people’s attitudes towards political participation and engagement in public life, as well as their perceptions of the opportunities and obstacles influencing their own and their country’s future. Furthermore, they discuss the common features of the generation and the importance of the social differences and inequalities within it. School-to-work transition is analysed by Leonie Backeberg, Andreas Etling and Jochen Tholen due to its impact on long-term life perspectives. In their opinion, a successful school-to-work transition is not only a matter of education but of social origin, especially for women and young people from the lower and middle classes, who have fewer opportunities in the labour market to get a decent job. The results obtained show that institutional quality shapes young people’s trajectories in various ways and points to the need for further policy action. The next chapter is focused on youth political engagement. Sofia Laine and Martta Myllylä, by applying Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of chronotopes, argue that there exist generational gaps in political engagement and dialogue. The time-spaces where youth agency can prosper are the physical and virtual streets and coffee shops that also enable identity construction outside tradition, authority and family (i.e. older generations). Gender issues have special consideration in this book. In this regard, Ilenya Camozzi, Daniela Cherubini, Carmen Leccardi and Paola Rivetti want to reflect the processes and practices of cultural innovation emerging among young Arab Mediterranean generations after the 2011 uprisings. According to this chapter, young people emerge as social actors able to cope with structural limitations and mechanisms of exclusion. At the same time, it shows the different ways young women and young men in the region inhabit the ambivalent condition of “waithood”. Chapter 11 explores the Euro-Med Youth Programme, a specific scheme directly and exclusively targeting young people in the Arab Mediterranean countries, under the policy evaluation framework. Asuman Göksel and Özgehan S¸enyuva argue that the programme is a direct reflection of the general Mediterranean policy of the European Union, which focuses on the diagnosis of the problem contextualisation, but at the same time undermining the social reality and the needs and expectations of the young people in the region. The final chapter summarises social opportunities and spaces in which young Arabs can establish and manage their own alternative contemporaneities. Elena Sánchez-Montijano and José Sánchez García analyse

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the diverse paths the young in Arab Mediterranean countries have developed to “escape” the economic, social and political marginalisation imposed by the hegemonic adult-centrism of their societies, known as “demarginalisation strategies”. This edited volume answers a demand for light to be shed on one of the most mediatised and important of current topics: youth in the Arab Mediterranean countries. The book will appeal to academics in the fields of International Relations and Youth Studies with an interest in the Arab Mediterranean countries. As well as those engaged in the study of youth, those interested in uprising movements around the world will also find intriguing perspectives from the countries and region under study. The objective is for different categories of readers beyond academia to be engaged: students, journalists and practitioners in government, international organisations and non-governmental organisations who deal with issues of youth, uprisings or the Arab Mediterranean countries.

Notes 1 The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007–13 under grant agreement no. 613174 for the SAHWA Project (www.sahwa.eu). 2 For more information see: Sánchez-Montijano et al., 2017. 3 The peer reviewed original versions of chapters 1, 3, 5–12 have been published in Spanish language in a special issue of Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internationals, 118.

References Abaza, M. (2009). Egyptianizyng the American Dream: Nasser City’s Shopping Malls, Public Order and the Privatized Military, in Singerman, D. and Amar, P. (ed.) Cairo Cosmopolitan: Politics, Culture, and Urban Space in the New Globalized Middle East. Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, pp. 193–220. Agrama, H. (2012). “Reflections on Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, modernity, secularism, democracy, and politics in Egypt”, American Ethnologist, 39(1), pp. 26–31. Al-Momani, M. (2012). “The Arab ‘Youth Quake’: Implications on Democratization and Stability”, Middle East Law and Governance, 3, pp. 1–2. Alwazir, A. Z. (2012). “Youth inclusion in Yemen: A necessary element for success of political transition”, Arab Reform Initiative. Arab Reform Brief, 64 (December). Asad, T. (1990). Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Assaad, R. (2003). “Formal and Informal”, Peuples Méditerranéens, 41–42, pp. 181–192. Assaad, R. and Roudi-Fahimi, F. (2007). Youth in the Middle East and North Africa: Demographic opportunity or challenge? Washington, DC: Population Reference Bureau. Bayat, A. (2003). “The ‘Street’ and the Politics of Dissent in the Arab World”, Middle East Report, 226 (spring), pp. 10–17. Bayat, A. (2012a). Life as politics. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

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Bayat, A. (2012b). Marginality: Curse or cure, in Bush, R. and Ayeb, H. (eds.) Marginality and Exclusion in Egypt. London: Zed Books. Bush, R. and Ayeb, H. (2012). Marginality and Exclusion in Egypt. London: Zed Books. Creenshaw, K. (1993). “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color”, Stanford Law Review, 43, pp. 1241–1299. Deeb, L. and Winegar, J. (2012). “Anthropologies of Arab-Majority Societies”, Annual Review of Anthropology, 41, pp. 537–558. Denis, E. (2000). “Le Caire, quand la ville déborde son enceinte”, Villes en Parallèle, 30/31, pp. 89–116. Early, E. (1997). Baladi women of Cairo. Cairo: American University Press. El Messini, S. (1974). Ibn al balad: A concept of Egyptian identity, PhD dissertation. Cairo: American University Press. Elyachar J. (2011). “The political economy of movement and gesture in Cairo”, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 17(1), pp. 82–99. Floris, S. (2012). Youth, those Anti-Heroes of the Arab Spring, in The Awakening of the Civil Society in the Mediterranean. Barcelona: IEMED. Foucault, M. (2004). Securité, territoire, population. Cours au College de France, 1977–1978. Paris: Gallimard. Ghannam, F. (2013). Live and Die Like a Man. Gender Dynamics in Urban Egypt. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Gillis, J. (1974). Youth and History: Tradition and Change in European Age Relations, 1170–Present. New York: Academic Press. Gilroy, P. (1993). Small Acts: Thoughts on the politics of black cultures. London: Serpent’s Tail. Haenni, P. (2005). L’ordre des caïds. Conjurer la dissidence urbaine au Caire. Paris: CEDEJ/Khartala. Haenni, P. (2009). The Economic Politics of Muslim Consumption, in Pink, J. (ed.) Muslim Societies in the Age of Mass Consumption: Politics, Culture and Identity between the Local and the Global. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Haraway, D. (1988). “Situated Knowledge: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”, Feminist Studies, 14, pp. 575–599. Hirschkind, C. (2001). “Civic Virtue and Religious Reason: An Islamic Counterpublic”, Cultural Anthropology, Arlington, DC, American Anthropological Association, 16(1), pp. 3–34. Ibrahim, B. L. and Hunt-Hendrix, L. (2011). Youth, Service and Pathways to Democracy in Egypt. American University in Cairo, John D. Gerhart Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement. Jacob, C. (2007). “Eventful transformations: Al Futuwwa between history and the everyday”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 49, pp. 589–712. Koning, A. (2009). Global Dreams: Class, Gender, and Public Space in Cosmopolitan Cairo. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. Newcomb R. (2009). Women of Fes: Ambiguities of Urban Life in Morocco. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Onodera, H. (2011). “A few reflections on not naming Egypt’s young revolutionaries”, Suomen Antropolog: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society, 36(4), pp. 70–73. Peterson, M. A. (2011). Connected in Cairo: Growing Up Cosmopolitan in the Modern Middle East. Indiana: Indiana University Press.

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Roseberry, W. (1994). Hegemony and the language of contention, in Gilbert, E., Joseph, M. and Nugent, D. (eds.) Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico. Durham: Duke University Press. Rough, A. (1987). Reveal and Conceal. Dress in Contemporary Egypt. Cairo: American University Press. SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017). Data File Edition 3.0. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). Salehi-Isfahani, D. and Dhillon. N. (2008). “Stalled youth transitions in the Middle East: A framework for policy reform”, Middle East Youth Initiative Working Paper, 8. Sánchez-Montijano, E., Martínez, I., Bourekba, M. and Dal Zotto, E. (2017). SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 Descriptive Report. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). Scheele, J. (2007). “Recycling Baraka: Knowledge, politics, and religion in contemporary Algeria”, Comp. Stud. Soc. Hist., 49(2), pp. 304–328. Schielke, S. (2009). “Ambivalent Commitments: Troubles of Morality, Religiosity and Aspiration among Young Egyptians”, Journal of Religion in Africa, 39, pp. 158–185. Shahine, S. H. (2011). “Youth and the revolution in Egypt”, Anthropology Today, 27(2), pp. 1–3. Shehata, D. (2008). “Youth Activism in Egypt”, Arab Reform Brief, 23. Singerman, D. (1995). Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Singerman, D. (2007). The Economic Imperatives of Marriage and “Wait” Adulthood: Emerging Practices, Identities, and Collective Life among Youth in the Middle East. Project on Youth Exclusion in the Middle East: Towards New Knowledge and Solutions. The Wolfensohn Center for Development/The Dubai School of Government Forum, 23–24 February. Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Singerman, D. and Amar, P. (2009). Cairo Cosmopolitan: Politics, Culture, and Urban Space in the New Globalized Middle East. Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, pp. 193–220. Sukarieh, M. (2012). “From terrorists to revolutionaries: The emergence of ‘youth’ in the Arab world and the discourse of globalization”, Interface: A Journal for and about Social Movements, 4(2), pp. 424–437. Sukarieh, M. and Tannock, S. (2008). “In the best interests of youth or neoliberalism? The World Bank and the New Global Youth Empowerment Project”, Journal of Youth Studies, 11(3), 301–312. doi:10.1080/1367626080194643. Swedenburg, T. (2012). Imagined Youths, MERIP245. Available at: www.merip.org/m er/mer245/imagined-youths. Yuval-Davies, N. (2012). The Politics of Belonging: Intersectional Contestations. London: University of East London. Wacquant, L. (2012). “The punitive regulation of poverty in the neoliberal age”, Criminal Justice Matters, 89(1), pp. 38–40. DOI: doi:10.1080/09627251.2012.721980.

Part I

To be young in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon: case studies

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Is becoming an entrepreneur the way out for young Moroccans?1 Caroline Minialai ECONOMIA, HEM RESEARCH CENTER

Lisa Bossenbroek ECONOMIA, HEM RESEARCH CENTER

Driss Ksikes ECONOMIA, HEM RESEARCH CENTER

1 Introduction In Morocco, in urban as well as in rural areas, young people actively create new forms of entrepreneurship. Through past experience, acquired know-how and technologies now largely available (in terms of rate of internet users among the population, Morocco is ranked third in Africa),2 they start their own businesses or projects. Their entrepreneurial ventures are often creative, innovative and sometimes also disruptive, because they move away from the traditional forms of business in their environment. There are multiple entrepreneurial paths, but the young people heading that way all seem to be driven by shared dreams and hopes: setting up their independent project or business and changing their country through their entrepreneurial actions (see also: Minialai and Sqalli, 2016). These shared dreams and hopes are the fruit of a Moroccan youth that is ambitious, has usually benefitted from education (in particular in the cities), but that faces difficulties finding a job (see for example: World Bank, 2012, 2014; Kamal, 2017). In the city of Rabat, Bab El Had marketplace has become a place of self-made young entrepreneurship through the production of cultural goods and services. In the countryside, young agricultural workers and farmers’ sons aspire to transform themselves into innovative independent farmers (Bossenbroek et al., 2015). Through the know-how acquired during internships in large farm enterprises, practical training and a rich social network, they gradually are able to set up their farm project (ibid.). In urban areas, young people become entrepreneurs very early. School might be the place where they encounter this whole new world—alas superficially through seminars or standardised programmes on entrepreneurship—but those who wish to keep up on the same track will also need to construct a different personal ecosystem to be able to fulfil their aims.

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Whatever the environment, this peculiar road is a long process. The young entrepreneurs will have to negotiate new relations both in the familial and working environments. For both women and men, entrepreneurship is a way to depart from their quite often marginal position in Moroccan society. Presented as such, the path of entrepreneurship seems to be sometimes a choice, other times a refuge, but in most cases a solitary and precarious experience, since the guarantees of success offered by the institutions, even if plenty in discourse and texts (Injaz, Mouqawalati,3 self-entrepreneur status, etc.) still prove to be highly inefficient in practice. Considering this paradoxical situation, we have built this chapter upon scattered and personal experiences undertaken in three different environments in order to perceive how in everyday life shaky and nascent forms of entrepreneurship shape these young people’s attitude to work and wealth. We illustrate in this chapter how at the margins of public policies young people turn their projects into spaces of creativity in which innovative entrepreneurial repertoires are formed to survive and live. As various chapters in this book also illustrate, young people navigate between the “margins” and the “mainstream” and try to turn their marginalised positions to their advantage to develop new economic activities and modes of life. Here we understand “marginality” as a concept that is linked to disadvantage, which can be societal (e.g. caste, hierarchy, class, gender), as well as economic and political (e.g. access to resources) and finally spatial, meaning “physical location and distance from centres of development” (Gurung and Kollmair, 2005, p. 10). Entrepreneurial activities are one of the many ways young people reconcile their marginalised position and mainstream economic activities. By building on different case studies throughout Morocco and a survey, both carried out during the SAHWA Project, we focus, in line with the theme of this book, on the different strategies undertaken by young people in their quest for independence and to become entrepreneurs. We thereby carefully take into consideration how the various strategies differ according to the different social location of young people along the lines of gender, class, urban/rural origin and education (see also: Sánchez-Montijano et al., 2017). In doing so, we intend to question the condition of youth entrepreneurship in Morocco, or in other words we question what entrepreneurship means for young people in Morocco and how they forge and use entrepreneurial strategies to live and survive. We seek to answer these questions by first of all reflecting on the environmental conditions for the birth of entrepreneurship, particularly focusing on the case of Morocco. We then proceed to illustrate how the Moroccan youth is poorly considered in public policies. As a result, entrepreneurship in Morocco remains discreet and often develops at the margins of public policies. We then go on to illustrate various profiles of young entrepreneurs, their socioeconomic background and the socioeconomic conditions in which the aspirations of entrepreneurship emerge. In the last section, we illustrate through three ethnographic case studies various strategies that young entrepreneurs undertake to set up their business. We conclude our text by reflecting on the favourable conditions for the

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development of entrepreneurial strategies, thereby also critically reflecting on how they are strongly marked by educational, gender and socioeconomic differences.

2 Methodology This chapter is a result of the work carried out in Morocco for the SAHWA Project.4 In the case of Morocco, we have studied young people in their own right and from their own perspectives, and questioned how youth is actually experienced by the young themselves (White, 2012). In doing so we moved away from looking at youth as a period of “transition to adulthood” since, as argued by White, “such a future oriented understanding of youth tends to obscure the fact that young men and women are also busy in the here and now, developing youth cultures and identities in their own right, that is, trying to be successful as youth and in the eyes of their peers, besides (or sometimes instead of) preparing themselves to be successful adults” (White, 2012, p. 10). Following the global SAHWA Project mixed methodological approach, we carried out both a youth survey5 and ethnographic fieldwork. Social phenomena are often complex, and varied methods help to best understand these complexities (Caracelli and Greene, 1997). The ethnographic fieldwork took place in 2015 in various areas and domains:6 entrepreneurship in urban settings and entrepreneurship in a rural setting. In the urban setting, we addressed different types of life trajectory and the level of education and training was a key issue (HEM, 2016). As such, we interviewed and followed two types of young entrepreneurs: those still studying at university or in any other type of higher education, and those who had dropped out of school and who had not completed their high school studies. In each area, we organised two focus groups, one gathering stakeholders together and one the entrepreneurs themselves. For urban nascent entrepreneurs the focus groups with stakeholders had nine participants from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) dedicated to youth entrepreneurship or from banks involved with youth entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurs group included eight people from 22 to 29 years old, five male and three female. Each focus group discussion and interview was recorded and fully transcribed to facilitate the analysis. Our ethnographic fieldwork then led us to study some individuals and to follow them for a couple of months, interviewing them on a regular basis.7 These young entrepreneurs were selected based on their entrepreneurial experience, their age and exposure. In the urban area, we thus selected two entrepreneurs: one male in the informal sector, and one male student entrepreneur. In the rural area we selected one male entrepreneur. Several interviews were conducted with all of them over one year. All these interviews were fully recorded and transcribed. These life stories helped us to get a deeper understanding of the processes and dynamics at work. The youth survey took place in 2016 and 2,000 young Moroccans between the ages of 15 and 29 were interviewed. In this survey, the entrepreneurs could be identified by their answering question 320 (“How did you get the job you

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currently have?”): “I created my business using my own capital” or “I created my business through a State-supported programme”.

3 Environmental conditions for entrepreneurship The question of entrepreneurial activities in Morocco is wide and encompasses many dimensions. The birth of a new entrepreneur and of his or her new venture is affected by multiple interrelated motivational factors. At the least, the project will fulfil an economic goal, whether subsistence or wealthoriented. Moreover, as expressed by various scholars, mostly in the domain of anthropology, entrepreneurs also represent and influence directions of social and cultural change (see, for example: Belshaw, 1955; Stewart, 1990). The development of entrepreneurship strongly depends on the environmental context. As such, the young entrepreneurs are embedded within their past, their culture, family and ethics (Tounés, 2003). When evaluating a student’s intentions to become an entrepreneur, researchers consider at least the three following determinants: perceived educational support (Turker and Selçuk, 2009); perceived relational support (family and friends); and the intention-behaviour link (Fayolle and Liñán, 2014). Entrepreneurs’ personality traits are mainly stable over time but they may be more or less activated by environmental pressures (Klotz and Neuban, 2015). Contingent environmental factors should also be considered, such as the business environment, networks and support for entrepreneurship structures. A comparative study carried out in Morocco (Bensghir and Reghioui, 2015) showed that the interviewed students, mainly master’s degree students in public institutions offering classes in entrepreneurship, had a very high level of venture creation (65%), mainly in order to be more autonomous in their professional life. Most of these students also had a role model in their extended family, i.e., a living example within their kinship. In addition, existing gender norms and perceptions further affect who can take up entrepreneurial activities and how they will develop. The characteristics of entrepreneurship (initiative-, risk- and decision-taking, pro-active, innovative, etc.) are often located in a male symbolic universe (Bruni et al., 2005). As argued by Bruni et al., when these same features are transposed to the symbolic domain of the female, they became uncertain and it becomes necessary to justify female enterprise, because it is not an immediately shared and self-evident social value (2005: 1). This makes it challenging for young women to pursue an entrepreneurial career. Moreover, Houria’s (2013) study focusing on female entrepreneurship in Morocco illustrates that women face difficulties in terms of appropriate training, difficulties accessing financial resources to set up their individual projects, difficulties accessing the market, and difficulties combining their multiple responsibilities of being wives, mothers and entrepreneurs. The political environment and policy initiatives are also important for the development of entrepreneurship. In particular, youth entrepreneurship is

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often encouraged by public policies because it is a cornerstone of the social dynamics of a country (Fayolle, 2012). Nevertheless, beyond the political intentions and administrative improvements, entrepreneurship remains rather discreet (Binkour, 2012). As a matter of fact, youth entrepreneurial intentions are rather high, especially when supported by a favourable environment (Kouba and Sahibeddine, 2012) but genuine creations remain rather low in the formal economy. 3.1 Invisibility of Moroccan youth in public policies In the Moroccan context, we observe that there is often a mismatch between public policies and young people’s needs. In fact, as mentioned by Kamal (2017), young people rarely appear in public policies. So far, only a few public policies have integrated young people. Despite this, when critically analysing the outcomes of these policies it often appears that they do not correspond to the needs of young people, or only target a small, already privileged minority of young people, further marginalising the clear majority. For example, the public employment policy of the early 1990s did integrate young people. As explained by Kamal, this policy focused principally on young graduates. Nevertheless, besides focusing on a very small category of young people the policy outcomes were disappointing, as the jobs offered to young graduates were often unstable and without social security. Since the so-called “Arab Spring”, the new constitution adopted in 2011 laid the foundations for the institutionalisation of youth issues, followed by the government declaration in 2012 which showed a manifest interest in youth (see: Kamal, 2017). Among the new measures implemented are different employment programmes, which should facilitate young people’s integration into the labour market, and the National Integrated Youth Policy 2015–2030. Despite the ambitions of the employment programmes, the situation of young people in employment has not improved (Kamal, 2017), and it is as yet too early to evaluate the impact of the National Integrated Youth Policy. Moreover, youth policies have mostly targeted urban youth and to a lesser extent rural youth. Over the last two decades various rural areas have benefited from a variety of policy programmes, like “Le Plan Maroc Vert”, launched in 2008, and the “Initiative Nationale de Développement Humain” (INDH), launched in 2005.8 Yet, both of these initiatives seldom make mention of or consider rural young people, whereas other projects (e.g., training) have mostly targeted farmers’ sons, and thus a very small fraction of the rural youth. Coupled with early school drop-out, young people are often left on their own.

4 Profiling the young Moroccan entrepreneurs Based on the SAHWA Youth Survey carried out in 2016 with 2,000 young Moroccans, we can draw an overview of young entrepreneurs’ socioeconomic

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backgrounds, education level and gender, and propose a general overview of their profile.9 This analysis focuses on young people who created a business. To our question “How did you get your current job?” they answered, “I created my business”. These account for 7.6% of the working young people interviewed in Morocco throughout the survey, and the working youth itself accounts for 34% of the sample. The young Moroccan entrepreneur is male (91.7%), between 25 and 29 years of age (83%), and lives in one of the three following provinces (21% each): Grand Casablanca, Souss-Massa-Draa and Marrakech-Tensift Al Haouz; one-third of them live in the cities of Casablanca, Agadir or Marrakech; 30.5% of them are married and 50% have left the family home and have their own accommodation. The decision to become an entrepreneur and to set up one’s own business is primarily made at the end of their studies or because of unemployment. Before creating their own business, 38.8% of these young Moroccan nascent entrepreneurs were students and 36.1% were unemployed. However, even if they are more educated than their parents (Figure 1.1), almost 28% still have no education and never attended school at any point in their young life. As extensively discussed in the literature, holding a university degree does not necessarily facilitate the entrepreneurial process. To some extent, university degrees tend to have a negative effect on the probability of young people being self-employed, as the university system is not well tailored to providing students with the skills, abilities and self-confidence they would need to set up their own business (Habivov et al., 2017; MA_LS_1). In Morocco, specifically, as a young man called Sami explained to us, “My university colleagues are not capable of speaking French properly, even less English; even the professors sometimes do not speak properly” (MA_LS_1). As a matter of fact, the educated young nascent entrepreneurs in Morocco mainly attended state schools (89%) and 96.5% of them were taught in Arabic. Looking at their school trajectories, we should note that a mere 19% of them left school because they had completed their course of studies. In most cases, economic and organisational issues (fees, transport, necessity to work) pushed them into active life and prevented 61.6% of them from completing their studies. The family effect: The importance of family background is emphasised in the literature when the entrepreneurial spirit, traits or abilities are questioned. Both the parenting style (Boz and Ergeneli, 2014) and the parents and educational backgrounds (Cooper and Dunkelberg, 1981; Gomolka, 1977) may reinforce or diminish the entrepreneurial inclination of young people. The young Moroccan entrepreneurs surveyed through the SAHWA study may have found support and role models in their families, especially their fathers. More than two-thirds of their fathers are self-employed, employers or farmers (Figure 1.2), and may have therefore been able to show the path of an independent working life, hence reinforcing the importance of family role models in entrepreneurial intentions.

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Figure 1.1 Entrepreneurs’ educational background Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

Figure 1.2 Entrepreneurs’ socioeconomic background Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

What kind of venture are they creating? Young Moroccan nascent entrepreneurs mainly got into commercial activities (80.5% declare that their business is in trade or other commercial activities). The more capital-intensive business areas such as industry or construction account only for 5.5% of the young entrepreneurs’ activities. Those who have been able to use the public policies support system started businesses in agriculture and administrative services. To create their business, 87% of the young entrepreneurs used their own money and more than three out of four got financial support from their parents. “Love money” and networks are the keys to starting up a business in Morocco, as only 17.8% can obtain a bank loan to develop or start their businesses. How difficult is the process? The entrepreneurs consider that the main difficulties they encounter are the lack of information (on their business, the market, etc.), and access to commercial networks and bureaucracy. This could probably be partially explained by the fact that our respondents lack overall

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access to an internet connection, as 72.2% have no connection at home. In rural areas, this figure rises to 80%. As a matter of fact, the non-connected entrepreneurs suffer twice as much as the others from a lack of information when creating their business. However, they are satisfied overall with their jobs, and 87% of the young entrepreneurs who have created their business relying on their own capital declare that they are satisfied or even very satisfied with their job. What about women’s entrepreneurship? Even though young women’s situation has been increasingly improving, especially in recent years (Cherubini, Rivetti and Leccardi, 2016), entrepreneurial initiatives are still scarce among young Moroccan women. According to the Haut Commissariat au Plan (HCP) in 2011,10 the number of working women who are independent, employers or associates is 10.6%, compared to 35.3% among men (of all ages). Yet, this number might even be higher, as many entrepreneurial activities reside in the so-called “informal domain”. Various studies (Rachdi, 2006; Aït Mous, 2005) illustrate that female entrepreneurial activities are strongly marked by age,11 socioeconomic and educational background. As such, young women with a low level of education and from low socioeconomic classes often head smaller entrepreneurial activities whereas women with a university degree and from a high socioeconomic class will lead larger entrepreneurial activities (see also: Aït Mous, 2005). Entrepreneurial activities are important for young women. They offer them the possibility to avoid being unemployed, to become autonomous, to create professional identities and to acquire socioprofessional recognition for what they do. Yet, they also face various constraints, as explained by a young woman during the SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork (MA_LS_2), and women’s path to entrepreneurship is still difficult, as their parents interfere and slow down—in the best-case scenario—their will to set up their own business. The high risks that come with entrepreneurial activities are the reason families discourage their daughters, sisters and wives from pursuing an entrepreneurial career (Aït Mous, 2005). As a matter of fact, in our study they account for only 8.3% of the young Moroccan nascent entrepreneurs. The foregoing section has helped us to paint an overall portrait of young Moroccan entrepreneurs. In the next one, we will be able to understand practices and identities more deeply by making extensive use of the SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork.

5 A glimpse of entrepreneurial practices and identities In the section that follows we present three different profiles of young Moroccan entrepreneurs in three different areas in Morocco (urban, peri-urban, rural). Their life trajectories illustrate how these young men identify new opportunities, develop various strategies to set up their businesses and actively negotiate a space to fulfil their entrepreneurial activities and identities.

Is becoming an entrepreneur the way out? 5.1 Kamel:

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entered entrepreneurship at 16

Kamel (aged 21) is a middle-class university student in Rabat. Despite his very young age, he has a very decent track record as an entrepreneur. His entrepreneurial trajectory, at the margins of the education system, provides us with an insight into the dynamics at stake in the school-to-entrepreneurship process. As explained by Kamel, he comes from a “middle-class, normal background”. He is the second of a three-child family. His parents were both educated and worked as teachers in Moroccan middle schools in Rabat. As he explains, his greatest fortune was that he attended a private primary school in Rabat and not the local state school in Sale. In that school, he acknowledges that he received a very strong foundation education, especially in languages. He was a very talented student and was able to attend excellent state middle and high schools. At that time already, his determination and will were very strong as he fought to get into the “elite” Moulay Youssef High School. His entrepreneurial journey started during his second year of high school. An NGO called Injaz, in partnership with the Ministry of Education, came to his high school to present its entrepreneurial training programme. Kamel applied and took part in the six-month training. We have to go as a team, through all steps of the entrepreneurial project: funding, brainstorming for products, suppliers search, manufacturing, and sales. At the end of the programme, the “mock company” has to be liquidated and we had to present an “annual” report. During that training period, I was in charge of the “company” as my colleagues chose me. At that time, I started changing my mind, and I was actually thinking about business creation. I had the feeling a small entrepreneur was born inside me and was growing up. I liked what I was doing. From that day, Kamel’s life changed drastically. He won the national Injaz competition and was then able to travel for the first time overseas to present his project at a regional competition in Algeria and then a few months later in Jordan. Kamel strongly worked on his language skills, improved his spoken English, and after a couple of months was able to dynamically present his work in Arabic, English and French. All along, he was accompanied by individuals from the business world who were taking part in the Injaz projects around the region. This help and mentorship gave him wings and a few months later, as he was entering university, he and one of his school friends decided to go “real” with their project. Kamel’s experience shows that becoming an entrepreneur is not everybody’s dream and cannot be the one and only solution to youth unemployment in Morocco. But at the same time, the entrepreneurship ability, spirit or will needs to be triggered and mentored. Thanks to his part in the Injaz programme, Kamel discovered his vocation and was able to set up his own goals. Moreover, he enhanced his ability to look for help in the forms of money,

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mentoring or pro bono consulting services. Though his company is taking off from a new office on the university grounds, his studies have suffered quite a bit as he feels the education he is getting does not meet his expectations. Therefore, despite his rather successful new-born enterprise, he is looking for solutions to complete his studies overseas in North America or Germany where he believes the entrepreneurial spirit is really encouraged and pushed forward. 5.2 Younes: on the way to becoming an agricultural entrepreneur Younes (aged 29) is a young farming entrepreneur who lives in the agricultural plain of the Saïss situated in the centre-north of Morocco. Over the last couple of years, Younes has set up various agricultural projects, such as an olive seedling project, a salad project and the construction of concrete posts for the plantation of grapes and for fencing agricultural land. His life trajectory and profile are interesting as they provide key insights with regard to the required ingredients to develop oneself as an entrepreneur in a rural area. After quitting school in the sixth grade, as he believed that school did not necessarily help him in developing his entrepreneurial aspirations, he fulfilled professional training in his douar. 13 Once finished, he decided to undertake various professional internships on large farms situated in the Saïss. Young men would often describe these farms as being “modern” and engaging in “high-tech agriculture”. These professional experiences have been essential for the development of Younes’ project. While working on these farms he got acquainted with new agricultural technologies, developed farming and management skills, and established a professional network. In 2008, after completing his professional training and internships, together with a former manager of one of the farms where he conducted an internship, he set up an olive seedling project. The former manager brings the know-how and material (seedlings and drip lines) and Younes the land (two hectares) and the water owned by the older generation (his grandfather). To convince his father and uncles, who manage the family farm of 40 hectares owned by Younes’ grandfather, he drew up a business plan and persuaded first his father and then his uncles, one by one. After two years, Younes decided to work for himself with the financial support of his father. Younes is predominantly in charge of the management and the marketing of his seedlings: “I sell 30% of the seedlings directly to farmers, and I sell the rest through intermediaries. We share the benefits with my father and part of my earnings I re-invest in my project.” In 2011, Younes decided to set up a salad project with an old school friend called Hassan (aged 28). Hassan worked as a technician in the region of the Souss,14 mainly in greenhouse vegetable production. Younes explained that: we accidently walked into each other and I asked him what he was up to. Two months later we started our new salad project. We carefully studied

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the market and figured out that the salads that are sold in this region are from the Gharb and the Souss.15 Once the salads arrive here they are wilted and are not crispy anymore. It’s a new product in the region and we aim to sell our salads to the hotels in Ifrane and to supermarkets in Meknes.16 We produce 17 different types of salads. Visiting their project, it resembles a small laboratory and Younes and Hassan barely have time to walk us around it, as they have to overlook the activities of the labourers, contact their clients, oversee the production and manage the drip irrigation system. When asking if they applied for governmental subsidies to finance their projects, they replied: “we didn’t search. Moreover, if we would benefit from the government’s subsidies we would have to produce ‘des produits terroir’. 17 We are not interested to produce the same crops as all the other farmers in the region. We have our own know-how and search for new markets.” Nevertheless, Younes and Hassan soon faced difficulties selling their salads, in particular in terms of transportation. After two years they decided to abandon their project. Nevertheless, Younes explained that he learned a lot from this experience and he decided to set up another project: the construction of concrete posts, which are often used to fence the land or for the growth of grapes. When asking how he got this idea he explained: “I sell most of my fruit seedlings to agricultural entrepreneurs who recently have settled down in the region. They usually buy a couple of hectares of land and plant fruit trees. As soon as they buy the land they fence it. As such, I decided to construct the posts and sell them together with the seedlings, as a package.” Also for this project Younes decided to collaborate with a cousin who used to work near Agadir in the construction sector. Younes’ cousin contributes with his know-how and manages the project, while Younes provides the seedlings and part of the resources to get the project started. As such, Younes is developing a new way of farming that is slightly different from the farm practices of the previous generation and innovates with existing farming practices (Bossenbroek and Kadiri, 2016). His various projects reflect his creativity and innovativeness. He doesn’t wait for the government’s support, but instead relies on his own resources (his professional experience, his knowledge, his professional network, and potential access to land and water controlled by the older generation). His social relations (family, friends, colleagues) are important and serve to connect his aspirations, resources (know-how, materials) and opportunities. Yet, before starting a new project he evaluates the market dynamics and searches for a new niche in which to settle. Through his project, Younes develops an identity of farming entrepreneur and also aims to obtain social recognition from the older generation, in particular his father and grandfather. In a context in which the production resources are held by the older generation, Younes mobilises his own resources for social mobility and to convince the older family members of his competences. To appreciate Younes’ story it is moreover important to

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note that the area in which he lives is a highly dynamic agricultural context with various large farms where various young rural men work to obtain professional experience and develop new competences used to develop their own businesses. 5.3 Salim: would-be entrepreneur at Bab El Had informal market When you listen, six years later, to Salim’s account—how he left school very early (15 years old), even though he was a good student, and migrated from his village, Biougra, not far from Agadir (600 km south of Rabat) to land finally in Bab El Had marketplace—you are confronted with a contemporary tale common to a large number of Moroccan youth,18 elbowing their way up from marginal positions and hankering for employment first, as a threshold to dare entrepreneurship later. “I left school”, recalls Salim, “because I saw that it led nowhere. And my mother could not afford waiting longer for some financial support”. He used to work nights at his brother’s shop in Agadir as a tailor’s apprentice-craftsman. “I worked till very late to finish the work, even at home. But I wasn’t always paid in return.” Family relationships were sometimes synonymous with nonvoluntary volunteering. To compensate, Salim took early initiatives as a salesman to earn his living. When he decided to leave school, he undertook by the same token to leave his area (Biougra, Agadir, Souss). It is important to bear in mind how local migration culture is rooted in the Souss area. Merchants have always left to the northern part of the country, mainly to launch grocery shops, but also abroad, mainly to France, looking for better work opportunities in industry and trade.19 Salim is both a lonely and passionate young man. Besides football, which seems to be a common hobby among youngsters of his age, he is very keen on pigeons (Lahmam). “I may spend hours choosing the right one, feeding them, taking care of them … I didn’t collect them for business’ sake only but also as a personal hobby”, he says. This shows at the same time how patient and passionate he can be, but also how pragmatic he is. “The first day, I saw a friend of mine collecting them and selling some at the marketplace. I decided to do the same, giving much more attention to the quality of their food but also their environment.” He explains how he managed to launch his small business by creating the adequate environment on the roof. “I take care of them and then sell them for a good price. But when I left for some time, to work in Agadir, it was hard for me to depart from them”. Through his narrative, Salim shows us both his sense of beauty and business. Well dressed, clean-shaven, you can hardly determine how (un)fortunate he is. At Jouteya, during the first three years, Salim learned how to elbow his way through a harshly competitive and unregulated place. “When I started, the unit’s tenant asked me to take a newspaper and clean the glass showcases … The other salesmen didn’t want to share with me information on prices and goods … I had to observe them, eat very quickly, and try to be there while all

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the others have left, to get my own opportunity. I managed very quickly to sell the same goods for better prices.” His potential as a would-be entrepreneur stems not only from his “sales skills” but also from his attitude as an autonomous individual. He doesn’t like people to interfere in his personal choices. “When my last boss tried to put his nose in my way of life (dressing code, going to cafés …), I didn’t like [it] at all”, Salim explains. He decided to move from a co-rented apartment to a solitary studio, paying up to 600 dhs a month, just because “I don’t like to leave from my affairs and realise later that somebody touched them or whatever”. Today, Salim has been learning more soft skills to develop new programmes and not only sell machines. This is allowing him, bit by bit, to diversify his sales spectrum. Meanwhile, he has been able to save enough money to build a new house of his own in his home city, Biougra. He is thus raising his social status but also his assets to be able—and that is his dream— to be an independent entrepreneur, and possibly migrate abroad to develop his network even further. 5.4 Lessons drawn By sketching these three experiences, we have tried to show that although young people seldom appear in public policies, they are able to create their own businesses and ventures. To do so, in formal settings, the family plays an important role both for the development of entrepreneurial aspirations, as well as for financial and moral support. This also comes out in our ethnographic case studies. These further illustrate the importance of professional networks, on which young entrepreneurs rely to acquire know-how and for material support. In light of a lack of tailored studies, young entrepreneurs learn by doing and reflect on their past experiences to further develop their business. Yet, although the state might not play an active role in promoting these initiatives, young entrepreneurs instead seek to obtain professional experience in private enterprises.

6 Conclusion Our fieldwork confirms that push factors towards entrepreneurship are very critical. The education system could play a greater role as young people can be exposed to entrepreneurial ventures at a very young age. The educational system is known to be a diminisher or a reinforcer of the entrepreneurial orientation of the youth (Cooper and Dunkelberg, 1981; Gomolka, 1977). The interviewees who have participated in such programmes emphasise their importance as they can replace the family influence in the entrepreneurial orientations of the youth. Nevertheless, in a country where the majority of young people do not attend secondary school (according to the HEM (2016) only around 38% of young people attend secondary education versus 97% for

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primary school), these initiatives could start at an earlier age in order to improve the entrepreneurial abilities and spirit of the youth. Yet our findings also reveal that most entrepreneurs are young men and that only a few women choose this professional career or identify as an entrepreneur. This can perhaps be explained by the difficulty women face in terms of accessing appropriate training, financial resources or other forms of capital, the market and difficulties with juggling their different responsibilities as a daughter, wife, mother and entrepreneur. Moreover, particularly in rural areas, young women may develop their entrepreneurial activities in particular domains considered “feminine”. As such, female entrepreneurial careers mostly develop in carpet manufacturing, embroidering activities, around services like selling home-made goods, or around “local products” like argan oil, honey, marmalade, etc., and narrowly define the domains of female (rural) entrepreneurship. Although the three case studies detailed illustrate how young people are able to launch and develop their business, sometimes from scratch, and seem to be quite successful in doing so, they also face many difficulties. They remain strongly dependent on their socioeconomic and economic context, and remain vulnerable. Moreover, many young entrepreneurs decide to become entrepreneurs because they are unemployed. In these cases, the journey of becoming an entrepreneur is a journey of survival and dignity, of social status, in which young entrepreneurs try to become autonomous in a harsh environment.

Notes 1 The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007–13 under grant agreement no. 613174 for the SAHWA Project (www.sahwa.eu). This publication reflects only the authors’ views. The European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein. 2 www.journaldunet.com/web-tech/chiffres-internet/maroc/pays-mar 3 Mouqawalati is a government-led programme designed to reduce unemployment by encouraging entrepreneurship. 4 The SAHWA Project (www.sahwa.eu) has received funding from the European’s Community Seventh Framework Program FP7/2007–13 under grant agreement no. 613174. The CESEM, Centre de recherches de HEM in Rabat, was a partner in this project for Morocco. 5 SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017. 6 HEM, 2016. 7 In quotations from the qualitative data we use the codes: MA = Morocco, FG = focus group summaries, FE = focused ethnographies, LS = life story summaries and NI = narrative interview summaries. 8 The INDH—National Human Development Initiative—is a programme launched in 2005. Its main objective is to “fight against poverty, precariousness and social exclusion through the realization of basic infrastructure projects, training and capacity building, social and cultural animation, sports actions as well as the promotion of income and jobs generating activities”: www.indh.ma/index.php/en/p resentation, accessed on 24 July 2017. 9 Sahwa Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

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10 The HCP is an independent government statistical institution in Morocco, and was founded in 2003. It provides the main sources of economic, social and demographic statistical data. See: www.hcp.ma. 11 Most female entrepreneurs are between the ages of 30 and 45 (Rachdi, 2006; Aït Mous, 2005). The study by Aït Mous (2005), focusing on interviews with 50 female entrepreneurs moreover illustrates that 26.6% of the female entrepreneurs are between the age of 25 and 29 years old. 12 All the names of interviewees in this chapter have been changed. 13 Douar: traditionally a tent village. 14 The Souss is an important agricultural region situated in the centre-west of Morocco, near the city of Agadir. 15 The Gharb is an important agricultural region situated in the north-west of Morocco. 16 Ifrane is situated in the central Atlas mountain range, approximately 35 kilometres from the Saïss. The city attracts many tourists and is popular among Moroccans. 17 This is a government initiative. The government encourages farmers to produce local products that can be labelled “home-grown products”, which should facilitate their marketing. 18 Overall, of the 6.4 million children initially enrolled at school, around 2.36 million leave while less than 16 years old (accordingly with HCP in 2015). 19 http://economia.ma/content/lascension-des-chefs-dentreprises-soussis

References Aït Mous, F. (2005). “L’entreprenariat féminin au Maroc: typologies, ressources familiales et nouveaux rôles féminins”, Unpublished paper. Belshaw, Cyril S. (1955). “The Cultural Milieu of the Entrepreneur: A Critical Essay”, Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 7(3) (1 February), pp. 146–163. Bensghir, A. and Reghioui, A. (2015). “La culture entrepreneuriale: étude comparative entre les étudiants marocains et mauritaniens”, Dossiers de Recherches en Economie et Gestion, 4(2), September. Binkour M. (2012). “La promotion de l’entrepreunariat au Maroc: role de l’Etat et perception des entrepreneurs”, Proceedings of the Colloquium Business and Entrepreneurship in Africa, 17–19 May, Université Laval. Bossenbroek, L. and Kadiri, Z. (2016). “Quête identitaire des jeunes et avenir du monde rural”, Revue Economia, 27, pp. 46–50. Bossenbroek, L., van der Ploeg, J.D. and Zwarteveen, M. (2015). “Broken dreams? Youth experiences of agrarian change in Morocco’s Saiss region”, Cahiers Agricultures, 24(6), pp. 342–348. Boz, A. and Ergeneli, A. (2014). “Women Entrepreneurs’ Personality Characteristics and Parents’ Parenting Style Profile in Turkey”, Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 109, pp. 92–97. Bruni, A., Gherardi, S. and Poggio, B. (2005). Gender and entrepreneurship: An ethnographical approach. New York and Oxford: Routledge. Caracelli, V.J. and Greene, J.C. (1997). Crafting mixed-methods evaluation designs, in Greene, J.C. and Caracelli, V.J. (Eds.) Advances in mixed-methods evaluation: The challenges and benefits of integrating diverse paradigms (New Directions for Evaluation, No. 74). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp. 19–32. Cherubini, D., Rivetti, P. and Leccardi, C. (2016). European Public Policies for Gender Equality in the Arab Mediterranean Region. SAHWA Project Policy Paper (consulted online).

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Cooper, A. C. and Dunkelberg, W. C. (1981). Influences upon entrepreneurship—A large scale study. San Diego, CA: Academy of Management Meetings. Fayolle, A. (2012). Entrepreneuriat. Apprendre à apprendre, 2nd edition. Paris: Dunod. Fayolle, A. and Liñán, F. (2014). “The future of research on entrepreneurial intentions”, Journal of Business Research, 67(5), pp. 663–666. Gomolka, E. (1977). “Characteristics of minority entrepreneurs and small business enterprises”, American Journal of Small Business, 2(1), pp. 12–21. Gurung, G. S. and Kollmair, M. (2005). Marginality: Concepts and their limitations. IP6 Working Paper no 4. Development Study Group Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Switzerland. Habibov, H., Afandi, E. and Cheung, A. (2017). “What is the effect of university education on chances to be self-employed in transitional countries?: Instrumental variable analysis of cross-sectional sample of 29 nations”, International Entrepreneurship Management Journal, 13, pp. 487–500. HEM (Institut des Hautes Etudes de Management) (2016). National Case Study— Morocco. Available at: http://sahwa.eu/OUTPUTS/Other-publications/National-Ca se-Study-Morocco (Accessed: 13 February 2018). Houria, Z. (2013). “L’entrepreneuriat féminin au Maroc”, Revista Internacional de Culturas y Literaturas, 14. Kamal, A. (2017). “Policy Paper on National Youth Policies in Morocco”, SAHWA. Available at: www.sahwa.eu/OUTPUTS/SAHWA-Policy-Papers/Policy-Paper-on-N ational-Youth-Policies-in-Morocco (Accessed: 23 June 2017). Klotz, A. and Neuban, D. (2015). “Research on the dark side of personality traits in entrepreneurship: Observations from an organizational behaviour perspective”, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, November. Kouba, S. and Sahibeddine, A. (2012). “L’intention entrepreneuriale des étudiants au Maroc: une analyse PLS de la méthode des équations structurelles”, Actes du 11ème CIFEPME, Brest. Minialai, C. and Sqalli, H. (2016). How to improve the governance of support for entrepreneurship initiatives. SAHWA Policy Paper. Retrieved from SAHWA website. Rachdi, F. (2006). L’entreprenariat féminin au Maroc: une étude exploratoire, 8e CIFEPME, 25–27 October, Haute Ecole de Gestion, Fribourg, Suisse. SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017). Data File Edition 3.0. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). Sánchez-Montijano, E., Martínez, I., Bourekba, M. and Dal Zotto, E. (2017). SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 Descriptive Report. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). Stewart, A. (1990). “The bigman metaphor for entrepreneurship: A “Library Tale” with morals on alternatives for further research”, Organization Science, 1(2), pp. 143–159. Tounés, A. (2003). L’intention entrepreneuriale. Une étude comparative entre des étudiants d’écoles de management et gestion suivant des programmes ou des formations en entrepreneuriat et des étudiants en DESS CAAE. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Université de Rouen. Turker, D. and Sonmez Selçuk, S. (2009). “Which factors affect entrepreneurial intention of university students?” Journal of European Industrial Training, 33(2), pp. 142–159. White, B. (2012). “Agriculture and the generation problem: Rural youth, employment and the future of farming”, IDS Bulletin, 43(6), pp. 9–19.

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World Bank (2012). Kingdom of Morocco Promoting Youth Opportunities and Participation, Middle East and North Africa Region Sustainable Development Department Report No. 68731–MOR. World Bank (2014). Unemployment Data. Available at: http://wdi.worldbank.org/table/ 2.5.

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Youth civic and political participation in Algeria1 Issues and challenges Mustapha Omrane CREAD/UNIVERSITÉ KHEMIS-MILIANA

1 Introduction Every country has its own political dynamic and its socioeconomic and historical particularities. The case of Algeria confirms this. Indeed, the country had its “Arab Spring” in October 1988. This historic uprising, which was led mainly by young people demanding a better life, profoundly changed the country and led the political powers to accept political pluralism for the first time since independence. In 1992, the country entered an extremely violent war whose effects remain 25 years on. Other countries in the MENA region are currently undergoing significant political upheaval, but in almost all these countries this “spring” is synonymous with war. These transformations have caused powerful socioeconomic and political disruption. One of this period’s main consequences, which is undoubtedly historic, is the emergence of the youth as the force for change. The whole world was surprised by the scale of these (sometimes very violent) events, which the analyses had not predicted. The voice of the young was heard and they became the bearers and actors of the change. This situation has reaffirmed the idea that these young people are perceived both as a threat to the powers of the political elites, and as a wealth and an opportunity for development (Musette, 2004). The two perceptions are eminently political, if we consider development, first and foremost, to be a field of governmental action. This analysis is clearly applicable to Algeria. Since independence, the country has faced multiple challenges and major political mutations. But it has considerable potential: around 26% of its population is between 15 and 29 years old and increasingly well educated, with around a million and a half young people currently in higher education (ONS, 2015). But the country’s economy—based essentially on hydrocarbon exports—is unable to create enough jobs for the ever-growing youth population. In this context, this chapter attempts to highlight the political dimension of young people’s lives, and seeks to understand their attitudes to political and civic participation. We will see that we cannot grasp young people’s reasoning unless we place them in their historical context and link them to wider socioeconomic conditions.

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This chapter analyses the data from the SAHWA Project, an international research project performed in five countries of the MENA region: Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon and Tunisia. Its methodological approach is based on the collection of quantitative and qualitative data. In the quantitative stage, the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017)2 was carried out on a total of 9,860 individuals and 842 variables in all the countries (2,002 individuals from all regions of Algeria). In the qualitative stage, the ethnographic fieldwork (2015) was carried out using various information collection techniques. Thus, for Algeria, this chapter is based on the analysis of eight focus groups, eight life stories, six narrative interviews and two focused ethnographies on youth groups.3 This ethnographic research was carried out in four wilayas: Algiers, Béjaïa, Djelfa and Oran.4 These complementary techniques allowed us to obtain rich and useful data to analyse.

2 Youth living conditions: the causes of the frustration Until the start of the 1980s, Algeria had one of the highest fertility rates in the world. The country even reached a peak of 8.1 children per woman in 1974, an historical record. This demographic prowess quickly raised the social pressure on education, healthcare services, employment and housing, etc. The second oil shock of 1986, characterised by a significant fall in petrol prices, greatly reduced the Algerian state’s capacity to adequately respond to continually growing social demand. More than 30 years on, despite many years of budgetary easing, the country seems to be confronted by this issue of growing social demand and limited financial resources. 2.1 The best-educated young people: faced with unemployment Young Algerians are increasingly well educated. The SAHWA Project confirms these high levels of education: 99% of the young people surveyed (15–29 years old) were in education or had attended school in the past; many at a high academic standard—41% of young men and 59% of young women (CREAD, 2017). In the different phases of this study, the young people we met were unanimous: their main worry was work. The position of most young Algerians is undoubtedly the same as it is for their peers across the MENA region (ILO, 2013). Official unemployment figures in Algeria give a rate of 11.2% in the general population (ONS, 2015), while for young people aged between 15 and 29, the rate is 32% (CREAD, 2017). Certainly, the country has seen a clear improvement in its socioeconomic indicators since the return of civil peace, but its economy is no longer able to create enough jobs for stillnumerous applicants. The unemployment rate among young people reflects the difficulties this group continues to have despite numerous government attempts to absorb this unemployment. In truth, young people face various challenges in addition to unemployment: they are affected by the problem of drug use and are tempted by emigration, including the illegal crossing of the

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Mediterranean towards southern Europe known in Algeria as harraga. Every year, hundreds attempt the crossing, and in 2007 around 2,000 young people were intercepted (Rarrbo, 2010). In the family sphere, the SAHWA survey data show that around 90% of young people live with their parents. This once again shows how great their needs are in terms of autonomy and independence. This desire for emancipation is natural for human beings at a certain age, particularly when social and family control is as strong as it is in Algeria, which is well known for its traditional roles. Logically, young people’s desire for freedom collides with the problem of unemployment. Because a job, even a poorly paid one, grants the young person a certain autonomy in financial terms and—among young women as well as men—strengthens their status within the family. What is more, the fact of disposing of their own budget confers on the young person the capacity to act in solidarity with the people around them, reinforcing the social integration of the young person who now feels useful and who enjoys a certain esteem. Living through a long period of inactivity, young people are suffering from the social and psychological effects of unemployment and some even mention a feeling of despair about the future. Young Algerians see work as el bab, the door to their life. But students and recent university graduates looking at the future now share the same fear and the same frustration. This is felt most by the graduates who have spent the most time at school and university. They expect a job (and pay) to match their efforts and their abilities, but when they apply for jobs their frustration is exacerbated. The administration is then blamed for causing their “mal-vie”. In the fieldwork, they were unanimous in denouncing the lack of transparency and nepotism in recruitment processes. Young people very often seek jobs in the civil service which, alone in their eyes, allow employees to benefit from the social rights that are in their view impossible to achieve in the private sector. Indeed, the public perception of private employers is highly negative. This situation increases the demand for jobs in the public sector (“chez l’Etat”), raising the pressure on the administration as a result. 2.2 The emergence of urban crime and violence In Algeria, the image of the young person in the collective consciousness is often associated with violence, with crime and with the transgression of society’s traditional values, such as those relating to work, to respect for elders, and to the preservation of family honour, etc. At the end of the armed conflict of the 1990s, new forms of violence appeared in society: protests, often violent, and crime, in which the main actors are the young. The specialists in youth issues we met confirmed the notion that the state has contributed to the development of acts of violence in society, not only among the young, but in the population as a whole. In this context, riots become almost the only way for people to appeal to the administration which, for them, means the state, which is perceived as the ultimate responsible party when it

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comes to the satisfaction of the basic needs of life. In such a situation, a riot appears to be a social weapon that can seriously threaten civil peace due to its capacity to evolve into more violent forms. Some studies say that, beyond the revolutionary context of recent years, this phenomenon is characteristic of the Mediterranean region (Hadj-Moussa and Wahnich, 2013). It must nevertheless be underlined that the riots are not necessarily the work of young delinquents. Delinquency and rioting are not necessarily linked, but at the same time they express a social predisposition to violent behaviour. The Algerian press called 2010 the year of riots. In the absence of official data, the figures proposed by the press suggest several thousand riots. Various media sources note more than 9,000 riots and disturbances throughout the national territory in the same year. The main cause is given as employment, and numerous wilayas have experienced these “job riots”, in which the law enforcement agencies typically intervene, sometimes resulting in legal proceedings against the rioters. Very often the young are contesting the processes of recruitment and workforce integration and feel they are victims of “hogra”, an Arabic term meaning injustice and poor treatment. The allocation of social housing is also a pretext for troubles that may take various forms: cutting off roads, besieging town halls, stoning law enforcement officers, etc. (Bennadji, 2013). Protests appear to be a characteristic feature of Mediterranean countries and are taking new forms in the southern Mediterranean region (Hadj-Moussa and Wahnich, 2013). Perret (2014) proposes three main causes of the uprisings in the Arab world: the generalised practice of corruption, the unequal distribution of wealth, and the lack of freedom of expression. In truth, these conditions fall within the scope of public policies, and therefore of state intervention. It is worth recalling that the uprisings in these past years in the Arab world mostly began as riots of little significance only to later snowball. It seems clear that the rule of law, a reliable system of political representation and a dynamic civil society are the sine qua non conditions for saving countries from the violence that has affected several Arab countries. In reality, the state’s weight in everyday life makes it logical for citizens to turn towards it when their needs arise. Such needs may relate to housing, access to basic services (healthcare, education, security, etc.) or employment. In being continuously called upon, the state pays the price of its strong presence in managing the city. It is symptomatic of the welfare state, of which Algeria embodies a specific model. The state’s intervention is often requested through violence. And when this demand is not satisfied, the citizens (often the young) occupy the streets and public spaces, generally in the form of potentially violent riots, in order to ensure they are heard. Within society, crime is most commonly associated with the young, particularly in the urban environment. Older generations refer to the emergence of youth delinquency in the period that followed the return to civil peace; and the impact of the civil war on the socialisation of the 1990s generation, and even that of the 2000s, certainly deserves interdisciplinary scientific study.

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3 Participation, inclusion, social exclusion: what do we mean? The term “exclusion” appeared throughout the 20th century, notably in the seminal work of Pierre Massé (1964) and René Lenoir (1974). The situation of social exclusion was what attracted the authors, leading them to highlight its social and economic dimensions. According to this literature, individuals with different profiles may belong to the socially excluded, such as the disabled and delinquents. In truth, the term “excluded” covers diverse social groups depending on the definition adopted. Most commonly, in the literature the concept refers to all kinds of vulnerability: poverty, access to care, unemployment, etc. Logically, the connection between poverty and exclusion is very strong, as an individual may be excluded from access to certain services such as healthcare and education due to their situation of poverty. Conversely, when an individual is excluded from access to certain services but is not necessarily poor, they may become poor as a result of their exclusion. The term exclusion has long been popular in Europe’s political sphere, where government actions are undertaken to fight against exclusion, notably through the promotion of employment, seen as the main factor in social integration. In the literature on social exclusion, it is the economic issue that is most commonly highlighted, while the political dimension is dealt with less as a constituent element of social exclusion. Few available studies address the political dimension of social exclusion (or inclusion). In addition to the deprivation of certain rights and access to services, exclusion may also include participation in democratic processes (Omtzigt, 2009). The term inclusion may have other synonyms such as insertion or even integration. These concepts are regularly borrowed by policies and programmes aspiring to promote access to employment or fight against poverty. The perception of being excluded from the political processes seems to cause young Algerians to develop a feeling of rejection, even of hatred, not only towards the political system, but towards the state as a whole. This leads us to another concept, that of political and civic participation. There is no consensus on this term in the literature. In Algeria, low participation in elections—most of all among the young—seems now to be a feature of political life. This is verifiable in society, known by the elites and demonstrated in the literature (Rouag, 2014). For the people, elections do not change reality. Numerous studies have shown the disinterest of young Algerians in politics and their lack of trust in the political system (CNES, 2016). Certain authors, following Burchardt, Le Grand and Piachaud (1999), explain social exclusion through psychological factors, meaning those that are personal to the individual themselves. According to this thesis, individuals exclude themselves from society and are therefore responsible for their situation. At first glance exclusion from access to certain services or certain rights may not appear to be linked to civic participation. But an individual’s feeling of exclusion also leads them to react. This therefore translates into the

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decision not to participate as an act of punishment or revenge towards the government. We observed in the field that this position is reinforced by every bad experience with the administration and by every national or local event with negative resonance, such as the government’s management problems or even the cases of corruption, whether reported by the media or experienced by the local community. These experiences create an environment in which young people develop a perception that the system put in place by the state does not allow them to be included in it, and even less to free themselves from it. According to another theory, it is not poverty that causes the uprisings in Arab countries, it is more the feeling of social injustice. This feeling was expressed in the demonstrations by the word “Dignité” during the events of the so-called Arab Spring (UNESCO, 2011). The UNESCO report states that the majority of young people in the Arab world have personal experience either of injustice or a sense of lacking dignity which becomes a catalyst for their participation. Participation is presented as a process in which individuals take part in the decision-making of the institutions, programmes and environments that affect them (UNESCO, 2011, p. 09). Across the MENA region, the same socioeconomic problems are generally observed—above all unemployment and the same restrictions in terms of governance and the inclusion of young people in decision-making mechanisms (OECD, 2015). Like the other countries in the region, Algeria has experienced this issue of young people’s minimal presence in decision-making. In the literature, civic participation may include activities or services directed towards the community, as it may cover both activities in the community and those in the political arena. In this study, we favour distinguishing activities of a social nature from those connected to the political, as young people’s position differs on the two kinds of activity. But the two dimensions are inextricably linked. Involvement in civic associations is often presented as training that can initiate young people in issues of public (and therefore political) order. Some theories of change are therefore put forward to examine the links between participation in civic activities and involvement in political life (Mercy Corps, 2012). These studies also attempt to highlight these relationships for both sexes in the light of the role women have played in the countries of the region in recent years.

4 Youth participation in community life Since 2011, the media, researchers, governments and development actors have all been abundantly interested in youth-related issues. The reflections particularly focus on the relationship between the young and the political and civic spheres. Hence civic participation, civic engagement and even political change are topics that are prioritised. The perception of young people lies more than ever between two extremes: fear and hope. In all probability, the prevailing situation in the countries that experienced the so-called Arab Spring is pushing the trend more towards crisis scenarios.

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Participation in community life assumes that the other party has a genuine will to involve young people, not only by informing them about their activities, but by leading them to make a tangible contribution to their activities (UNESCO, 2011). Other authors cited by the UNESCO report identify different conditions for effective participation. First: a political climate that accepts and supports active participation and interaction at all levels of developing the programme, from implementation to evaluation. In addition, a sociocultural and political context that supports individual and collective awareness, the acquisition of knowledge and discussion of the subjects and problems that affect the well-being of the community (UNESCO, 2011). According to a comparative analysis, the youth in Arab countries are more politically active than the global average: 28.9% compared to 15.2%. This mainly relates to involvement in protests or demonstrations. They are less involved in civic or community groups, with 19% likely to participate in such groups compared to 32% of young people in Africa; their participation in elections is 48% compared to the global average of 59% (Kurtz, 2012). On another note, the study shows that young men are more involved than young women in civic activities, with the exception of electoral participation, where there is little difference (Kurtz, 2012). According to this study, Algeria is the country in which the levels of participation are most equal between the two sexes in the MENA region. So too is civic engagement among young people with higher education. Most of the young people who are civically engaged in the region are those who are interested in the news on politics and the government. On average, young people who are interested in politics or who follow the news are 2.5 to 3 times more likely than those who do not follow political news to engage in civic activities, including both civic and political engagement (Kurtz, 2012). After independence in 1962, Algeria was governed by a single party. Political formations were banned along with independent unions and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs). After the 1986 oil shock, the country’s financial resources collapsed as a consequence of falling oil prices on the international market, which remains the state’s main source of revenue today. This engendered a very serious socioeconomic crisis, lowering the value of the national currency, increasing the prices of staple foods, causing a scarcity of basic products (bread, milk, oil, etc.), and above all higher unemployment. This economic crisis resulted in a large-scale popular uprising in October 1988. Thus, the country experienced often violent demonstrations led mainly by the young—even adolescents—demanding not only solutions to the economic problems but also a change in the form of government. In 1989, economic and political reforms were put in place. The first political parties, civil society organisations and independent press were created as a result.

5 The relationship of the young with community and political activism We have seen that the literature establishes that the political and civic participation of young Algerians is fairly minimal. Indeed, our immersion in the

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field showed an extremely minimal presence of political and community activities. The rare active associations are in the large and medium-sized towns. Outside them, especially in rural areas, they were almost non-existent. Generally, these movements had great difficulty both functioning and recruiting volunteers. After several years, the development of internet use and the emergence of social networks facilitated mobilisation, above all in large towns, as was the case with an association active in Algiers that the project’s researchers observed. Most of its members had studied in higher education; in terms of recruitment, the young people knew each other beforehand; and many young people discovered the association’s work through social networks and became active members later on. Most of the young people were volunteering for the first time in their lives. This is learning by doing for youths with no experience in the volunteering sector and who have not benefitted from training in social work. Charitable activities with people in situations of poverty attract young people who feel useful to society. The young seem to have understood that community work is an opportunity that allows them to acquire personal skills and they perceive it highly positively (DZ_FE_1). The volunteers see this social activism as an apprenticeship that prepares them for future employment. In truth, community activism aids the social inclusion of these young volunteers who are also working for the social inclusion of members of society. The state would benefit from providing civic associations with support in terms of training. This is clearly a field with great potential, especially as this learning is not only professional, but also builds citizenship among young people. On the quantitative level, the survey results show that most young people belong neither to a political movement nor to a cultural, charitable or humanitarian group, etc. The data show that a third of young people (33.6%) are connected to political movements or civic associations. In reality, this rarely means effective membership as the answers may include sympathisers, participants, donors or volunteers. They are most often sympathisers and not true supporters. By contrast, membership increases as education levels rise. This is truer for young people who have been through higher education and are more familiar with group activism, especially through student movements. The recent developments in the country of major media organisations, particularly the television, and the widespread use of social networks have certainly popularised voluntary work (DZ_FE_1). These are normally solidarity activities, such as those performed by aid organisations to help the sick, the poor, orphans, etc. However, internet use does not necessarily mean greater interest in politics. Research in England has shown the internet to be a cause of civic and political disengagement. Individuals, especially the young, spend a lot of their time on the internet and are less and less interested in civic and political issues, as the contents of the internet are more commercial than public (Livingstone, Couldry and Markham, 2007). Political parties and movements do not seem to attract the interest of young Algerians. Fewer than 5% said they were active in a political party. The

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few young people who get involved favour humanitarian or charity organisations and sports clubs, given the lack of leisure activities. They distance themselves from all political formations because of the representation made of these organisations. In terms of non-political movements, we do not find the same state of mind among young people. They prompt neither the same resentment nor the same defiance. Of the young people encountered in different regions, none said they were against community work. But though there is often a predisposition to serve in voluntary activities, those who actually take the step of joining are in fact few in number (DZ_FG_4). This corroborates the previous assertion about recruitment, which seems to occur in a restricted way, above all in family or friendship circles. In 2012, there were 1,027 national and 90,764 approved associations in Algeria (CNES, 2016). These associations are active in various fields: culture, religion, sport, solidarity, the environment, etc. These are not insignificant numbers, and yet these organisations seem unable to mobilise significant human resources. The fieldwork and the various bibliographical sources suggest a very minor effective presence. These associations often lament the difficulties they encounter when performing their activities. Several hundred disappear each year, notably due to the lack of means and to disinterest. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to know how many are genuinely active. The lack of capacity that characterises NGOs limits the levels of citizen mobilisation and resources. In the political sphere, Algeria has around 50 political parties that regularly participate in elections. However, it is not easy to find public information on the number of political party members. These data would provide another indicator of political representativeness and the integration of the political institutions within the population. Furthermore, only a small proportion of the young people surveyed had participated in at least one of the activities performed by a civic association or political movement. A quarter (25.4%) had participated in political or civic association activities in the 12 months prior to the survey (Table 2.1). Though it remains weak generally, youth involvement is relatively higher among young men (28.3%) than among young women (22.1%). This is partly explained by the fact that young men find it easier to perform activities in the public sphere than young women because of social norms, particularly outside the large urban centres. However, this activism is not influenced either by place of residence or education level. 5.1 Participation in political or civic association activities At below 20%, the proportion of young people who declared they had participated in at least one political or civic association activity is very low (Table 2.2). Participation is shown to be greater among young men than young women across all activities. A previous study made in seven countries in the MENA region, including Algeria, provided evidence of a strong relationship

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Table 2.1 Proportion of young people who had participated in political or civic association activities in the 12 months prior to the survey, by type of activity and gender (%) Male

Female

Total

Urban Rural Total

29.9 25.7 28.3

22.8 20.9 22.1

26.6 23.5 25.4

15 to 19 20 to 24 25 to 29

26.3 30.5 27.9

18.5 23.4 24.1

22.9 27.0 26.1

Middle at the most Secondary Higher

Education level 29.8 19.8 25.4 17.6 29.6 29.4

25.8 21.9 29.5

Age

Source: Survey of Algerian youth, SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

between membership of civic associations and political activism (Mercy Corps, 2012). No doubt, work in the voluntary sector strengthens individuals’ capacities in terms of public activities and prepares them to take on responsibilities in the political field. In response to the question of whether young people are listened to by the local leaders in an interior region of the country (Djelfa), the reactions convey the absence of communication between elected representatives and the administration on the one hand, and the citizens on the other (DZ_FG_4). The interviews seemed to give young people an opportunity for free expression that allowed them to externalise their grievances: “If you can pull strings, Table 2.2 Proportion of young people who had participated in at least one activity organised by civic associations or political parties in the 12 months prior to the survey, by type of activity and gender (%) Activities

Male

Female

Total

Participated in party political meetings or activities Made a donation to a party or association Collected signatures or signed petitions Participated, attended or helped at demonstrations Took part in strike action Used violent forms of action for political or social goals Participated in electoral campaigns Political participation on the internet

20.0 19.6 19.1 21.0 22.5 18.6 20.3 19.4

17.5 16.6 15.8 16.2 17.3 15.5 16.2 16.0

18.8 18.2 17.5 18.8 20.0 17.1 18.4 17.8

Source: Survey of Algerian youth, SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

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we’ll listen to you, if not, we won’t. This is the home of stringpulling, if you look for the head of the daïra or the mayor to tell him your problems, you won’t find him. It’s like when there are local elections, they look for us, and after the elections, there is nothing.” These statements show that taking care of public concerns at a local level is essential if we want to see a change in individuals’ perceptions of the political system. This relationship has also been shown in developed countries. In England, studies have demonstrated the causes of some English youth disengagement. Among individuals, it turns out that preoccupations of a personal and local nature increasingly take precedence over the national and governmental (Bennett, 1998, cited by Livingstone, Couldry and Markham, 2007, p. 6). 5.2 Perception of national institutions Throughout the interviews, raising political issues was taken by the young people as an opportunity to express their discontent with their political leaders and to criticise the exercise of politics, both by the opposition parties and the government. As a result of this, national institutions do not inspire trust among young Algerians. No institution inspires complete confidence, many have no confidence at all in institutions and only a very small number have complete confidence. In general, the degree of young people’s trust in a given institution is below the average level for all national institutions, with the exception of the security services (5.3%) (Table 2.3). This reminds us of the importance of the security sector in the eyes of young people, no doubt fed by the experiences of insecurity in the 1990s. By contrast, politicians, parliament and the political parties top the list of institutions young people trust least. Young men and women have the same lack of confidence in national institutions. Despite the criticism, the score for the education system must be underlined as it performs well in the trust rankings. In young people’s rationale, which no doubt also applies to other parts of the population, the perception of the political institutions is profoundly personified—in other words, it is based on the perception of the individuals who represent those institutions. Bad personal experiences with the state administration, as well as the cases of poor governance or corruption in their areas— true or alleged—become prejudices among individuals against state institutions as a whole. These depictions are confirmed by the information supplied by the media, which convey suspicion or accusations of public figures or senior state officials (DZ_FG_1). In this case, the truth is expected to come from the justice system. This institution is perceived as a government entity. 5.3 Perception of international institutions, media and organisations With the exception of the field of religion, young people in general trust neither the national nor the foreign media. And when it comes to unions or employers, the level of trust falls notably. In essence, the closer one gets to

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Table 2.3 Distribution of young people by level of confidence in national institutions and gender

Police Education system Legal system Government General administration Local administration Elections Parliament Local elected officials Political parties Politicians

Male

Female

Total

4.7 4.1 3.8 3.6 3.6 3.5 3.2 2.7 2.8 2.6 2.5

6.0 4.9 4.5 4.3 4.0 3.8 4.0 3.1 3.1 3.1 3.0

5.3 4.5 4.1 3.9 3.8 3.6 3.6 2.9 2.9 2.8 2.8

Source: Survey of Algerian youth, SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

politics, the less trust there is. We may conclude that for young people school, religion and the family are the foundations of individual lives and of society. Beyond these pillars of socialisation, the young seem to find no trustworthy guides. Apparently, even greater than their distrust of national institutions is young people’s distrust of international institutions, including those from Arab countries (Table 2.4). The United States scores worst, no doubt due to general youth culture in terms of international politics. It is, however, useful to point out that the European Union (EU) is the institution that is best ranked and enjoys the most trust. For the surveyed, the EU is the product of a union between countries aspiring to greater prosperity, and is not directly involved in the crises the region is experiencing. It enjoys a position of neutrality with regard to the conflicts on the international scene and is not linked to the painful colonial past. By contrast, the Maghreb is not a successful union. The United States, despite its status as a developed country, is down at the lower end. Table 2.4 Distribution of young people by level of confidence in international institutions and gender Institutions

Male

Female

Total

European Union League of Arab States United Nations The Arab Maghreb United States

2.9 2.5 2.5 1.9 2.0

2.7 3.0 2.4 2.3 1.9

2.8 2.7 2.4 2.1 2.0

Source: Survey of Algerian youth, SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

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5.4 Position on elections Observing the frequency of participation shows that only around one young person in ten declared that they vote regularly (Table 2.5). At the same time, a majority (56.0%) never votes, which translates to a position of rejection of elections, whether local or national. In a fairly ostensible manner, the young are performing a boycott. The term abstention is less appropriate than boycott, with its sense of a position taken to express a total rejection of the process and of its actors. That is what makes it a profoundly political act. Just under a third of the respondents vote always, often or sometimes, among both young men and young women: 32.1% and 31.4% respectively. This low level of involvement in the electoral processes translates, we have seen, into a conviction that is well established among the young that the elections are perverted. Whatever their place of residence, young people express the same frustrations in relation to the access to jobs, leisure and housing, but they do not take the same positions on voting. The young in the towns in the interior, in addition to the same needs as their peers, express a feeling of isolation when compared with the regions further to the north. They show the same contempt for the administration and elected representatives, but participate more in elections. In the large coastal towns, they are more radical and adopt the boycott as a highly political position: this is at once a general punishment of the government and political formations and a form of expression that demonstrates a refusal to take part in an operation that is considered dishonest. Effectively, the political act of voting is subjected to an eminently social judgement. Before election day (so even if there is no fraud) the positions have already been taken. Numerous criticisms are therefore made of elections: the dominance of some political parties perceived to be components of the government, the lack of transparency in the choice of candidates, the bad reputation of certain candidates (above all at the top of the list) who are perceived as corrupt due to stories reported locally, the role of money, family and tribal patterns and the candidates’ low levels of qualification. Most blame is attributed to the state which, in their eyes, legitimates these individuals to become official candidates. After the elections, the elected representatives are Table 2.5 Distribution in percentage of young people by frequency of participation in elections and gender Frequency

Male

Female

Total

Always Often Sometimes Rarely Never

10.2 6.9 14.3 12.9 55.5

13.9 8.1 10.1 10.9 56.5

11.9 7.5 12.3 12.0 56.0

Source: Survey of Algerian youth, SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

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not credible to young people. As a result, government assurances about the transparency of the elections are sometimes seen as complacent, sometimes as ignorant of the reality. In any case, this situation damages the people’s idea of the state. 5.5 Abstention The survey data are eloquent on participation in the last elections: 27.4%. No great disparities exist between urban and rural environments or according to sex. Though the level of participation has a tendency to rise in the group aged 25 to 29 years old, it remains very close to the officially announced national average. The rate of abstention among young people in the 2012 legislative elections was estimated at 56.86% (Safir, 2012). Excluding all those who were not of legal voting age and those who were abroad, the majority of young Algerians (60.1%) did not take part in the last national elections because, according to them, they were not interested (Table 2.6). A majority of respondents declared that they were not interested in the last elections. Beyond that position—not interested—and its apparent connotation, which seems at first to be less serious than “Voting will have no effect”, or even “The elections are neither fair nor transparent”, this is undoubtedly the same level of radicalisation. For these young people the act of voting in itself is not interesting, as it is meant to be an act of citizenship. In the same vein, among the abstainers, the answers concerning participation in future elections suggest broadly the same situation, as only 22.5% declared themselves certain to go and vote. But they are fewer in number than those who confirmed not envisaging going to the polling booth. Young women are more likely to take part in elections. This gender difference no doubt expresses a less harsh perception of the sociopolitical environment among young women than men. This divergence may be read in the light of the social roles attributed to men and women in society. The latter are meant to have a job and housing in order to honour the largest project in the life of an individual— starting a family through marriage (DZ_LSV_8).

Table 2.6 Proportion of young people who did not vote in the last national elections by reasons for not voting and gender Reason

Male

Female

Total

Not interested Voting will have no effect The elections are neither fair nor transparent Others Total

61.0 18.9 12.4 7.8 100

59.1 12.5 7.9 20.4 100

60.1 16.0 10.4 13.4 100

Source: Survey of Algerian youth, SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

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In terms of young people’s positions on politics, the majority keep out of elections and reject even the idea of going to vote. Throughout the interviews, young people expressed their discontent towards politicians and criticised the practice of politics, both by the opposition parties and the government. The different criticisms gathered concern the choice of candidates, the competences of politicians and the effectiveness of political action. These criticisms translate, as we have seen, into a deep lack of trust among young people and raise questions about the reasons for this perception, which seems to be very strong and well established in the collective consciousness, as illustrated by this young person interviewed in the capital: “I don’t believe those making false promises, if I live to a hundred I won’t go and vote” (DZ_FG_4). Politically, the common ground between the young people in the capital and their peers in the interior areas is the lack of trust in politicians as well as local elected representatives. In the capital young people are more radical in their opinions, which can sometimes translate into a hatred of the political system and of the administration (DZ_FG_1). In truth, the term depoliticised does not seem appropriate in the case of the Algerian youth. It is most often used for those who refuse to participate in elections. But these are not individuals who are disinterested in politics. On the contrary, they would like to take part, just following other rules and new codes. The depictions observed in the collective consciousness are marked, essentially, by the negative opinions of the political world and above all of its actors. Thus, state employees are merged with elected representatives, as they are perceived as privileged individuals, benefitting from their income while being protected by the state. The expressions gathered in the field are highly revealing in this regard: “From the moment they are elected they only serve their personal interests” (DZ_FG_4), or even the very famous collective judgement “All are thieves”. This lack of trust when it comes to politics is shown in other studies and other sample surveys (Rouag, 2014). It is a perception fed by the aforementioned feeling of hogra, an injustice suffered or felt by an individual from one entity or from another more powerful individual that is associated with disdain for the weaker party.

6 Conclusion Algeria presents an enormous paradox in which, on the one hand, the state spends colossal amounts on socioeconomic development, especially in its social policy, and on the other a generation of young people feels marginalised and has no confidence in the actions of the state. The possible explanation for this unlikely situation is that young people’s frame of reference for the country’s socioeconomic and political reality is clearly composed of Western criteria. In their reasoning, reference to the West is justified by the existence of a youth generation with the aptitudes to lead the country towards progress, and by observing the numerous Algerians with higher education working in the developed countries. Essentially, it is an idea that is deeply

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rooted in the collective consciousness: Algeria has a great revolution in its history, it possesses large geographical size and significant resources, and yet its inhabitants cannot enjoy great quality of life. In their view, the political system, through incompetence or lack of will, prevents them from having the life they hope for—the one lived by their neighbours in the northern Mediterranean. They demand democracy, liberty, respect, dignity and emancipation in levels close to those in Europe. On the evidence, the young are disinterested in politics and are withdrawing into themselves, as politics is out of step with their expectations and aspirations, and because they consider that the political discourse is a long way from reflecting the reality of their everyday experience. They are not asking for just any kind of life, but for well-being. For all these reasons, they do not recognise themselves in the political discourse. They have the impression that policies are not addressed to them and that their speech is not of interest to politicians. This is the result of a mismatch between young people’s ambitions and the socioeconomic, political and cultural prospects they are offered. On the conceptual level, non-participation is a symptom of self-exclusion. As a concept it is explored more in political sociology and in the political sciences, as it touches directly on key concepts in the scientific field such as citizenship, political participation and the relationship between the governors and the governed. Nevertheless, the contact with the young people in the field leads us to deduce that, beyond self-exclusion, young people are sending a message to society and the state to express their disenchantment and their “mal-vie”. Because in addition to this situation of self-exclusion, the young experience another more socioeconomic exclusion—of not having access to work and housing. The young therefore experience several exclusions. This perception is accentuated by the feeling of not being listened to, and of facing the pressures of life alone. In this context, the young are highly sensitive to issues linked to social justice, equality between citizens, justice and governance. The shortcomings of these systems are not accepted and reinforce the feelings of exclusion among them, and hence their loss of trust and hope. This explains the emergence of the riots, of the violence and the desire to emigrate even in the most dangerous way, through harraga as the illegal crossing of the Mediterranean is known. These young people did not live through the events that marked the first experience of political pluralism and they did not experience the worst years of insecurity in the 1990s. Nevertheless, they have the same judgements and take the same positions of distrust and rejection of the political world and its actors as their seniors. This clearly reflects a situation in which the rejection of politics is transmitted from the previous generations to the young. It is an anchoring of these positions in the collective consciousness of society that will be difficult to change. That this rejection, which began as a political position adopted in certain generations as a response to the circumstances of a specific era, becomes a social tradition is therefore unavoidable. For the public authorities and political parties, the acceptance of this situation is all the

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more dangerous for democracy and distances the country from the international standards on this issue. Finally, we underline the collapse of hope for the future, most often after the failure to find a job. The young person, having benefitted during their life from a system of social protection, seems not to accept the suspension of state support in what they consider the basic rights of life: employment and housing. In truth, the weakness of the feeling of belonging to a community governed by the rules of equality and justice has repercussions that go beyond political life and affect the social system as a whole. Individuals are therefore more inclined to ignore the principles of citizenship, and to break the rules in the exercise of their occupations, duties, trades, etc. As a consequence, the country’s whole performance is diminished. The young have shown they feel the change they hoped for will not be realised in the near future. Nothing currently indicates a change in their state of mind, as trust is visibly broken. They have a pessimistic vision of their future, and feel the need to be listened to and taken into consideration by society and its decision-makers. More specifically, the government would benefit from strengthening the equality, fairness and transparency of government services, most specifically in the processes of recruitment and access to housing. This would contribute greatly to changing the negative perception and would also reduce the chronic tensions between young people—and therefore society—and the state agencies. In the Algerian context, which is characterised by multiple socioeconomic difficulties, the family and particularly parents can play essential roles in terms of the social inclusion of young people. Because this is a long process of socialisation in which the family and school have the most decisive roles. On the evidence, we cannot expect parents to educate their children in the ideas of citizenship and participation while they themselves do not believe in them. Suffice to say, civic and political participation is not an issue that only affects the young—the relationship between the state and society as a whole is impacted. Essentially, it is a question of the vision we have for the country as a whole.

Notes 1 The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007–13 under grant agreement no. 613174 for the SAHWA Project (www.sahwa.eu). This publication reflects only the author’s views. The European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein. 2 For more information: Sánchez-Montijano et al., 2017. 3 The qualitative data references indicate the country (DZ = Algeria), source (FG = focus groups, LS = life stories, LSV = life stories videos, FE = focused ethnographies) and number. 4 On the methodological level, the collection of qualitative data on young people representing large urban centres in the north—Algiers, Béjaïa, Oran and Djelfa— turns out to have great added value. Throughout this analysis, the information collected in Algiers is analysed in relation to that from Djelfa in order to detect the

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differences in their reasoning and behaviour. The individual interviews and focus groups in Algiers were performed in the town of Sidi-Moussa, which is found halfway between Blida and the capital, Algiers. Similar work was done in a rural setting in the town of Messaad, in the wilaya of Djelfa. A wilaya is an administrative entity that is equivalent to a county in certain countries. Algeria has 48.

References Bennadji, C. (2013). “Algérie 2010: l’année des mille et une émeutes”. L’Année du Maghreb. Available at: http://journals.openedition.org/anneemaghreb/1254, (Accessed: 30 December 2017). Burchardt, T., Le Grand, J. and Piachaud, D. (1999). “Social Exclusion in Britain 1991–1995”, Social Policy and Administration, 33(3), pp. 227–244. CNES (Conseil national économique et social) (2016). Rapport national sur le développement humain 2013–2015, Quelle place pour les jeunes dans la perspective du développement humain durable en Algérie? Algiers. CREAD (Centre de Recherche en Economie Appliquée pour le Développement) (2017). Rapport principal de l’enquête algérienne sur la jeunesse SAHWA. Algiers. Hadj-Moussa, R. and Wahnich, S. (2013). “Les émeutes: contestation de la marge ou la marge de la contestation?” L’Homme et la société, 187–188, pp. 9–14. ILO (International Labour Organization) (2013). Global Employment Trends for Youth: A generation at risk. Geneva. Kurtz, J. (2012). Civic engagement of Youth in the Middle East and North Africa: An analysis of key drivers and outcomes. Mercy Corps. Lenoir, R. (1974). Les exclus: Un Français sur dix. Paris: Le Seuil. Livingstone, S., Couldry, N. and Markham, T. (2007). Youthful steps towards civic participation: Does the Internet help?, in Loader, B. (ed.) Young Citizens in the Digital Age: Political Engagement, Young People and New Media. London: Routledge, pp. 21–34. Massé, P. (1964). Les dividendes du progrès, rapport du Secrétaire General du Plan. Paris. Mercy Corps (2012). Civic engagement of youth in the Middle East and North Africa: An analysis of key drivers and outcomes. Available at: www.mercycorps.org/sites/defa ult/files/mena_youth_civic_engagement_study_-_final.pdf, (Accessed: 12 March 2017). Musette, M. S. (2004). Les politiques de la jeunesse en Algérie, in Musette, M. S. (ed.) Regards critiques sur les jeunes et la santé en Algérie. Algiers: CREAD/ANDRS. Omtzigt, D. J. (2009). Survey on social inclusion: Theory and policy. Report Working Paper. London: Oxford University. ONS (Office national des statistiques) (2015). “Activité, emploi & chômage en septembre, 2015”, 726. Available at: www.ons.dz, (Accessed: 20 March 2017). OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) (2015). Youth in the MENA region: How to bring them in. Preliminary version. Available at: www. oecd.org/mena/governance/youth-in-the-mena-region.pdf. Perret, C. (2014). “Représentation sociale de la démocratie: une étude comparée Algérie, France, Tunisie”, Notes de recherche, 12–02, IREGE, Université de Savoie. Rarrbo, K. (2010). Etude sur les politiques jeunesse des pays partenaires méditerranéens. Rapport du Programme Euromed, Jeunesse III. Union européenne. Rouag, A. (2014). Le rapport des jeunes au politique en Algérie. Communication au 23ème Congrès mondial de science politique, IPSA. Montréal, 19–24 July.

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Safir, N. (2012). “La jeunesse algérienne: un profond et durable malaise”, Confluences Méditerranée, 81, pp. 153–161. SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017). Data File Edition 3.0. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). Sánchez-Montijano, E., Martínez, I., Bourekba, M. and Dal Zotto, E. (2017). SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 Descriptive Report. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) (2011). Arab youth, civic engagement and economic participation. Beirut.

3

Young Tunisian men and women, between marginalisation and recognition1 Soukeina Bouraoui CAWTAR

Lilia Othman Challougui CAWTAR

Sihem Najar CAWTAR

1 Introduction Seven years after 14 January 2011, Tunisia still has the look of a laboratory in which all outcomes seem possible. The findings of the comparative research carried out in Tunisia as part of the SAHWA Project vary and contrast but an invincible hope can be detected. Taking as its foundation the SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork 2015 (focus groups, life stories and in-depth interviews, etc.) and the quantitative survey (SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017), gathered in highly diverse settings throughout the country, this chapter seeks to reflect upon the way young people, and notably young women, position themselves on a sociopolitical scene in full gestation. This means looking at how these actors assert their real citizenship despite their invisibility and the denial of recognition to which they are subject. Young people continue to fill both the government’s official political discourse and that of all the political parties. However, just as before, people under the age of 30 have no official place in the decision-making positions: there is no young party leader, minister, secretary of state, ambassador, governor or municipal president, and there are very few members of parliament (28 are under 35 years old, making up 13% of the total; 23 of those are women—11%). This is despite young people aged 15 to 34 making up 33.4% of the population. Although, legally, no profession is closed to them, the situation is no better for women in general and young women in particular. The testimonies of the young interviewees reveal that young women are the group that is most vulnerable to the various forms of injustice and inequality in the different spheres (family, school, work, political institutions, and so on).

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How do young people in general and young women in particular (who have been subject to social injustice) experience these inequalities? How do young people respond to the different forms of exclusion, inequality and marginalisation to which they are subjected? To what extent do they manage to mobilise the different forms of expression and engagement available to them (rap, graffiti, internet activism, etc.) in their search for social recognition and “citizen” legitimacy? To address these different questions, this chapter is organised into two main parts. The first will focus on youth (male and female) and the struggle for social recognition. This means showing how personal experiences of marginalisation and feelings of invisibility and discrimination take different forms depending on gender and sphere. The second addresses young people and the different forms of citizen engagement as a means of affirming themselves and claiming social recognition.

2 Youth and the struggle for social recognition Faced with the social recognition deficit (Honneth, 2004), young people in general and young women in particular seek to find ways to position themselves in society via various forms of artistic expression (graffiti, theatre, painting, dance, rap, and so on), citizen participation (organising elections, joining associations, participating in training sessions), and economic activities (micro-enterprises, resourcefulness, etc.). In this first part of the chapter, the accent will be placed on the thinking behind young people’s actions (both young men and women) and “the critical competences” (Boltanski, 1990) that enable them to denounce the various forms of injustice and demand more visibility. Honneth (1995, p. 69) has already shown that “subjects are … required to enter into an intersubjective conflict [to be recognised]”. Much more than an essential element of citizenship, recognition is therefore a condition, on the one hand, of the participation in social life, the “necessary conditions for human socialisation” (Honneth, 1995, p. 189, note 2) and, on the other hand, of social integration as inclusion processes that play out through the established forms of recognition. It is in the wake of Axel Honneth’s analysis that we propose to address the mechanisms by which young people in general and young women in particular engage in processes of emancipation interest that target the destruction of social exclusions and asymmetries. In this sense, Honneth identifies three models of recognition: the recognition inherent in the different manifestations of love and affective relationships; the recognition present in the values of liberty and above all equality found at the heart of modern law and morality; and finally the recognition conducive to esteem: what happens in a pluralist society marked by a strong division of labour, but where everyone is prepared, in a spirit of rational cooperation, to agree on the price and importance of the contribution of others to the social group (Honneth, 2004, p. 135). Nevertheless, the young, and above all young women, lack sufficiently affirmed

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social recognition. Studying this denial of recognition would allow us to understand the reasons for their poor citizen engagement and participation (97.3% of young people said that since the revolution they do not belong to any political institution; 48.4% of those are young men and 48.9% are young women).2 Reading the SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork reveals that while the recognition deficit and the “experience of disdain” and marginalisation that results from it lead to a certain number of social and political struggles, it remains true that this reciprocal recognition crisis could lead to forms of acceptance of the established social structure. But we have decided to highlight the different manifestations of the struggle for recognition as an essential condition of the exercise of citizenship from a gender perspective. Our hypothesis is that the struggle for recognition will be expressed on the bases of essentially distinct ranges and rationales of action depending on gender and geographical location. In fact, taking into account the differentiated socialisation of the sexes, it would be interesting to question whether the young women are as well equipped as young men with the “critical competences” and reflective faculties that allow them, on the one hand, to be conscious of their marginalisation and, on the other, to claim equality and social justice. To what extent is citizen engagement a path by which young men and women can gain “social esteem” and recognition? We begin, therefore, with the experiences of disdain described by our interviewees. These experiences are at the root of the struggle for recognition and the revindication of an active citizenship. 2.1 The experience of disdain The interviews reveal that experiences of disdain are rooted in longer-standing social situations of inequality and domination (gender,3 socioeconomic group, geographical origin, ideological or political affiliation, etc.). More specifically, it is as members of a “status group” (Renault, 2007, pp. 14–19) that the young people interviewed (male and female) consider themselves to be victims of “social invisibility”, exclusion and disdain. Nevertheless, the risks of marginalisation and disdain appear to be more numerous among young women than young men and affect their citizenship more profoundly.4 It is also important to underline that the forms of marginalisation and disdain to which women are subject have their roots in the cultural foundations of the roles and the statuses assigned to them in a society that produces a cumulative experience of recognition denial. The young people interviewed gave several examples of the social origins of recognition denial and disdain. Everything starts in the family, where the social relations between the sexes are constructed. Yet, as Honneth has shown, individuals escape disdain and achieve recognition thanks to love within the private sphere (Dubet, 2007). It is love, as the primary sphere of recognition, that gives the individual the self-confidence necessary to

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confidently achieve participation in public life.5 We propose some examples that, among so many others, represent a manifest illustration of discrimination and lack of respect and recognition within the family. One of the young people interviewed (a 20-year-old student from Al-Waslatia-Kairouan) declared that she was subject to discriminatory treatment by her parents in favour of her brother. She shows Al-Waslatia to be a small town like those in the other regions of the centre and north, where social life is organised around tradition. In such an environment—disliked by our interviewee—the smallest sign of rebellion would not be tolerated. Particularly for women, social control provides their behaviour with horizons and limits. Very early on, the young interviewee realised the difficult balance she would have to endure between submission and aspirations of a better life. All her desires were pretexts for interminable duels with her father. Behind this she saw the mentality of the region, which privileged boys and denied girls the right to fulfilment. Her interest in her appearance angered her father to the extent that he asked her to wear the veil. Her refusal was categorical, and opposing her father was a way to resist the conservatism of her environment. As a painful concession to her father, she had to give up practising sport (handball) and artistic (dance) activities, while her brother was spoiled by parents unable to be strict with him. A 23-year-old, male, unemployed interviewee is aware of enjoying a degree of favour in relation to his sister (a 20-year-old economics student). He considers that this favour is imposed by the environment. For example, before going out, his sister must tell their parents the details of her plans; our interviewee only has to explain when he gets home. From this young man’s remarks we can see how the girl’s superior status to the boy’s does not affect the value of the male in comparison to the female. These discriminatory practices against young women extend beyond the sphere of the nuclear family and reach the extended family circle. Such is the case of one young woman interviewed (a 19-year-old high school student from Djerba), who has always been supported and encouraged by her parents but who often finds herself facing the resistance of her maternal grandmother, who is outraged that she has chosen theatre as the activity to which she devotes most of her time, and tells her father: “Your daughter will be the shame of the family!” Neither does her grandmother accept her grandchild sticking to her studies, considering that “sooner or later the girl will end up getting married and staying at home!” These discriminatory practices between young men and women are representative of so many factors that prevent women from exercising their full citizenship. Several young people said geographical origin was a fundamental source of disdain, as well as gender. As such, one young interviewee (from Djerba) addressed the issue of origin as a personal matter. A few days before Ben Ali’s flight, a teacher pointed out her surname, which was associated at the time with Sidi Bouzid and Bouazizi, and told her: “You are the cause of the

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misfortunes afflicting the country!” Following this incident, our interviewee felt isolated and rejected by her classmates as a group, all of whom had Djerbian names. Her reactions during the protests of January 2011, she says, were motivated by the feeling of being excluded from the region in which she was born and had always lived. The issue of regionalism, a feeling our speaker calls “racism”, became a source of discomfort following a small incident at school when some of her classmates called her “zemegry” (immigrant), a foreigner to the inhabitants of the island. She says that “racism” is the main motivation behind her citizen participation. For our speaker, this experience of exclusion and stigmatisation was the cause of her becoming aware of active citizenship and her feeling of personal identity. A young interviewee from Gafsa described another manifestation of regionalism. In this case it relates to the denigration and stigmatisation of the region: We see on the television, on all the channels, that Gafsa is only spoken of when there are sit-ins or strikes … Gafsa is never spoken about when there is a large cultural festival, for example. So there is nothing in Gafsa. When you go to find a job, you realise that “racism” exists! Being from the centre of Gafsa or the periphery is not the same thing. The word “racism” recurs frequently as the young people describe their experiences of disdain and emphasise the different manifestations of discriminatory and stigmatising attitudes of a regionalist nature that threaten their citizenship and confine them to the status of second-class citizens (Rivière, 2009). One of the youths interviewed (a rapper from the island of Djerba) speaks of a different form of discrimination based on racial appearance. When talking about the messages he wants to convey through rap, he says: “There are regions where there is colour racism, in Tunisia in general; have experienced it personally. In Djerba, racism is visible when you want to get married and in the world of work!”. These different forms of stigmatisation, whether regional or “racial”, reflect a moral ranking in society. Another form of exclusion, this time of an ideological nature, was described by an interviewee who was dismissed from her job for wearing the veil and by a young man (an activist and employee in a call centre) who experienced exclusion due to his ideological and political affiliations. He had close relatives who were Islamist and communist on the sides of both his father and mother. At a time when Ben Ali’s police repression had reached its high point, our interlocutor was targeted by the political police due to his union engagement at university. Other experiences of disdain are based on other considerations such as gender. This is the case of a student originally from Kairouan and of a student originally from Gafsa. The former is deprived of her freedom and autonomy because of her gender identity. She says:

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Soukeina Bouraoui, Lilia Othman Challougui & Sihem Najar I’ve had problems over insignificant details, but given my age and the region … it was complex. My father told me: if I had ten daughters you could do what you wanted, but I’ve got only one daughter and you must obey me … he mentioned some of my friends’ behaviour that he didn’t like, for example, he sees one of them speaking to a boy, or dressing in a way “that won’t do” and forbids me from seeing her.

The latter suffers the weight of social control in her neighbourhood. Examining the data collected also reveals that most of the young people interviewed mention experiencing disdain in relation to their generational identity. On this issue, a youth from Djerba remarked: “the parties don’t want to come down and see people’s experience … their only concern is their position! […] The old restrict us, they need an hour to say one word, where are the young? Who gives young people a voice?” A young interviewee from Gafsa similarly states: “The old have experience, but the young have desires. Why not give them a chance? […] There is no communication between them and us.” These testimonies about the different forms of marginalisation and disdain experienced by young people of both sexes prove that young women are much more often the victims of “inequality of opportunities” than young men in the various spheres of action. They do not benefit from the same opportunities as young men in terms of social evolution. In what ways can young women overcome invisibility and disdain by engaging in the struggle for recognition and the revindication of full citizenship? 2.2 The struggle for recognition The ethnographic material collected describes forms of engagement that are based on what Honneth considers a moral concern to be considered a full member of the community (Rousset, 2015). In what way is the search for recognition by young people in general and young women in particular a defensive reaction against the various experiences of humiliation and disdain they experience every day? In most cases, we note that there are trigger factors for citizen engagement. For the young high school student on the island of Djerba, the humiliating experience that resulted from the regionalist attitude of one of her teachers strengthened her feeling of belonging to her region of origin (Sidi Bouzid) and encouraged her to revindicate her own identity. She says: “After that incident, I became proud of my origins […] since what happened I deliberately emphasise my surname! So I am Djerbian and originally from Bouzid! […] Afterwards I didn’t stop taking part in demonstrations. The girls, who at a certain point stopped speaking a word to me, have reconciled with me.” This profile gives us a prime example of the revindication of a real and active citizenship. In fact, this young woman is just as passionate about the theatre, which takes up most of her time and interest. She has attended the al May youth centre in Djerba for a number of years. In order to take action, she misses no opportunity

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to discover the diverse frameworks (spontaneous or institutional) that she finds within reach. In the setting of that institution, she supported a project creating the Academy of “Youth Guides” proposed by an official for culture from the governorate of Manouba. The Academy has allowed her to spend time with interesting people, to visit places, and to attend discussions and meetings (at both national and international levels) which have enlightened her on diverse subjects. This high school student wants to enjoy her citizenship to the full. She reiterates her desire to join the army to defend the country: the terrorist attacks of recent years have fed in her a feeling of spontaneous patriotism, which seems to have neither religious nor secular ideology behind it. She also made the decision to put herself forward as an observer member of a party for the 2014 elections. The citizen engagement this young person as demonstrated is identified as a revindicative reaction to the experience of recognition denial (disparaging recognition, ignorance or invisibilisation) institutionalised in various ways (Renault, 2007, pp. 14–19). For another activist interviewed (a 27-year-old Tunisie Télécom employee), the events in the Kasbah were an important moment in her political formation and her coming to political consciousness, a sort of formative rite of passage. This young woman has found her vocation in union work, and in the Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail (UGTT) the institution to give her the training and protection she needed. A member of the Tunisie Télécom call centre union, she was among the first agents leading the mobilisation of a sitin that lasted 59 days, and which made significant achievements. During those months, she attracted the attention of the leaders of the UGTT, who took charge of training her. Hence she has participated in work placements in Tunisia and abroad, extending her skills in communication and negotiation. At a personal level, she had a significant experience in 2012. At the time she was engaged in a sit-in—alone—at the Tunisie Télécom headquarters, following a hunger strike to protest against the director who opposed her tenure. This act was the opportunity to mobilise the support of the UGTT, political figures and activists from civil society she had met during the sit-in at the Kasbah. The heads of Tunisie Télécom were unable to resist this mobilisation and after three days she was given her position. This young activist has never belonged to a political party: union work remains her vocation. She defends the presence of women and young people in union work. For both of these young people, the experiences of disdain (at school and in the professional sphere, respectively) were the main sources of their search for recognition and citizen engagement. What are the different characteristics of this kind of engagement?

3 Youth and citizen engagement Now we move on to the gendered engagement of young people in the postrevolutionary period. Engagement is considered indicative and revelatory of the hopes and values driving it. The quantitative study carried out by

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SAHWA attests to a very low level of engagement among young people. Attraction to political parties and unions is greatly underrepresented when compared to participation in associations, notably volunteer ones. Young men and women are less partisan and have little confidence in politicians, and yet they are quite critical when it comes to the facts of society and its ills. They are more attracted by the means of initiation proposed by associations that recognise and value their actions and above all provide the most appropriate means of expression and communication, such as cyberspace. Prioritising understanding the evolution of their gendered trajectory, the aim is to reveal the issues relating to involvement, participation and the sustainability of engagement on the margins for young people who form what is admittedly a minority. The different studies and research projects carried out since the revolution have been guided by the hypothesis that new forms of engagement are appearing among young people due to the exhaustion of traditional forms of engagement and the governance crisis. In his work on the new forms of engagement Martinot-Lagarde (2008, pp. 48–54) presents three types of engagement which correspond to different time periods: 1 the professional activist, a model linked to union activism whose erosion has been analysed by Jacques Ion to the end of activism; 2 the liberal activist working in an associative environment shaped by the primacy of individual choices from a consumerist perspective; and 3 the pragmatic activist characterised by their roots in a particular territory. An experience that affects them emotionally is always the starting point. This kind of engagement seems to prioritise action in the setting of a networked society. These activist figures call into question and help us address the evolving dynamic of the engaged young people in our sample. 3.1 Engaged Tunisian youth: a gendered approach After the “Revolution”, the young reminded everyone that they are not just citizens of tomorrow in training, but citizens of today and major actors in our societies. The revolutionary context characterised by the liberalisation of potential and the democratisation of the country shook up the dictatorship regime and at the same time made the work of collective mobilisation and individual investment something demanding and innovative. A new engagement rationale is taking shape (Vakaloulis, 2013). To understand this specific rationale for young people means examining motivations and the first forms of involvement. It is also a question of addressing the positioning of the young within the political organisations, unions or associations, and defining how these “experience spaces” simultaneously mobilise subjective experiences and experimentation with new relational modalities and engagement patterns among the young men and women in our survey (Pleyers and Capitaine, 2016, pp. 49–59). Beginning with ethnographic interviews carried out on young activists, we propose to study young women’s and men’s contrasting forms of engagement. The group of young people encountered in this research offer fairly divergent

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profiles and journeys (activists from civil society, political parties and unions, as well as internet activists). All are between 20 and 30 years old. 3.2 Positioning in the engagement and identity reference (political, union, associative) The awakening to activism among the interviewees does not seem to be grounded in any specific ideological precedent. That said, most of the young people attributed to their fathers a more or less important role in their initiation in public affairs. Their fathers are educated and perceived, in the main, as engaged in their professional careers. Just one young man in the group came from a family with a political and ideological tradition. For young women, the events of 14 January, participation in the Kasbah sit-in and the neighbourhood committees represented “an initiation rite” into engagement, while for young men they provided confirmation of their previous experience and a decisive rite of passage in accessing the status of proven political activist. At high school, boys seem to outstrip girls in the discovery of ideas and ideals that are an early guide to their future involvement. One 26-year-old son of a history and geography teacher, a fervent reader like his father, discovered American rap then rock music, which he describes as an art of protest and rebellion against all kinds of oppression. A 27-year-old call centre manager declares that the left-wing political ideas his father inspired in him provided strong motivation throughout the infrequent solidarity demonstrations for the Palestinian people. Three of the young women mention no individual memories or ideologies that shaped their high school careers. Only one emphasised her participation in several demonstrations, enjoying identifying herself with the image of “the leader”. The revolution was a turning point in the path towards activism for various young people interviewed. The call centre worker joined the political party his father founded; his involvement in the events that marked this period was more direct, more politically framed. He explains his capacity to properly decode the issues and the discourses and to identify the people he met in the Kasbah. The influence of the parties in turmoil at that time taught him about the gestation of politics. The profile of the BBC manager is more autonomous, more aware of the challenges. He read the leanings of the actors present at the sit-in but chose to act in his own way: “I was present at Kasbah 1 and 2 … I participated and I withdrew of my own will, not because of the choices of a party.” He is not keen on large demonstrations, but the Kasbah episode, he says, was a necessary step on his way to a different activity. That is different from the young women’s participation. The Tunisie Télécom worker involved in the UGTT union movement was in charge of communication. When she didn’t have a night shift she was at the Kasbah. She led her parents to believe that she had to substitute for one of her colleagues at the call centre. Veiled and sporting the national flag, she described it thus:

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“When I took part in the Kasbah sit-in I was ‘green’, I was just starting to understand political life! I learned a lot at the Kasbah …” Although the other young women didn’t participate in the events, they did follow their progress. And the experience nevertheless drove them towards an engaged choice. The 18-year-old high school student, troubled by the assassination of the leftist activist Chokri Belaïd, joined the Popular Front despite her young age. This trigger event was the origin of her indignation and rising awareness. The 29-year-old president of the International Youth Chamber, a lawyer by training, joined Nidaa Tounes and made the parallel civic decision to join the youth chamber of commerce. This indicates that for young women—the laboratory technician and the Tunisie Télécom worker—it was their character traits and particularly their zest for altruism and aid that motivated their choice of engagement. 3.3 Engagement experiences and the profiles that emerge from them The exercise of freedom of expression and participation in demonstrations and protest movements were opportunities to experiment with citizenship. As an active subject endowed with a “power to act” (Proulx, 2012), the young people get involved to varying degrees in the electoral process. They access new spaces of engagement, such as an increasingly dynamic civil society, unions open to youth skills, parties seeking young activists, and a cyberspace that favours citizens’ power to act. The digital web has established itself as a new space for expression and political and citizen action among young women and men. This new form of citizen participation on the web (internet activism) must not be presented as the antilogy of organised or even institutionalised activism in the field of action. Quite the contrary, this new public space, which is open to all, is seen as the catalyst for the blossoming or consolidation of the potential for engagement or activism. What should be emphasised is that the investment in this new alternative public and citizen space has, for young men, meant the prolonging and consolidation of their activism, while for young women the result was merely the greater awareness of political and union engagement that took shape at the turning point of the revolution. Nevertheless, from these experiences a recognisable activist approach transpires. 3.4 What is the profile of the activist? It is tempting to describe the call centre worker as a professional activist (Martinot-Lagarde, 2008, pp. 48–54), as he places all his trust in his political party. He has benefitted from various work placements abroad, shapes himself in the party ideology and participates in its propaganda. But he is aware of the crisis in political work, especially given young people’s disaffection for the parties. He discovers the practices, attitudes, obstacles and management

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problems that govern classical political work. He therefore considers that the political work crisis means community work needs to be valued. In his words only an institution that confronts dangers such as terrorism is in a position to protect the social fabric and the consciousness of young people. The community work option seems to be placed above political vocations, which conveys a confidence in the effectiveness of the results to be achieved. Passionate about the media, the young student, active in civil society, creates an information website, Tunisie-Face, which specialises in social information. He seeks to take advantage of a series of relationships with young journalists. Currently, he leads an observatory working on the media’s relationship with press ethics. This observatory is a personal initiative that still lacks legal status, but he finds it useful to set his activity within the framework of an association. When it comes to the BBC employee, he has demonstrated a capacity to employ his linguistic and cultural skills (mastery of the English language) to engage in community work at an international level. His paths towards engagement in community work differ from the other interviewees. His cultural level and mastery of English have allowed him to enter the ranks of foreign community workers. Young men tend to position themselves on the sociopolitical scene by favouring the civic framework that provides favourable conditions for citizen engagement. The laboratory technician was appointed regional coordinator for Nidaa and during the elections was a candidate on the secondary list; she has benefitted from training in the party’s political academy and acknowledges its importance in her journey. But, like the young men, she is aware of the problems with political work: “it is difficult to seduce the young into voting for the parties, the disaffection is total, they are right!” She disapproves of what she calls the “mediocre level of the female members of the Constituent Assembly … I am against anyone filling a post who has not mastered the role”. Her strategy is to avoid media visibility in order to dedicate herself to her training first. Making use of her position and her scientific training, she has just created an association focused on environmental concerns. A lawyer by training and president of the International Youth Chamber, she had the idea of placing an office at the Université Libre where she studied. The revolution made saving this network urgent and imperative. The fragility of the situation and the modesty of the means did not stop her planning activities related to her legal specialisation by mobilising a knowledge network. The high school student represents the political activist in the making. She is a loyal Nidaa supporter. She stands apart from the other students of her age for her level of awareness and her capacity to direct her energy and emotion towards political concerns. The young women acknowledge that, as well as politics, unions play an undeniable role in the training for activism. This fits with experience in the

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field of activism at a younger age than among young men, expressing above all the need for a more structured and judicious introduction. They are, however, just as interested as young men with community work because of its effectiveness and its direct ties to their own causes. The turning point of the revolution played a significant role in framing and defining the political attitudes and behaviour of the young men and women. That framing, with different contents, standards and values of freedom of expression and of action, and tangible effectiveness assembled a perception of reality and relations with the other, particularly the social agents of political power (Percheron, 1993). The freedom to act is a dimension that is effective there. This is engagement in well-defined projects, with quicker and more direct visibility. Another feature to highlight is that pragmatism outweighs political ideology. Citizen involvement and participation makes sense for young people. It is based on non-binding structures and privileges proximity and effectiveness. The data collected reveal agreement on the disenchantment with politics. They express the loss of trust in it. Talk of lack of credibility is relatively recurrent in the speech. This rhetoric is constructed around findings of the ambiguity of politics or its difficulty. In the interests of pragmatism and solidarity, the young people interviewed take part in activity that seems similar to that of the “liberal activist” (Martinot-Lagarde, 2008, pp. 48–56), with regard to the place given to community life and the primacy of individual choice. A pragmatic perspective guides community work towards providing services and developing potential (physical, intellectual or spiritual). The party’s or union’s distant position is achieved not by satisfying the activist or their loyalty by initiating a career, but by the convergence of double movement: the personal satisfaction of a genuine need; and the simultaneous aim for an associative democracy (Martinot-Lagarde, 2008, pp. 48–54). The fabric of community participation remains a refuge for most young people, who trust it and participate in establishing an experience of activism.

4 Conclusion In the end, the young women differ from the young men in the sample due to the earliness of their entry into activism and the consequent need for initiation and training. That is what explains the young women primarily joining unions and mentoring organisations for young people (youth centres and cultural institutions) as the settings for their initiation. The parental reference the young people identify with may again play a part. If fathers are a source of influence or awareness, it may be that young men find expression of this facet of their personality and their emancipation easier. Nevertheless, according to the integrated approach to engagement (BraultLabbé and Dubé, 2009), all are fully on the path to engagement and an activist career. At the emotional level they are all drawn by a particular aim, in

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this case participation in public life. They invest emotionally in their cause through meaningful values such as freedom, equity, participation and credibility. Hence a choice of action that can make their engagement real. At a cognitive level all involve planning, perseverance and assessment of the action. A charitable motivation affects the balance of costs and benefits, favouring long-lasting, intense involvement and effective results. Family socialisation—through the family, peers and older people—greatly influences the ethical quality and processes that determine their engagement. It is through the different forms of engagement that young people (men and women) become aware of their real citizenship and, as a result, fight against exclusion in its diverse modulations (gender, generation, socioeconomic status, etc.). The survey reveals that experimenting with citizenship (inside and outside traditional activist institutions) is a means by which young people fight for social recognition in order to position themselves in the new, shifting sociopolitical scene.

Notes 1 The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007–13 under grant agreement no. 613174 for the SAHWA Project (www.sahwa.eu). This publication reflects only the authors’ views. The European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein. 2 Data from SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017; CAWTAR, 2016. 3 G. Balandier, Anthropo-logiques. Paris: PUF, Livre de Poche, Biblio-Essais, 1985, p. 42. 4 The percentage of NEETs (young people who are not in education, employment or training) reveals disparities according to sex and region: 32.4% of young women and 20.3% of young men in the urban environment are NEETs, as against 50.4% and 33.4% in the rural setting. Cf. World Bank Group, ONJ and CMI, Tunisie, Surmonter les obstacles à l’inclusion des jeunes. Tunis, 2014, p. xiii. 5 The second sphere is the legal and political; the third is that of social esteem. Cf. Axel Honneth, “Without recognition, the individual cannot think of themselves as the subject of their own life”. Comments gathered by Alexandra Laignel‐Lavastine, www.philomag.com/article,entretien,axel‐honneth‐sans‐lareconnaissance‐l‐individun e‐peut‐se‐penser‐en‐sujet‐de‐sa‐propre‐vie,180.php.

References Boltanski, L. (1990). L’Amour et la Justice comme compétences. Trois essais de sociologie de l’action. Métailié. Brault-Labbé, A. and Dubé, L. (2009). “Mieux comprendre l’engagement psychologique: revue théorique et proposition d’un modèle intégratif”, Les Cahiers Internationaux de Psychologie Sociale, 2009/1(81), pp. 115–131. DOI: doi:10.3917/ cips.081.0115. Available at: www.cairn.info/revue-les-cahiers-internationaux-de-p sychologie-sociale-2009-1-page-115.htm. CAWTAR (Center of Arab Women for Training and Research) (2016). National Case Study—Tunisia. Available at: http://sahwa.eu/OUTPUTS/Other-publications/Na tional-Case-Study-Tunisia, (Accessed 13 February 2018).

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Dubet, F. (2007). “A propos de la Société du mépris et de la Réification d’Axel Honneth”, La Vie des idées, 29 October. ISSN: 21053030. Available at: www.laviedesi dees.fr/AproposdelaSocietedumepris.html. Honneth, A. (1995). The struggle for recognition. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. Honneth, A. (2004). “La théorie de la reconnaissance: une esquisse”, Revue du MAUSS, 2004/1(23), pp. 133–136. Martinot-Lagarde, P. (2008). “De nouvelles formes d’engagement”, Revue Projet, 2008/4(305), pp. 48–54. Percheron, A. (1993). La socialisation politique. Paris: Armand Colin. Pleyers, G. and Capitaine, B. (2016). “Introduction. Alteractivisme: comprendre l’engagement des jeunes”, Agora débats/jeunesses, 2016/2(73), pp. 49–59. Available at: www.cairn.info/revue-agora-debats-jeunesses-2016-2-page-49.htm. Proulx, S. (2012). La puissance d’agir des citoyens à l’ère numérique: cyber activisme et nouvelles formes d’expression politique en ligne, in Najar, S. (Ed.) Mouvements sociaux en ligne, cyber activisme et nouvelles formes d’expression en Méditerranée. Paris: Karthala. Renault, E. (2007). “Demander le respect. Mépris social et subalternité”, Idées, la revue des sciences économiques et sociales, CNDP, pp. 14–19. Rivière, C. and Lapeyronnie, D. (2009). “Ghetto urbain. Ségrégation, violence, pauvreté en France aujourd’hui”, Lectures, Les comptes rendus, uploaded 13 December 2009. Available at: http://lectures.revues.org/5542. Rousset, M. (2015). “L’urgence? En finir avec le culte du mépris”, Marianne. Available at: www.marianne.net/debattons/idees/lurgence-en-finir-avec-le-culte-du-mepris. SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017). Data File Edition 3.0. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). Sánchez-Montijano, E., Martínez, I., Bourekba, M. and Dal Zotto, E. (2017). SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 Descriptive Report. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). Vakaloulis, M. (2013). “Quelle France dans 10 ans?” Contribution de Michel Vakaloulis, philosophe, “L’avenir est entre nos mains”, La jeunesse en mouvement, 18 November.

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Revolt, re-marginalisation and co-optation1 Youth political participation in Egypt Bahgat Korany AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF CAIRO

1 Introduction2 Among Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries, Egypt—because of its long history and demographic and sociopolitical weight—is relatively over-researched. On the surface, this seems to be the case for its youth too. For instance, New York’s World Population Council has its regional headquarters for West Asia and North Africa in Cairo, which published two excellent reports on Egypt’s youth in 2009 and 2014. But apart from the known data about youth voting, these reports contain no analysis of political participation. The United Nations Development Programme rightly devoted its 2016 Arab Human Development Report to youth. Though some parts deal with civic engagement, this report likewise mentions voting figures and other figures about youth orientation towards democracy but does not analyse political participation. In fact, in none of these publications does the item “political participation” appear even in the table of contents. Some current publications appear to deal with political aspects, even if they are still skewed towards the Tahrir context and its immediate aftermath, rather than the post-2014 situation,3 dubbed here “statisation”. At present, youth4 is at the centre of Egypt’s attention, and at the highest level. Was 2016 not declared by Egypt’s president the Year of the Youth, and were six youth forums not held during the last two years, the last one in November 2017, with presidential participation? And yet in only the last two years, two laws have been introduced that are restrictive of youth activities (al-Ahram, 25 October 2017, and see below), whether concerning club activities and universities or the use of social media. The solution to this apparent paradox is that youth participation is allowed mainly through the state. This goes beyond the marginalisation of youth’s independent participation to become governmental political control, especially with security clearing— that is, statisation. Such control from above explains the challenge in data collection on any youth political participation outside state control. In fact, it was hard during the myriad interviews we conducted to obtain data from some interviewees, even if we approached the issue very indirectly. Consequently, this chapter’s main argument is that youth political participation

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exists in two parallel types at two extremes: informal/outside main official channels (especially through social media) versus statised. Similarly to Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall (Sik, 2015), the analysis of youth in the Arab Mediterranean countries has to include as a benchmark the “Arab Spring” and its dynamics. After all, Bouazizi’s self-immolation in December 2010 became literally and metaphorically the spark of this “Arab Spring”. The 2010 death of Egypt’s Khaled Sa’eed from police torture was another spark. Youth political participation is analysed here through three phases: 1

2

3

Widespread search for alternatives through different organisations and culminating in the Tahrir protests of January/February 2011. This was informal, that is, youth groups acted outside established political structures such as political parties.5 This is probably one of the most important differences in youth political socialisation6 between the North and South Mediterranean countries. Informal political participation maintained this pattern in its second phase, 2011–13, through other youth groups such as Ultras and Tamarod/ Rebellion. However, what distinguishes a third phase, 2013–17, is what I call the explicit “statisation” of youth political participation. It is the co-optation of many of them through state channels at the highest level, such as the Presidential Leadership Programme (PLP), institutionalised in 2015. This co-optation does not negate the youth-as-many-groups approach adopted here. It is both a characteristic of youth political participation and an impediment to its effectiveness.

This chapter is structured in ten sections. Following the introductory section above, section 2 starts with four charts about the state of youth political participation or lack thereof, that is, their marginalisation. Section 3 makes explicit the analytical framework: the revised contentious politics and its basis, youth political socialisation, which shaped their political participation in Tahrir. Section 4 concentrates on Tahrir, corresponding to phase I, characterised by mass participation outside established political structures/channels. Section 5 (corresponding to phase II) traces the lack of coordination after Tahrir and the arrival of two other youth groups; though these youth groups managed to bring down the Muslim Brotherhood regime in 2013, as was done two years earlier with Mubarak’s, both regimes were finally replaced by another general-turned-president. Though on the surface, the present regime has youth at the centre of its policies—as section 6 shows— this is based much more on control than on independent youth partnership: statisation is more than nationalisation, as everything seems to be decided at the top as the dominant form of youth political participation (phase III). Section 7 dissects interview data in support of such statisation. Section 8 returns to quantitative data to document implicit divergence in ranking youth

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priorities. Section 9 reiterates the primacy of establishing youth machinery for effective political participation. Finally, the conclusion reiterates this chapter’s main argument: youth fragmentation is at the basis of governmental success in youth statisation. To back up its analysis, this chapter counts on its field work and two data sets: first, the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017; Sánchez-Montijano et al., 2017) demonstrated in nine charts that show current youth political alienation and mistrust of the “system” and its components; and second, four sets of interviews conducted in 2015 with data that speak for youth from inside as well outside the government (SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork 2015). All data indicate that youth fragmentation and lack of institutional machinery that links different youth groups politically and socially—especially in the countryside—limit the effectiveness of their political participation. Though under-researched, the anatomy of youth group multiplicity and lack of coordination is a prerequisite to understand such youth limitations and the success of the counter-revolution. For instance, as early as the autumn of 2011, about 153 youth groups applied to join the “national dialogue”, while some of the best-known declined participation. Therefore for analytical clarity, we trace youth political participation through analysis of dominant youth groups that initially conducted their protests through other organisations, on the way en masse to Tahrir and beyond.

2 Youth alienation from politicians, political institutions and their “system”: some SAHWA data All data—quantitative and qualitative—are consistent: youth did not trust their political system with its different components: institutions, the people manning them, their processes and the resulting policies. These data are not only consistent but also explicit. For Figure 4.1, if we add up the first six responses of this 11-point scale (0 = no confidence / 10 = absolute confidence), two-thirds show varying degrees of low trust in their government, and zero trust is more than 15%. The data in Figure 4.2 are overwhelming: the degree of trust in institutions working for the people and speaking in their name—political parties—does not attain 8% as the total of the last five responses. Almost 45% have zero trust. Politicians fare even worse (Figure 4.3): only about 6%, as the total of the last five responses, trust them, and 46% have zero trust. This low level of trust in the “system” is reflected in voting (Figure 4.4). Voting (or lack thereof) is conventionally considered an explicit indicator of political participation. Almost 82% of the youth interviewed do not care to vote, either because of lack of interest or because many think that in the final analysis it does not make much difference. Mistrust of the political system, coupled with the feeling of incapacity to change it, is the characteristic of the majority of youth. As the interview data below will show, many no longer care.

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Figure 4.1 How much trust do you have in government in Egypt? Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

Figure 4.2 How much trust do you have in political parties in Egypt? Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

Figure 4.3 How much trust do you have in politicians in Egypt? Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

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Figure 4.4 Voting behaviour Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

3 Guiding the analysis: contentious politics … revised This youth alienation guides the choice of the analytical framework applied here—revised “contentious politics”—as the most relevant paradigm to decode and understand the situation on the ground (Tarrow, 1998; Tilly, 1975). For what characterises the “Arab Spring” in Egypt and elsewhere in the region is the intensity and density of its 2011 protests, which exemplify a peak in contentious politics. Contentious politics is “a phase of heightened conflict across the social system … A combination of organized and unorganized participation and sequences of intensified … information flow and interaction between challenges and authorities” (Tarrow, 1998, p. 142). As an analytical framework, standard contentious politics emphasises three principal components: 1 resource mobilisation; 2 political opportunity structure; and 3 frames. Resource mobilisation denotes par excellence collective action as the essence of contentious politics. For instance, in January 2011, when Mubarak’s government cut off mobile phone and internet facilities, many parents rushed to the streets to get news about their sons and daughters. They then witnessed first-hand vivid instances of police brutality. Provoked and shocked by this brutality, they spontaneously pulled together for self-defence and defence of their children. As a result, improvised food chains were initiated, sleeping tents with blankets were brought to Tahrir Square, and some doctors established emergency clinics on the spot. Indeed, the cutting off of communication channels backfired across the country and was transformed from a constraint into more mobilisation and an opportunity. Political opportunity structure (POS) emphasises the process itself: why people participate and why their numbers increase in contention. POS is thus a consistent—but not necessarily formal—dimension of the political struggle. Consequently, POS is useful in accounting for the evolution of the contention, and for its chances of success or failure. As mentioned in the example above, the cutting off of communication channels and seeing police brutality

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provoked ordinary people’s sentiments so much that their numbers in the streets increased rather than decreased. Police forces became increasingly overpowered to the point of collapse. The eventual evacuation of the police forces from the streets on 28/29 January indicates an increase in the POS. Another POS increase arose with the divisions within the political elite. Indeed, a heated debate took place between Mubarak and his minister of the interior, Habib al-Adli, when shortly thereafter Mubarak had to ask the armed forces to quell the demonstrations. But they refused to fire on the people, and some photographs show on the contrary scenes of camaraderie between the armed forces and the protesters. POS thus acts like an open door that protesters realise they can pass through, or are strong enough to push open. POS therefore plays a double role. It is a process factor that accounts for the chances of success of the protest. Equally important, POS addresses the nagging problem of agency versus structure, and acts like a bridge between the two to emphasise the impact of agency—the protesters—in influencing the contention’s political results. POS does show par excellence this organic interaction between agency and structure in Tahrir, principally through media, old and new. For people in the localities away from the action, in cities and villages—as well as sympathisers abroad—media communicated the picture and validated the existence of a common cause and a joint frame of action, the third pillar of the contentious politics approach. Frames help people define their interactions in a similar way, thereby coming together, that is, to achieve a frame of ideological or cultural alignment. Frames create this cultural and/or ideological glue by offering people “interpretative schemes … to make sense of events” (Tarrow, 1998, p. 19). This common perception of events creates a collective, shared feeling that transforms a mass of protesters into a unified and coordinated group. In Egypt’s case, this commonality is based on patterns of youth political socialisation. Figure 4.5 and Figure 4.6 demonstrate that in addition to the equally common alienation of the “system” and its politicians as shown in Figures 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4, this (negative) political socialisation and generational divide acted as a glue of youth contentious political participation. This is a generation that lives very much within itself, with its peers of the “virtual world” and based on its cult of social media. Young people who participated in the revolution rated the importance of different sources of information in the following way (on a scale of 1 to 10): Twitter 5.5, Internet news 6.4, Facebook 7.1. And as many as 91.7% believe the internet gives citizens the ability to affect government policy (Osman and Girgis, 2016). This youth togetherness is duly emphasised by the standard contentious politics paradigm. It rightly explains youth success in toppling the Mubarak regime on 11 February 2011 after 21 days of protests in Tahrir. This is, however, half the story. What about the post-Tahrir period when youth political participation was less effective? This is why the standard formulation of the contentious politics paradigm cannot be simply imported into this chapter. It has to be de-simplified. Its

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Figure 4.5 Political socialisation: how often do you discuss national political affairs in Egypt with your father? Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

Figure 4.6 Political socialisation: how often do you discuss national political affairs in Egypt with your mother? Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

predominant version is based on the dichotomy of protesters versus authorities. Though initially true, even Tahrir reflected a much more complex situation of multiple groups. This group multiplicity became increasingly dominant during the post-Tahrir period and is correlated with less effective youth political participation. Organisations such as the 6 April Youth Movement, Kullina Khaled Sa’eed (Egypt’s Bouazizi), Kefaya, and Mohamed El-Baradei’s Coalition for Change

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initiated the mobilisation of protesters in the streets on 25 January. They were then joined by other youth groups, increasing their diversity and dynamics. Thus, although the contentious politics paradigm is most relevant and useful in decoding Tahrir’s microcosm, it has to be supplemented—and not supplanted—by explicitly focusing on the “group diversity” conceptual lens. If emphasis on group dynamics is not factored in, we will be unable to account for the limitations of youth political participation after its peak in Tahrir. Indeed, since Egypt cannot be analysed as a monolithic society, neither should be its youth. Though Tahrir protests were initially a predominantly Cairene representation, they soon evolved into a national and diversified one. In addition to the middle-class youth who initiated the revolution, many young Egyptians poured in from Cairo’s slums, to be joined later by people from the countryside (the opposite of the Tunisian pattern). Protesters’ unity notwithstanding, Tahrir still embodied inherent national diversity, with its group dynamics among rich and poor, males and females, and urban-based and rural-based. Though under-researched, youth group diversity was the characteristic.

4 Mapping principal youth groups and their political participation/socialisation In the initial phase youth unity was present—at least in a negative or “anti” sense. Many got their initial political socialisation and public training outside established political parties (and their families, as Figures 4.5 and 4.6 show). Consequently, what characterises the pattern of their political participation— despite their inherent group multiplicity—is that they are “anti” these parties. Their political participation and political socialisation were in mass protest organisations.7 Of these, Kefaya (“Enough”) was a pioneer and catalyst in street protests (El-Mahdi, 2009; al-Shurbagi, 2010), and the National Coalition for Change was identified with Mohammed El-Baradei, former Egyptian diplomat, former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Nobel Peace Prize winner. But both organisations severely disappointed the youth. “It was a disaster”, exploded Maha El-Gamal, the long-time activist with El-Baradei. She added: “El-Baradei surrounded himself with amateurs and opportunists who were never on the same page with each other” (Khalil, 2012, pp. 112–114). Young protestors had no choice but to depend on themselves and establish their own bodies—four are mentioned here. Two were central in Tahrir: the 6 April Youth Movement and Kullina Khaled Sa’eed. 6 April Youth Movement (Harakat Shabab 6 Abril). The establishment of 6 April Youth Movement coincided with the mass labour protests on 6 April 2008 in al-Mahalla al-Kubra, an industrial textile town in the middle of the Nile Delta. The founders were all young men and women, notably Ahmed Maher, Asmaa Mahfouz and Israa Abdel Fattah, who later became Tahrir icons, indeed household names. By 2009, the movement could count on connections with about 70,000 young and educated sympathisers.

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Because some of its members went to Serbia to see on the ground how nonviolent means had toppled dictator Slobodan Milosevic, they tended to promote the same tactics in Egypt. But such a silmiya (non-violent) approach did not prevent police repression. On 6 April 2009 the movement was attacked, its websites hacked, and many of its members arrested. Though their demonstrations did not rally more than a few hundred, they learned how to organise to converge from many street directions simultaneously, a technique that proved its usefulness later as it overpowered police forces during Tahrir. Movement members also learned how to mitigate the effects of tear gas by covering the faces with handkerchiefs soaked in vinegar, and how to make rudimentary armour against the riot police. These tactics became in fact the trademark of success in Tahrir. National and international networking was a characteristic of these youth movements as we will also see with Kullina Khaled Sa’eed. Kullina Khaled Sa’eed (‘We Are All Khaled Saeed’). Khaled Sa’eed was a 28-year-old man, arrested and publicly beaten to death by the police in Alexandria in June 2010. Against police claims that he choked to death on drugs, photographs of his mutilated body were taken by his brother in the morgue and circulated on the internet. Like Tunisia’s Bouazizi, Sa’eed became the symbol of police brutality and the callous state in Egypt. Mass protest movements usually need a spark to ignite them, and Sa’eed’s torture and mutilation—like Bouazizi’s self-immolation—provided this spark. The Time correspondent witnessed on the spot how El-Baradei’s militants, for instance, used the Khaled Sa’eed case to incite people to mobilise: “Mehitab Jellani, a young veiled woman and long-time political activist, kept a copy in her purse of Khaled Saeed’s iconic autopsy, pulling it out to remind the undecided about the casual daily police brutality that had become commonplace under the emergency laws” (Khalil, 2012, p. 109). Wael Ghoneim, the Google Middle East executive, and the secret administrator of Kullina Khaled Sa’eed, starts his documentary book with his kidnapping on the streets of downtown Cairo just a few days before the Tahrir eruption. He recounts how the illuminated downtown streets became suddenly shrouded in darkness when he was pushed into a car, handcuffed and blindfolded. One of the two security police constantly pushed his head down to his knees so that nobody outside could see what was happening, unlike the public beating of Khaled Sa’eed. But once the blindfolded Ghoneim arrived at the Secret Police headquarters, the beating started in earnest, amidst a mixture of sadistic police laughter and insults. Ghoneim appropriately titles his first chapter “The Republic of Fear” (Ghoneim, 2012, pp. 27–28). The subtitle of this documentary autobiography is revealing: The Power of the People is Greater than the People in Power. The website and its administration are an embodiment of the mobilising impact of social media on the road to Tahrir, fuelling the revolution. Social media impact continued selfgenerated when Ghoneim remained in solitary confinement for 11 days. Moreover, if Google had not publicised around the world the cry “Where is Ghoneim?” he could possibly have been another Khaled Sa’eed.

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Written in colloquial Arabic to avoid any elitist tendency and to reach as many as possible, the reaction to this instant messaging was indeed impressive: 300 subscribers in the first two minutes, 3,000 in the first hour, then 100,000 about a week later before settling at 250,000 frequent visitors. The language used is indeed angry, rebellious, lively and very mobilising, with folkloric songs to energise mass feelings of protest and incite their translation into action. The site was also connected to other web pages such as that of Khaled El-Naggar of the El-Baradei campaign, and to well-established bloggers such as the award-winner Wael Abbas. With such networking, this site substantiates the contentious politics’ mobilisational component and social media as an alternative revolutionary forum. As Kullina Khaled Sa’eed repeatedly insisted, Egypt, after this young man’s death, should not be the same as before. Indeed, the change was taking place. In preparation for the 25 January mobilisation, the site published a long sixpage reminder of governmental “achievements”, with official statistics in support—youth unemployment, systemic corruption at the top level, widespread poverty, increasing levels of child anaemia, and even growing rates of national depression. The site insisted on two demands to be immediately met to cope with the disastrous situation: abolishing emergency laws and limiting the presidential mandate. It ended by specifying meeting points for mass protests: four in Cairo, two in Alexandria, two in Ismailia, as well as others in al-Mahalla al-Kubra, Tanta and Sohag. There were suggestions for mobilising slogans, including two inspired by the Tunisian revolution. Also included were practical guidelines for demonstrator protection and maximum effectiveness (Ghoneim, 2012, pp. 181, 188–194). And the 25 January mass demonstrations took place.8 After a long day and night in Tahrir, the site administrator wrote: “25 January is not the end of the regime but the beginning of its end” (Ghoneim, 2012, p. 200).

5 Post-Tahrir contentious politics and more youth groups Contrary to widespread wisdom, and as seen above, contentious politics and protest in Egypt have existed before Tahrir, mainly through strikes and labour sit-ins. These acted as dress rehearsal for the massive 2011 Tahrir events. SAHWA data reveal such transformation in terms of political socialisation and a youth feeling of empowerment. What is unexpected, however, is that such extreme and uncontrolled contentious politics continued and even increased after the fall of the old regime, but without the needed political machinery. The youth failed to organise, maintain unity and institutionalise demand for change through specific and operational modalities. Instead, two new youth groups joined the political scene as new political actors, the Ultras and Tamarod (Rebellion), amidst chaotic street politics. The Ultras are not exactly a new force, as they existed before as an influential football group. During 2007, different football club supporters clashed, provoking the involvement of security forces. This marked the Ultras’

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presence as a powerful entity, able to mobilise and organise cheering activities. Most importantly, the Ultras did not accept partnership or orders from their club heads or leaders, and therefore remained autonomous. In Tahrir and after and as a political actor, they capitalised on football’s mass popularity and mobilisational power. For instance, Ultras participation was effective in the protection of Tahrir Square during the “Battle of the Camel”, an attempt by the outgoing regime to violently disperse the protesters. This political participation aspect strengthened the ongoing rivalry between security forces and Ultras. After the Port Said incident, where dozens of football fans were killed in clashes with security forces, Ultras used their mobilisational power in organising marches across Egypt and sit-ins at the district attorney’s office. However, this was done without coordination with other youth groups, a further confirmation not only of group multiplicity but especially non-coordination. The other newcomer, Tamarod, initially acted differently and attempted coordination, but in the end acted alone. Tamarod as a group was founded in late April 2013 by some members of the popular Egyptian movement Kefaya. Independently or not,9 Tamarod had as a declared objective to get rid of the first civilian president in more than 60 years, the Muslim Brotherhood Mohamed Morsi. Tamarod gave an ultimatum to President Morsi to step down, as he did not consult, and only listened to his Muslim Brotherhood “group of friends”. Tamarod had planned the mass protests to coincide with the first anniversary of Morsi’s presidency. Ahmed Abdo, one of the movement’s founding members, says that the idea of Tamarod went back to five people who wanted to remind Egyptians of the revolution and its goals after a notable failure in political change and a worsening situation. Tamarod started out simply as photocopying a petition (ten piasters per copy) and collecting signatures with names and national IDs. It first started out in the governorate of Port Said, which was already witnessing signs of civil disobedience. The petition collected around 200,000 signatures in its first week. It quickly gained support among opposition parties such as Dostur, al-Tayar al-Sha’bi, al-Misriyin al-Ahrar, Kefaya and 6 April Youth Movement. Mahmoud Badr headed this Tamarod movement and successfully collected more than 22 million signatures demanding President Mohamed Morsi step down. The petition complained: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Security has not been restored; The poor “have no place” in society; The government has had to “beg” the International Monetary Fund for a US$4.8 billion loan to help shore-up public finances; There has been “no justice” for people killed by security forces during the uprising and at anti-government protests since then; “No dignity is left” for Egyptians or their country; The economy has “collapsed”, with low growth and high inflation; Egypt is “following in the footsteps” of the United States.

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As we now know, Tamarod was indeed effective in getting rid of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood regime, resulting in the takeover of the presidency through the election as president of the former minister of defence. But this apparent instance of effective political participation did not make youth an independent effective political actor.

6 What do the prime stakeholders think? The qualitative data Three interviewees, from student unions and government, including a representative of the new post of youth assistant to minister, further the above analysis. Alaa, a graduate of the American University in Cairo, served as president of its student union. He was successful in reviving what was known as the Egyptian Student Union (Ittihad Tullab Misr), which brought together private and state university students. His political participation pattern was to promote youth empowerment initiatives through social dialogue with authorities, coupled with mobilisation waves to go down the main streets. Demands included having a civilian president, an improved economy, a fight against corruption, etc. The revolution of 30 June 2013 that brought Sisi to power was believed to be a path corrector, or something that would put the Egyptians back on track. Sherif is rather the post-Tahrir embodiment of disillusionment. His priority was reform of the constitution, the main contract that governed interaction between government and citizens. With the events of 30 June 2013, Sherif was discouraged and preferred to quit political life, as government policies in his view continued to exclude youth. While the two disagreed with regard to continuing or quitting, both Alaa and Sherif converged when it came to the idea of local councils. This prospect of a 25% youth quota seems to be a promising start for youth participation. Provided such elections are conducted properly, Sherif will then “return to politics”. Indeed, both are apprehensive of “bureaucratic intervention”—(the socalled deep state that includes the security services). In Sherif ’s words, “We do not know what is happening or what has happened”, even with other youth bodies. This non-coordination seems to be at the basis of youth action and “Post-Tahrir demonstrated the lack of effective youth leadership to counter the deep state, or bring unity among youth factions. Another problem among the youth today is the non-acknowledgement of this very problem. In other words, youth today must acknowledge the bureaucratic regime that is vested in all aspects of the Egyptian society, so that we can actually devise a solution and act upon it”. When it comes to youth in the decision-making process, Alaa highlights that a huge percentage of Egyptian youth still lack basic skills and are somewhat unqualified to lead and formulate policies. Sherif agrees. Again, they stress that government and civil society organisations need to have a clear vision of how to develop and efficiently use the power vested in those people.

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Alaa’s main policy recommendation is to actually make use of those entrepreneurs who do exist but need to be guided and encouraged. “This way, Egypt can produce a calibre that can lead in all aspects of the future. While the government has recently attempted to recruit and encourage participation of youth assistants to several ministers, bureaucracy or ‘deep state’ is still an obstacle that derails the effectiveness of such youth participation.” 6.1 Governmental youth working on youth policies Youth working on youth issues expressed a slightly different point of view. The interviewee is a young person, part of the new policy to recruit youth as assistants to some ministers, and holds the key position of assistant to the minister of youth and sports. He ranks youth challenges differently, the main challenge being unemployment—indeed, for him it represents the major cause of all other challenges. “Egyptian youth lack needed skills that would help their employability … Though youth empowerment through skill-building and training programmes is a prime governmental objective, resources are limited compared to the number of youth.” He also mentioned the political problem: a lack of transparency that constitutes a challenge for the government towards youth, as the government is unable to build trust with youth. Consequently, there should be dialogue with “credible” youth representatives, in order to create a National Youth Policy document. He noted, however, that government policies have been changing slightly towards more inclusion for youth. “As confirmed by the PLP, and the president’s speeches and decisions, the top policymaker is more aware of youth power and potential, … an important step towards youth political empowerment.” In this context, “the role of youth is as a watchdog of government policies, providing initiatives in collaboration with NGOs [non-governmental organisations] and civil society organisations … These are gates towards more active youth”.10

7 Plus ça change … continuing statisation The Presidential Leadership Programme is the incarnation of the present regime’s youth policies. It began in 2015 with an eight-month training course, while youth assistants to ministers were appointed and 2016 was declared the Year of the Youth. In its first version, the PLP included 500 young people (aged 20 to 30) from all governorates, meant to be a representative sample of Egypt (so, for example, only four came from the very elitist American University in Cairo). The three-day Sharm El Sheikh conference, with 3,100 participants, was more of a graduation project, which also aimed to showcase the present regime’s emphasis on youth in its policies.11 According to one PLP member on the spot, the conference worked through eight forums, including 84 sessions totalling 126 hours, and ended with a set of recommendations on the issues debated. These became the basis of the six recommendations that the president announced in the closing ceremony.

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Since then, six periodic youth conferences with the participation of the president have been held, aired on public television. The last (in November 2017), designed as a youth UN, conducted a simulation exercise of global problems from development to terrorism. In addition, a long-term and institutional step is the 2017 announcement of the National Youth Academy for Training, administratively part of the presidency of the republic (Presidential Decree of 29/08/2017). Inspired by the French model of an École nationale d’administration for the formation of high-level state administrators, the academy’s main aim is to sharpen the skills of young people to participate in the development of all state sectors, thus making youth the state’s new civil servants. The academy’s board of trustees will consist of the prime minister, presidency representatives, the Supreme Council of Universities, and ministers of higher education, planning and finance.

8 Youth group diversity, non-coordinated priorities Differences among interviewees are—expectedly—due to their position in the socio-political system. However, youth empowerment—in the technical sense of market qualifications, employment or a political sense of partnership or participation—is a point of consensus. Figure 4.7 and Figure 4.8 confirm two main trends: whereas political alienation is confirmed, the top ranking of the need for employment is also confirmed as an existential issue for the majority, indeed pressing for daily survival. Indeed, the 2015 report of the National Council for Social Services and Development indicates that as many as 91% of the unemployed are under the age of 29 (Akl, 2017). In fact, the primacy of gaining employment is so widespread, especially for women, that many are ready to accept lower wages or even be “exiled” in order to have a job.12 What these figures do not show, but interviews explicitly demonstrated, is that as many as 74% of those interviewed indicated that to get a job you need wasta, a personal connection. Young people thus tell us that equality of opportunity is a mere slogan that lacks substance. This adds to youth political alienation and social exclusion.

Figure 4.7 Lack of employment as first concern: what is your personal situation? Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

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Figure 4.8 Would you accept a job even if it was … ? Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

Figure 4.9 How did you get your current job? Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

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9 Youth political participation: the primacy of a coordinating machinery A basic conclusion from both the interview data and Figures 4.1 to 4.4 above is that youth were united by both mistrust of traditional formal political institutions and their generational divide from conventional agents of political socialisation. These common elements brought them together and motivated their search for alternatives. However, as group multiplicity is a characteristic of society, any society, Egyptian youth reflected it. As a result of lack of youth political machinery, efforts to cope with their group multiplicity were uncoordinated and resulted in fragmentation and fractionalisation. Consequently, they tended to improvise rather than strategise, and fall victim to their own differences, and their political participation was predominantly and increasingly statised. Thus, on 4 November 2017, Sharm El Sheikh hosted the World Youth Forum, the sixth in a series of conferences Egypt has held since October 2016. This last one specifically aimed to assure the national and international community that the Egyptian government is working tirelessly to build bridges of trust with Egyptian youth, with its appealing slogan We Need to Talk. However, to “welcome” this World Youth Forum, on 24 October 2017 the Egyptian parliament approved in principle the Youth Entities Act, which replaces Law 77 of 1975 on the national associations for youth and sports welfare. As Article 6 of the draft text puts it, its aim is the “prevention of participation in political party and religious activities, or promoting them”. Clubs and youth organisations are conceived so broadly under “youth entities” that they could include state or private universities (Farouk, 2017). To further marginalise youth autonomous political participation, the Demonstration Law 107 of 2013 and the Combating Terrorism Laws 8 and 94 of 2015 take aim at the internet and social media to restrict public space. In the language of strategic and security studies, (non-statised) youth participation is securitised—that is, perceived as a threat to sociopolitical order. This chapter attributes such statisation and some successes of the counterrevolution to lack of political machinery and coordination to cope with fragmentation of youth groups. As mentioned above, when the transitional ruling SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) launched one of its “national dialogues” in the autumn of 2011 it announced that as many as 153 youth groups had agreed to take part! These, however, were not all the existing youth groups, as many—and some of the best-known ones—declined participation. The main point here is that in the hazy post–January 2011 era, many organisations were established, and many in name only. Such fragmentation— though exaggerated and manipulated by counter-revolution forces—still reflects the youth’s lack of experience in establishing political machinery. The closest they came to the establishment of any political institution was when they discovered a rallying opposition figure (like El-Baradei and his National Coalition for Change), or were inspired by a politically provocative event (as in the case of Kullina Khaled Sa’eed). As shown above, both were short-lived

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as they did not follow up by establishing a specifically youth political machinery. The result of failure to coordinate group multiplicity is fragmentation, improvisation and vulnerability to co-optation.

10 Conclusion The above analysis demonstrates that youth political participation, past and present, is so controlled from above we can call it statised. To escape this state control, youth tried to acquire their political socialisation through the protesting political organisations outside state structures or formal opposition. Even in these political bodies, they were marginalised and became increasingly alienated. As Maged Osman, former Cairo University professor and minister of communications and now head of the public opinion survey body Baseera, put it: Although young people played a major role during the 2011 and 2013 revolutions, … according to the two polls conducted by Baseera their participation in referendums and elections is low … in the 2014-presidential elections just 27 percent of total interviewed voters, … although this 18–30 age group makes up 37 percent of eligible voters. Similarly … in the 2015-parliamentary elections … figures did not exceed 20 percent. [Moreover] only 4 percent knew the correct dates of the elections in their governorates during the first phase of voting, and only 29 percent knew the dates during the second phase. (Osman and Girgis, 2016, p. 4) In contrast, and as the data above indicate, new social media13 as an informal participation channel are still the preferred means of mobilisation among the youth and indeed proved their impact already in 2011 with Kullina Khaled Sa’eed, a pillar of Tahrir effectiveness. But websites and channels are increasingly controlled by the authorities and cannot substitute for effective organisation on the ground, especially in the countryside and urban informal settlements, where most of the youth live. Indeed, we face here one of the important obstacles, other than governmental control, to youth political effectiveness: in addition to the multiplicity of their groups and the lack of coordination or coalition-building, the absence of youth organisation and rootedness in the lower strata of society, the countryside and the slums of big cities. Data in recent field research confirm youth group multiplicity and noncoordination, even over priorities, by showing divergence amongst youth: mainstream versus youth activists (Hasan, 2016).

Notes 1 The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007–13 under grant agreement no.

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Bahgat Korany 613174 for the SAHWA Project (www.sahwa.eu). This publication reflects only the author’s views. The European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein. My thanks are to Mostafa Al-Sayyad of the SAHWA Cairo team for help with data collection. A younger generation of Egyptian political scientists is now dealing with some aspects of this lacuna, e.g., Allam, 2017; Sika, 2016. This chapter, as the SAHWA Project, is based on the assumption of the existence of distinct generations, and that the 15–29-year-olds can be conceptualised as a distinct unit of analysis, the so-called youth bulge. Contrary to the famous 2009 World Bank Report, Egypt’s youth is not “in waiting” but on the move. The chapter does not conceive of youth only—or even mainly—as a biological life stage but as a social category with a distinct culture, values, mindset and problems/ assets. They are also living—contrary to previous youth generations—in an era of globalisation, the so-called global village. As shown in their organisations, such as Kullina Khaled Sa’eed, and their mobilisation efforts they are thus both the embodiment and the driver of the ICT (information communications technology) revolution in Egypt. Mainly because of space, this chapter focuses on the under-researched political aspect and does not deal with the important gender aspect. For such dimensions, see Allam, 2017. Basically, control and social exclusion of youth are magnified when you are a woman, especially if you have been an activist or express liberal views—stigmatised as “loose behaviour”. Political socialisation is basic as it shapes political participation, both as a political culture and a political behaviour. Basic texts on political sociology and political science devote detailed space to its analysis, e.g., Lichbach and Zuckerman, 1997; Lim, 2006. In the 64 months from October 2003 to January 2009, there were 1,321 protests, of which 47.9% were demands for socioeconomic rights (Siam, 2010). These continued after 2011, becoming increasingly violent. When Ghoneim was released on 7 February, he was received by no less than the minister of the interior. He was accompanied home by the newly appointed secretary-general of the governing National Democratic Party, Dr Hossam Badrawi. When negotiating to appear on one of the most popular talk shows, The 10pm, he imposed his conditions: to talk uninterrupted as much as he wanted, and to receive in return 1 million Egyptian pounds, to be given in his name to the families of the 25 January martyrs. Both conditions were immediately accepted. During the programme, Ghoneim’s collapse in tears over the discussion of martyrs and his storming out of the studio publicised even more the ugliness of the callous regime. Its end was in sight, as Mubarak finally stepped down three days later, on 11 February. One of the most controversial and unverified assertions is that Tamarod acted— initially or later—with support from the very top to facilitate the return of the military to power. This controversy raises the issue of youth group multiplicity and their non-coordination, necessarily leading to state-controlled political participation. A similar view is confirmed by SAHWA interviews conducted in 2015 with two former ministers of youth and sports of the Mubarak regime, Dr Ali Helal and Dr Safei Kharboush, convinced of statisation of youth participation. Both characterised the post-Tahrir context as that of politically more active youth with more calls for social and political changes. Helal mentioned that there had been a “politicisation” of Egyptian youth—that is, soaring involvement in politics but also declining enthusiasm, illustrated by less participation in voting in the constitutional referendum and presidential and potentially parliamentary elections (which

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indeed happened in the different election rounds of October–November 2015). However, the same interviewee mentioned that more participation from youth would be expected in local council elections, which allocated a 25% youth quota and allowed for 21-year-olds to run for such elections. Moreover, with regards to political participation and youth behaviour, both interviewees agreed that youth failed to participate or form their own political parties as they failed to unite. 11 In addition to the first PLP of 500 graduates, this conference included 500 university students, 500 youth from political parties, 500 from the ministry of youth who were active in local youth councils, 500 youth representing media and art, and 600 who applied through the website. 12 Two interviewees from UNICEF Egypt who worked as both programme officer and consultant in the youth and adolescence development and participation programme saw unemployment as the pressing challenge, and believed that youth education is not adapted to market conditions and available jobs. There is still a tendency among many youth to work in the overloaded and uninspiring public sector, while its innovative members are drained—if only informally—out of it. Moreover, one of the interviewees spoke about a problem of social exclusion, forcing youth to create their own world and produce their own culture such as the Ultras and the “Mahragan” songs, blaming social exclusion on the youth’s lack of trust in the government and society in general, when they are not treated as partners. Finally, both interviewees agreed as well that the educational system needs a long-term plan to ensure sustainability and a better quality to cope with future needs of youth. 13 It is estimated that, worldwide, youth-dominated social media in 2017 used 156 million emails and 16 million SMSs per minute. MENA and Egypt are part of this communication revolution. The report by Digital Media Science states that Arab users spend three to seven hours online, that 88% of users access social media websites daily, and that on average 10 million tweets and 258 million views on YouTube are produced by Arabs every day. In the analysis of digital media trends in the MENA region in 2014, Egypt represents the biggest internet population with almost 40 million users, including 22 million on Facebook, followed by Google+, Twitter and Instagram. People are so addicted to social media that as many as just under 90% use it daily and 26% access it at work. Moreover, findings showed that Egyptians ranked the highest in MENA on activities like instant messaging and updating social media, and that 51% share their comments and opinions online. As analysis especially of Kullina Khaled Sa’eed showed, social media were the key mobilisational aspect that coordinated among different youth groups and made Tahrir a public revolutionary space, an effective possible channel that finally brought down Mubarak. Realising the importance of social media, the government has been after their control. In 2017 alone, the government used various reasons to close down 21 websites, even issuing a law about cybercrime and associating its control with the fight against terrorism.

References Akl, Z. (2017). Egyptian Youth and Political Participation. Cairo: Al-Ahram Foundation, Center for Political and Strategic Studies. Allam, N. (2017). Women and the Egyptian Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Arab Social Media Influences Summit (2015). First Report. Dubai: Digital Media Science. Backeberg, L. and Jochen, T. (2017). “The Frustrated Generation: Youth Exclusion in Arab Mediterranean Countries”, Journal of Youth Studies, pp. 1–20.

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Farouk, M. (2017). False Promises to Egypt’s Youth. Washington: Carnegie Endowment (SADA). Garson, G. D. (1978). Group Theories of Politics. Beverly Hills and London: Sage. Ghoneim, W. (2012). Revolution 2.0 (Arabic Edition). Cairo: Dar el Shorouk. Hasan, N.T.A. (2016). Change in Egypt’s Political Culture and the January 2011 Revolution: A Field Study of Egyptian Youth. MA thesis (in Arabic), Cairo University. Khalil, A. (2012). Liberation Square: Inside the Egyptian Revolution and the Rebirth of a Nation. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press. Lichbach, M. I. and Zuckerman, A. S. (eds.) (1997). Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lim, T. C. (2006). Doing Comparative Politics: An Introduction to Approaches and Issues. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. El-Mahdi, R. (2009). “Enough! Egypt’s Quest for Democracy”, Comparative Political Studies, 42(3), pp. 1011–1039. Moses, J. and Torbjørn, K. (2012). Ways of Knowing: Competing Methodologies in Social and Political Research, 2nd edition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Osman, M. and Girgis, H. (2016). Towards Effective Political Participation. New York and Cairo: Population Council, pp. 1–7. SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017). Data File Edition 3.0. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). Sánchez-Montijano, E., Martínez, I., Bourekba, M. and Dal Zotto, E. (2017). SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 Descriptive Report. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). al-Shurbagi, M. (2010). Kefaya: Redefining Politics, in Shehata, D. (Ed.) The Return of Politics: The New Protest Movements in Egypt (in Arabic). Cairo: Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, pp. 111–142. Siam, E. (2010). The Map of Peaceful Protests in Egypt: Preliminary Indicators of a New Civil Society, in Shehata, D. (Ed.) The Return of Politics: The New Protest Movements in Egypt (in Arabic). Cairo: Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, pp. 49–76. Sik, D. (2015). Memory Transmission and Political Socialization in Post Socialist Hungary, in Plinkington, H. and Pollock, G. (Eds.) Radical Futures: Youth, Politics and Activism in Contemporary Europe. Chichester: Wiley & Sons, pp. 53–72. Sika, N. (2016). The Disguise of Youth Inclusion in Egypt. Power for Youth Project, Working Paper No. 4. Tarrow, S. (1998). Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tilly, Ch. et al. (1975). The Rebellious Century 1830–1930. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Other sources AUC Forum Panel on 1st PLP conference, November 2015. Available at: http://a ucegypt.edu/research/forum. AUC Forum Data Bank. Available at: http://aucegypt.edu/research/forum. Newspapers: al-Ahram and al-Misri al-yawm.

5

“Born to be exported”? The post-civil war Lebanese youth(s)1 and the rupture between education and employment2 Rima Majed AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT

1 Introduction Understanding the social dynamics and the situation of marginalisation of the youth(s) requires an analysis of their positions within the structures of the labour market, their access to quality education and their ability to navigate within those rigid structures in an attempt to defy them through several channels, the most common of which is migration in pursuit of a desired better future. This chapter looks at the conditions, practices, patterns and expectations of the youth(s) within the Lebanese context. It attempts to contribute to the rich case studies presented in this book in order to paint a nuanced image of the realities of the youth(s) in the Arab Mediterranean region. For this purpose, this text asks the following questions: What are the positions of the Lebanese youth (s) within the labour market? What is the relationship between education and employment in Lebanon? How do the youth(s) attempt to cope with the extremely high unemployment rates in the country? What role does migration play for the marginalised Lebanese youth(s)? Unemployment is endemic under capitalism. No country in the world today has an unemployment rate of zero, but the severity of unemployment varies considerably from one region to another. Particularly vulnerable to unemployment is the youth population that is trying to enter the labour market at a young age or trying to make a transition from education to employment. Since the financial crisis of 2008, most countries around the globe have suffered from increased rates of unemployment (Dibeh et al., 2016), specifically affecting the youth(s). According to the International Labour Organization (ILO, 2015a) report on Global Employment Trends for Youth, the global youth unemployment rate stabilised at 13% in 2015, while the pre-crisis rate was 11.7%. This global rate hides within it varying regional trends. The Arab region has the highest rate of youth unemployment in the world (ILO, 2015b). Following the Arab uprisings in 2011, many scholars and analysts highlighted the alarming rates of youth unemployment in the region as a main catalyst for the revolutions (Hoffman and Jamal, 2012; ILO, 2011). According to

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the Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) (2016), youth unemployment in the Arab region in 2012 was 29.73%: double the global average youth unemployment rate (13.99%). This rate is also highly gendered, with young women’s participation in the labour force in the Arab region being the lowest globally (24%), and with young females’ unemployment rate (47%) being twice as high as young males’ (24%) in the Arab region. The AHDR (2016) expects the situation to worsen by 2020 if the Arab region does not create more than 60 million new jobs to absorb the number of new entrants to the workforce. Lebanon’s unemployment trends are in line with the alarming regional figures. According to the World Bank (2012), the total unemployment rate in Lebanon is 11%, with a youth unemployment rate of 34%. This acute youth unemployment problem is mainly explained by the country’s economic system, which is characterised by jobless growth which affects mostly the already marginalised population: i.e. women, the poor, the youth(s) and the rural populations (Dibeh et al., 2016; World Bank, 2012). Whereas the gross domestic product (GDP) growth in Lebanon averaged 3.7% per year between 1997 and 2009, the employment rate grew at only 1.1% (World Bank, 2012). This reflects structural limitations within the Lebanese economy to create jobs and absorb its growing youth population. For example, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP, 2013) has estimated the number of new jobs created in the Lebanese market to be around 5,000 per year, whereas the number of new entrants to the labour market in 2013 was around 32,000. Therefore, some of the main coping mechanisms for youth unemployment in Lebanon have been either informality, especially for the less educated youth(s); or migration, mainly for the skilled and educated (De Bel-Air, 2017; Dibeh et al., 2017; Kasparian, 2010; Kawar and Tzannatos, 2012). This has led to a serious brain-drain problem (Dibeh et al., 2017), whereby the Lebanese economy is losing most of its skilled labour because of the lack of job creation and the focus on relatively low-skill, low-wage jobs. However, while the problem of unemployment remains initially linked to the demand side (structural economic limitations), a wide stream of literature focuses the attention on the supply side: education. Education is considered one of the main determinants of employability and is viewed as an important channel for class mobility in society (Göksel et al., 2016). Therefore, youth employability is often understood in terms of educational achievements and training that match the market demand (Dibeh et al., 2016; Kawar and Tzannatos, 2012). In this respect, most studies examining the educational sector in Lebanon highlight the huge discrepancy in the quality of education between private and state schools and higher education institutions (El-Ghali, 2011; Kawar and Tzannatos, 2012; Nahas, 2011). Although the number of state and private schools is almost equal in Lebanon, the state sector accounts for fewer teachers (43.8% in 2010), fewer students (29.2% in 2011), and suffers from low public spending (6.8% of GDP in 2010) (UNICEF Lebanon, 2013). This has led to low-quality teaching and learning in state schools, which explains the negative perceptions associated with state schools and the continuous decrease in the number of Lebanese students’ enrolment in state

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schools (UNICEF Lebanon, 2013). Moreover, the distribution of state and private schools in Lebanon is unequal: whereas more private schools are found in the capital and in big cities, state schools are mainly concentrated in the poor and rural areas of the country (UNICEF Lebanon, 2013). This problem of quality and access becomes even more acute in higher education. Although Lebanon has more than 50 higher education institutions, there is only one state university (the Lebanese University), and most of these institutions are concentrated in the capital, Beirut. Moreover, the quality of education in private institutions varies widely, with only a few universities offering good-quality education at a very high cost, making it very hard for youth(s) from poor and marginalised backgrounds to get access to top universities. Therefore, one of the main problems facing the Lebanese youth(s) is the unequal access to quality education, which severely impacts the job prospects of the poor and marginalised youth(s). In this respect, this chapter will examine youth unemployment in Lebanon based on the results of the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017)3 and the SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork 20154 carried out in three regions of Lebanon (Ein El Remmaneh, Ras Beirut and Joun) between April and June 2015.5 The fieldwork consisted of participant observation, narrative interviews, life stories and focus groups in Ein El Remmaneh (urban, lower/ working-class neighbourhood), Ras Beirut (urban, middle/upper-class neighbourhood), and Joun (rural/village), and it included life histories and case studies in both Ein El Remmaneh and Joun.6 Therefore, the chapter will focus on the post-civil war era (1990–2016) to explore the relationship between structural constraints (social, economic and political), education and migration in studying employability in Lebanon. The chapter will shed light on the social and economic transformations in post-civil war Lebanon and their implications on youth prospects. It will discuss employment, education and migration while contrasting formality and informality, and showing how structural inequalities and unequal access to education have led to what Bourdieu (1977) called “social reproduction”. Therefore, the chapter will ask whether the problem in Lebanon is a “mismatch” between education and employment or whether it is rather a complete “rupture”. The rest of the chapter will be arranged as follows: section 2 will provide an overview of the main political, economic and educational transformations in the post-civil war era in order to set the context for the data discussion. Section 3 will explain the methodology adopted for the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017), and will explore the data on the characteristics and perceptions of youth (un)employment in Lebanon in light of the ethnographic data. Section 4 will tackle the question of migration and will reflect on the link between education, economic structures and migration. Finally, section 5 will conclude the chapter with a critical evaluation of the idea of a “mismatch” between education and employment, and will propose a reading of the Lebanese experience as a case of complete “rupture” between the two.

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2 Political, social, economic and educational transformations in post-civil war Lebanon The post-civil war (1990–2016) political economy of Lebanon has been characterised by two main features: 1 a stark neoliberal turn in the already marketoriented liberal economy of the pre-war era, coupled with 2 pronounced nepotism and clientelism within the renewed sectarian power-sharing system. By the end of the civil war, the Lebanese economy was heavily suffering. In addition to the huge human cost of the 15-year war, the country had lost most of its infrastructure, state institutions were all weakened, and the economy was massively destroyed with a “GDP per capita less than one third of the GDP per capita in 1974 at the eve of the war” (Dibeh, 2005). Unable to deal with the economic crisis and the deterioration of the currency, Prime Minister Omar Karami resigned in 1992 under pressure from heavy street protests and was replaced by the Lebanese billionaire Rafiq Hariri. Under Hariri’s premiership, the country adopted its most neoliberal economic policies with a major focus on the reconstruction of the capital’s city centre, heavy financialising through government over-borrowing and an agenda of privatisation that was sometimes blocked by Hariri’s political rivals (Baumann, 2012). Although these policies were able to stabilise the currency and achieve economic growth, this came at the expense of massive public debt, high unemployment rates, accentuated inequalities between the centre and peripheries, high poverty rates (UNDP, 2008) and significant polarisation between social classes. The post-war Lebanese economy was still dominated by the service sector, with banking and tourism forming the core drivers of growth (Fakih and Marrouch, 2015). While reconstruction was booming and aid funds were flooding into the country, the relative share of the industrial and agricultural sectors in the GDP were decreasing at the expense of a rapid increase in the share of trade and services (Abou Jaoude, 2015).7 Given the nonproductive nature of these sectors, the economy was characterised by jobless growth, and therefore only a minority of Lebanese prospered—businessmen, politicians and their networks. A new “contractor bourgeoisie” (Baumann, 2012) emerged during that period and reached political power, replacing the old traditional elites and shaping the post-war patronage networks. The Taif Accords were signed on 24 October 1989 to put an end to the civil war in Lebanon. The most notable aspect of this agreement was the readoption of a sectarian power-sharing system whereby political power is to be shared among the main sectarian leaders of the country. This power-sharing formula not only shared out political representation, it indirectly shared economic and financial advantages to sectarian leaders (Nizameddin, 2006, p. 102). Within such a formula, clientelism and corruption flourished in the post-war period (Leenders, 2012; Makarem, 2014). Flagrant abuse of public funds became common (Picard, 2000, p. 318) and public agencies became the main source of patronage for the zu’ama (Cammett, 2014).8 An elaborate system of clientelism started to take shape, transforming pre-civil war patronage

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relations to fit the new realities of the post-war era. Nepotism, or the wasta system, became the core of economic survival in Lebanon and employment often relied on clientelistic networks. Despite the economic boom during the initial post-war reconstruction era, the Lebanese economy has suffered from cyclical crises since the late 1990s (Dibeh, 2005), and its labour market has been characterised by limited job opportunities, a “low appetite for skilled labour” and a considerable informal sector (Kawar and Tzannatos, 2012). According to the World Bank (2012), the informal sector is estimated at 36.4% of GDP and more than half of workers are either informal wage employees or low-skilled self-employed individuals who have no access to social insurance and labour regulation (Abou Jaoude, 2015). According to a recent report published by the Arab NGOs [non-governmental organisations] Network for Development (ANND), 90% of immigrants in Lebanon are involved in informal work,9 while 59% of the Lebanese work informally (ANND, 2016). The share of Lebanese women in the informal sector (44%) is lower than that of men (63%), given their larger involvement in formal governmental or private jobs. Moreover, Lebanon is also a country that has a strikingly high rate of selfemployment, with more than 36% of male workers being self-employed, and therefore not benefiting from social security (ANND, 2016). The majority of the private sector in Lebanon (90%) is formed of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that employ fewer than 10 workers and cater for the local Lebanese market (Abou Jaoude, 2015). Moreover, poverty rates (27%) and child labour remain significantly high for a middle-income country (ANND, 2016; Dibeh et al., 2016). According to Dibeh et al. (2016, p. 6), there is “a strong indication that poverty is strongly correlated with informality, which mostly affects youth from marginalized backgrounds”. Therefore, informality seems to be highly associated with poverty, precarity and uncertainty, which mainly affect the young and marginalised populations in Lebanon at remarkably high rates. Looking now at the educational sector, the post-war transformations seem to have also been significant. The Lebanese educational system is divided into state institutions that are sponsored by the state, and private institutions that are either confessional or secular (UNICEF Lebanon, 2013, p. 16). In the pre-independence era, most private schools (and universities) in Lebanon were established by missionaries as part of their “mission civilisatrice”. These schools teach in foreign languages (French or English) and adopt the curriculum of colonial countries, thus teaching the histories and cultures of these countries (LAU, 2016). However, following independence in 1943, the state started to invest heavily in education in its attempt to create a new national identity. Although the number of state schools surpassed that of private schools in 1954 (see Figure 5.1), the 1960s and 1970s witnessed a relative growth in the number of private educational institutions, which came to compete with the public sector institutions not only in terms of numbers, but also (and mainly) in terms of quality of the education offered. Whereas state schools had expanded and covered many rural and peripheral areas in Lebanon, the

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Figure 5.1 Evolution of state and private schools, 1944–2000 Source: Ministry of Education and CERD statistics (cited in Frayha, 2003).

“quality of the education was given less emphasis, especially given the limited number of qualified teachers” and the poor monitoring and inspection as a result of the sectarian resistance to such governmental control (UNICEF Lebanon, 2013, p. 17). During the civil war (1975–90), the conditions of schools deteriorated in the country and many parents found themselves unable to afford the high tuition fees of private schools. Therefore, despite being poorly equipped and poorly staffed, state schools received high numbers of students during the civil war and employed a large number of teachers who, in many cases, were not adequately qualified. This lack of qualifications amongst teachers added to the deterioration of the educational standards of state schools, a problem that continues to weigh on the state school system in Lebanon to the present day. On the other hand, private-run schools have become a profitable business for entrepreneurs and an important outlet of patronage for religious institutions or sectarian leaders who offer free or relatively cheap private education through their networks of schools and universities. During the ethnographic fieldwork carried out in 2015, several of the youth(s) highlighted their frustration with the divisions within the educational system in Lebanon and their awareness of the corruption and clientelism behind the lack of any serious reform in the educational sector. One interlocutor from Ras Beirut explained: The government is strategically neglecting state schools, while the leaders (politicians) … they have their own private schools … or shares, this is one of the reasons they don’t encourage state schools … it is difficult to find a private school where the owner or share-holder is not a politician or with a political agenda. (O, Male: LB_FG_13) Moreover, many of the youth interlocutors in the research also expressed an awareness of how the current educational system in Lebanon is reproducing social inequalities. During one of the focus groups in Joun, a young man provided a clear analysis of his view on the issue:

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First of all, there is the difference between village and city—we don’t have colleges or universities that are close to us. If we want to go to university then we have to go to the city. Now with regards to university—here in Lebanon we have different classes and us middle classes don’t have like $100,000 to invest into our education at a private university. We go instead to the state/public universities: the Lebanese University and what we specialise in is based upon what they have available … (H, Male: LB_FG_15) Similarly, speaking of the Lebanese University and the deteriorating quality of education it offers, many interlocutors shared their personal experiences there and spoke of the seriously alarming conditions of the national university. They mostly highlighted the overcrowded lecture halls, the lack of seriousness of some professors who don’t show up to classes, and the very high levels of favouritism and nepotism within the university given the high interference of political parties in university affairs (LAU, 2016). Finally, based on the ethnographic data, it seems that there is an aspiration amongst Lebanese youth(s) for a just educational system that provides quality education in state institutions, thus contributing to closing the social gap instead of deepening and widening it. One interlocutor from Ein El Remmaneh succinctly sums up what many others had already highlighted, saying: We should have one-system-schooling where all, regardless of their background and social class, should go through that system. (R, Female: LB_FG_14) Therefore, the post-civil war social, economic, political and educational context in Lebanon suffers from many structural problems that are forming serious obstacles for the youth(s) of the country. In the next section, I will explore the data provided by the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) in order to study the conditions and perceptions of the youth(s) when it comes to employment and opportunities.

3 Characteristics of youth (un)employment and perceptions of opportunities in Lebanon The SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) was conducted at the end of 2015 with a representative sample of 2,000 Lebanese youth residents aged between 15 and 29 years old. A stratified sample was chosen from the six Lebanese governorates based on the Central Administration of Statistics (CAS) 2004 Census of Buildings.10 Multi-stage probability sampling was adopted in order to ensure randomness and representativeness.11 The survey included a household questionnaire and individual interviews with the youth residents. The results of the survey confirm some trends that have been previously discussed and highlight some other trends that are worthy of discussion,

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namely the class and the gender dimensions of youth(s) perceptions and opportunities. 3.1 Trends confirmed: six main aspects of the youth relationship to the labour market in Lebanon The survey results confirm six main aspects of the youth(s) relationship with the labour market in Lebanon: 1 the lack of jobs as a structural reason for unemployment; 2 the role of favouritism; 3 the predominance of the service and trade sectors in the Lebanese economy; 4 the predominance of the private sector as the main employer; 5 the precarity and informality of most jobs available; and 6 the crucial role of social capital (networks/wasta) in accessing jobs. When asked about their reasons for being unemployed, 50% of the unemployed youth(s) reported that the lack of jobs was the main reason for their unemployment, while 31.8% cited string-pulling/favouritism in recruitment (Figure 5.2). Only 10.6% said that they were unemployed because they didn’t have the necessary skills, and 7.6% said that they did not find a job that fitted their profile. Therefore, although previous research tends to emphasise the mismatch between skills/qualifications and employability, it seems from the survey that this relationship only mattered for around 18% of unemployment. The main factor determining youth unemployment in Lebanon seems to be related to structural obstacles that have to do with the jobless economy and the high levels of favouritism in recruitment, rather than a mismatch between skills and opportunities. Moreover, the survey results confirmed the predominance of the service and trade sectors in the jobs that most youth(s) occupy. Out of the 749 respondents who reported being employed, around one-third (30.6%) work in the commercial services sector, followed by the trade sector (24.3%), the education sector (13.5%) and the administration, non-commercial services sector (11.5%). The survey results also show that 91.9% of surveyed youth(s) who are employed work in the private sector. These results mirror the analyses of other studies reviewed in the previous section which highlight the

Figure 5.2 Why do you think you are unemployed? Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

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predominance of the service sector and the private sector in the Lebanese labour market. More importantly, the survey results also shed light on the considerable size of the informal sector in Lebanon. Around half of the employed youth(s) had no contract for the job they performed in the past week (47.2%), whereas 38.2% had a contract of indefinite duration, 3.1% had employment aid measures and only 1.4% had a fixed-term contract. This high level of informality was also coupled with a lack of social security provision. Figure 5.3 shows that 54.5% of the employed youth(s) reported not being insured by the Social Security system. It is interesting to note that 35.9% of those uninsured said that they were not interested in the Social Security system. This is probably due to the fact that they either rely on private insurance companies or they rely on clientelistic networks to access healthcare. However, 23% of the youth(s) who did not benefit from the Social Security system explained that this was because their employer was not insured and 8.6% said that their employer refused to insure them. Finally, the effect of contacts and networks, or what Bourdieu (1986) would call “social capital”, seemed to be an important factor of youth employability in Lebanon. When asked how they got their current job, 32.6% of the employed youth(s) said that it was through personal contacts while 25.1% said that they got their jobs through family contacts. In addition, 13% reported being entrepreneurs, thus creating their own business through their capital. However, only 13.9% of the employed youth(s) said that they got their jobs by sending their CVs (resumés) to employers, 6.4% said that they were

Figure 5.3 Are you insured by the Social Security system? If not, why not? Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

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employed after answering a job advertisement, and 2.9% found employment through a competition or an exam. Contrasting these results with the answers of the unemployed youth(s) who were looking for a job (Figure 5.4), the effect of personal or family contacts becomes even more apparent. In the multiple-response question asking unemployed youth(s) about the approaches they have been using to seek jobs, 57.6% reported looking for a job by travelling to workplaces and asking about vacancies, while 39.4% said that they were sending their CVs to administrations and companies. Moreover, 30.3% mentioned sending employment requests, 28.8% said that they were answering newspaper advertisements and another 27.3% mentioned the use of the internet (social networks) as a means to look for a job. However, it seems that only a minority of the unemployed youth(s) were able to mobilise personal networks (18.2%) or to ask for assistance from parents (13.6%). This speaks of a certain relation between social capital (networks) and class position, since it seems that most unemployed youth(s) do not belong to social networks close enough to employers to be able to directly ask for a job and they also cannot rely on parents to open businesses for them. These youth(s) are marginalised from the privileged positions of the uppermiddle- and upper-class youth(s) who generally possess (or have easier access to) both social and economic capital. These results lead us to think of the position of the youth(s) within the labour market from an intersectional perspective (Davis, 2008). The youth(s) are not one homogeneous category, but rather a diverse and heterogeneous group that experience “youthfulness” in different ways depending on their positions (Bayat, 2013; Sánchez García et al., 2014). Whereas the survey data do not allow us to fully explore the different intersections of positions and

Figure 5.4 Approaches used by unemployed youth(s) looking for jobs Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

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inequalities when it comes to employability, they still offer some important insights in terms of class and gender effects. 3.2 Digging deeper: the intersectionality of the class and gender dimensions The results of the survey show a desire for reaching high educational levels amongst the Lebanese youth(s). Around 41% of the surveyed youth(s) expressed a desire to pursue postgraduate studies, with 23.3% wanting a master’s degree, and 17.8% wanting a doctorate. Another 41% of the youth(s) hoped to reach university level (BA or BS), and only 10.3% just wished they could complete secondary education. When zooming in to further understand the positions of the youth(s) regarding education, factors such as class, gender and ability come into play. In fact, 50.1% of the respondents reported not being in education at the time of the survey. Of those, 26.6% said that they had already finished their studies, while 23.3% reported leaving school because the studies were difficult for them. This highlights the rigidity of the educational system and the lack of alternatives for youth(s) with learning difficulties or with interests that are not compatible with the traditional educational curriculum. Moreover, financial considerations also played an important role in explaining why many youth(s) had already left education at the time of the survey: 11.7% said they left school because fees were too high and 14.2% left school in order to work and help their family. In fact, the survey shows that 23.8% of the youth(s) had to start work for the first time before the age of 18. This means that around a quarter of Lebanese youth(s) have to start working before adulthood, mainly because of financial need. The importance of the class dimension in creating the social realities, experiences and perceptions of the youth(s) is also highlighted in the results of the question asking unemployed youth(s) who reported that they were not looking for a job about the reasons for their inactivity. In fact, 16.3% of the inactive youth(s) said that they don’t need to work because they come from well-off families. These results clearly reflect class differences and their centrality in explaining the diverse experiences and aspirations of the youth(s) of Lebanon. Finally, 10.4% of the surveyed youth(s) said that they had to leave school in order to prepare for marriage, while 22.6% of the inactive youth(s) (mostly women) said that they were not working because of the opposition of their parents or their husband. This seems to reflect a patriarchal social culture where family is considered to be more important than education, especially for young women. However, although patriarchy is clearly entrenched in the lived experiences of the youth(s) in Lebanon, this does not go unchallenged. For example, whereas the majority of the youth(s) (66.8%) reported covering their personal needs through assistance from their fathers, a smaller portion (15%) said they received financial assistance from their mothers. Although these numbers are not enough to draw conclusions, it does seem that family dynamics are already shifting and mothers are starting to be perceived by some youth(s) as

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a main source of income. Moreover, these results become even more relevant when taking into account that 81.4% of the respondents reported that their mothers are housewives. This suggests that many of the working mothers tend to also be the main contributors to the livelihoods of their children. Other trends of negotiating gender relations are visible in the answers of the youth(s) to a number of questions related to gender roles and expectations. Whereas the majority of young men (80.5%) believed that men should make the decisions in a family, the majority of women (55.1%) disagreed with this statement. However, whereas the majority of young women (93.1%) agreed that a married woman should have the possibility to work outside the house if she wants, around 70% of these young women also believed that if work is scarce, men should have more right to a job than women. This seems to be explained by the fact that around 90% of women (and 92.4% of men) considered that men should be the main financial provider in the family. These gender dynamics were also highlighted in the ethnographic data, where many young women relayed mixed sentiments regarding work: whereas work gave them a sense of independence and empowerment, many young women expressed a desire for their future partner to support them financially, especially when they planned to have children. These seemingly contradictory answers could be explained by the fact that given the patriarchal norms surrounding the gender division of labour within the family, housework is almost solely carried out by women. This work is still not perceived as labour, and therefore remains non-remunerated. Hence, when women consider that it is men’s responsibility to provide for the family, they indirectly ask for the recognition of housework as labour. On the other hand, the difficult economic conditions and the inability of most men to fulfil their role as the sole breadwinner in the family are posing serious challenges to the traditional family dynamics. The ethnographic fieldwork sheds light on the pressure felt by most young men who are postponing or not considering marriage because of their inability to acquire a house and provide for a family. Therefore, the structural economic changes taking place in the labour market are starting to clearly affect family and gender dynamics. Finally, the data gathered for this research point to some serious structural obstacles that hinder the employability of the youth(s) in Lebanon and that heavily impact their social experiences and expectations. These structural inequalities linked to the social capital and the social class of the young individuals (and their families) in Lebanon have, in many cases, led to a process of social reproduction (Bourdieu, 1977) whereby those who have better structural positions from the start (well-off family, well connected, etc.) have better chances of employability and class mobility. But how do the youth(s) cope with these obstacles? How do they survive given the striking lack of job opportunities and the extremely difficult conditions of the Lebanese labour market? In the next section, I discuss one major channel through which many youth(s) try to overcome the above-discussed obstacles: migration.

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4 Born to be exported? Youth emigration as a partial solution Youth emigration, whether in the form of internal migration or emigration abroad, is widespread in Lebanon. The processes of urbanisation and the decline in the agricultural sector in Lebanon since the 1940s have led to an uneven development between centre and periphery whereby most educational institutions and economic activities became concentrated in the capital Beirut (Traboulsi, 2012). This shift in the economic structure has pushed, and continues to push, many of the youth(s) from rural areas to relocate to the capital in order to pursue their education or search for job opportunities. However, the general lack of job opportunities in the country, together with the political instability and the social fractionalisation, have led many Lebanese youth(s), both from rural and urban areas, to leave the country in search of better opportunities abroad (De Bel-Air, 2017; Dibeh et al., 2017; Kawar and Tzannatos, 2012). In fact, emigration is not a new phenomenon in the country. As explained by Tabar (2010), the history of emigration in Lebanon goes back to the 19th century, with four main waves of emigration, all caused by unstable economic and political conditions in the country. However, the recent wave of youth emigration since the 1990s has often been referred to as a “brain drain”. Despite the centrality of remittances to the Lebanese economy (De Bel-Air, 2017), it is believed that the high rates of migration amongst the youth(s) have a negative effect on economic growth and human capital (Dibeh et al., 2017). In fact, many recent studies have shown that the rate of unemployment in Lebanon is positively correlated with the level of education (Chaaban, 2009; Kawar and Tzannatos, 2012), and that the propensity to migrate increases with a rise in educational level (Dibeh et al., 2017; Sánchez-Montijano and Girona-Raventós, 2017). Therefore, the more educated youth(s) find more difficulties getting a job and as a result seek employment abroad. Looking at the results of the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) and the National Case Study—Lebanon (LAU, 2016) regarding emigration, it seems that although the majority of the youth(s) (81.1%) did not want to emigrate, job opportunities and the desire for a better future are amongst the main reasons that drive them to consider relocating (Figure 5.5). When asked about the reasons pushing them to consider emigrating, 53.4% said that the lack of professional opportunities in Lebanon is a major reason they want to leave. Moreover, 37.6% of the youth(s) who want to emigrate talked about the poor living conditions in Lebanon, while 34.7% gave as their reason for wanting to leave the country the fact that incomes in Lebanon are lower than abroad. In their recent study based on the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017), Dibeh et al. (2017) highlight some of the main factors that affect the decision of the youth(s) in Lebanon to emigrate. Exploring the characteristics of the youth(s) who consider leaving the country, it seems that males have a higher propensity to want to emigrate than females. This result does not come as a surprise since, as previously discussed, the traditional gender and family

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Figure 5.5 The main reasons pushing youth(s) to want to emigrate Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

norms put a bigger burden on men when it comes to financial provisions. Moreover, the results of the survey, as analysed by Dibeh et al. (2017), also suggest that being unemployed increases the willingness to emigrate, while having a university degree also increases that willingness. These results are in line with the data from the National Case Study—Lebanon (LAU, 2016), in which many of the youth(s) with university-level education expressed serious concerns and uncertainties about their future and their ability to find jobs in Lebanon. Looking closer at the push and pull factors that determine the propensity to emigrate, Dibeh et al. (2017) show that the wealth of the household plays a major role in the youths’ decision to migrate. They show that young people who receive financial support from their parents are less likely to emigrate. Similarly, having capitalist parents significantly decreases the propensity of the youth(s) to emigrate. Therefore, the results suggest that youth(s) from rich families are less likely to consider leaving the country. This is further substantiated by the analysis that looks at the effect of socioeconomic concerns on the propensity to emigrate. Here again, the results suggest that the youth(s) who expressed the highest concerns over socioeconomic conditions are more likely to want to emigrate. This effect of social class can also be discerned when we look at the urban/rural dynamics of youth emigration. Dibeh et al. (2017) show that young people in the poorest governorates in Lebanon—the North and the Beqaa—have the highest propensity to migrate. These results are also supported by the ethnographic fieldwork in the village of Joun (LAU,

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2016), where many of the youth(s) explained that higher education institutions and job opportunities were absent from their rural areas. Most of the youth(s) from Joun had to leave their village after school in order to pursue higher education in Beirut and then find a job, in many cases abroad. This means that many of the youth(s) from rural areas have experienced what I would call “double exportation”: first in the form of internal migration to the urban cities, and then in the form of emigration abroad. Therefore, given the shortage of jobs and the “low appetite for skilled labour” in the Lebanese labour market (Kawar and Tzannatos, 2012), emigration has become a very common escape strategy from unemployment, and a major channel for upward mobility (or at least a prevention of downward mobility) for most of the youth(s) from the middle or lower social classes (De Bel-Air, 2017). The empirical results suggest that the spectre of emigration hovers over the lives of most Lebanese youth(s), with the exception of those who come from wealthy families and thus have no socioeconomic concerns. The research reaffirms that it is mainly the educated youth(s) of Lebanon, a considerable portion of the youth(s) in the country, who form the majority of the emigrants. Given the results of the survey and the ethnographic fieldwork, and based on the structural conditions that made relocating for work so common for the youth(s) of Lebanon, one can argue that these youth(s) are often “born to be exported”! However, despite the harsh conditions and realities that push a considerable section of Lebanese youth(s) to leave the country, this situation does not go completely unchallenged. The past decade has witnessed increased youth political engagement and participation in collective actions that have contested the status quo and challenged the Lebanese system and its ruling elites (AbiYaghi et al., 2017; Meier, 2015). The latest of these mobilisations was the #You_Stink movement in 2015 following the garbage crisis (Abu-Rish, 2015; Kerbage, 2017; Kraidy, 2016) and the subsequent mobilisations that culminated in the creation of the Beirut Madinati municipal campaign in 2016.12 Whereas these movements tackled a variety of issues, from the call for the “downfall of the sectarian regime” to the urban activism around the “right to the city”, the common drive in all these campaigns has been discontent with the current state of affairs and a need to fight for a better future where the upcoming generations will be able to fulfil their aspirations without the need to migrate and “export” their knowledge, experience and skills.

5 Rethinking the relationship between education and employment: a mismatch or a rupture? This chapter highlighted some of the main conditions affecting the employability of the youth(s) in Lebanon. It explained how the structures of the Lebanese economy form the biggest obstacle to the transition of the youth(s) from education to employment. In fact, the Lebanese labour market does not offer enough job opportunities to absorb the new entrants to the market, and

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it suffers from a lack of opportunities for skilled labour since the economy is mainly based on the banking and service sectors. Moreover, the chapter discussed the important role played by clientelism and favouritism in determining the chances of young people getting a job in the country. The data suggest that the youth(s) who come from households that possess high social and economic capital are better able to find (or create) jobs. However, youth(s) who do not have enough social capital and who do not belong to the traditional sectarian clientelistic networks seem more likely to be unemployed. In addition, the chapter also shed light on the considerable size of the informal sector and on the high level of precarity that many employed youth(s), especially those from marginalised sections of society, suffer from. These difficult economic conditions have had some considerable impacts on the gender and family dynamics in Lebanon. The analysis suggests that while patriarchal family norms persist, a negotiation of traditional gender roles is palpable now that many young women have entered the labour market. Moreover, the chapter discussed the ways in which young people in Lebanon try to challenge these difficult structural obstacles and to overcome unemployment. Whereas informality is one important channel for the less educated youth(s), migration is highlighted as one of the major channels for the educated who want to escape from unemployment. The SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) data suggest that young educated males from the middle or lower classes in rural areas have the highest willingness to migrate from the country. These results again highlighted the centrality of the class and rural/urban dimensions in determining youth’s propensity to migrate for employment. Therefore, most of the youth(s) who tend to remain in the country are generally either the less qualified who tend to be unemployed or who end up taking precarious jobs in the informal sector, or those from well-off families who can afford to remain unemployed or to become self-employed entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship has recently become a very popular concept advocated by many international organisations and “experts” as a solution to youth unemployment in the Arab world (AHDR, 2016; Kawar and Tzannatos, 2012). This approach remains highly problematic for many reasons. First, looking at youth unemployment in Lebanon (or the Arab region) as the outcome of a “mismatch” between the supply and the demand side in the labour market, or between education and job opportunities, is a distorted lens of analysis. Not only does this approach assume that the role of education is solely to prepare workers for the market, it also adopts a twisted market logic that considers that the “suppliers” and the “demanders” are on par with each other. Thus it becomes acceptable to propose recommendations on both sides of the spectrum, without needing to question or reconsider the very structure of the market itself. In fact, as succinctly explained by Herrera (2017), “empowering” youth(s) through training and capacity building that prepares them to better match market needs does not solve the problem. These proposed solutions mainly focus on the supply side while the bulk of the problem lies in the very structure of the economy and the labour market (Göksel et al., 2016).

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Therefore, as suggested by Herrera (2017), trying to solve the problem of youth unemployment through a call for the youth(s) themselves to take action to deal with their predicament, and encouraging the youth(s) to become entrepreneurs through borrowing money, is only going to make the problem even more acute. This new market-oriented trend of advocating entrepreneurship is, as explained by Herrera (2017), very similar to the development trend that advocated micro-finance a few decades ago and ended up with catastrophic results. The case of youth unemployment in Lebanon should not be studied or understood as a case of mismatch between skills and opportunities; it is rather a case of complete rupture that can only be seriously addressed through a treatment of the structural obstacles that exist in the economy and in the labour market.

Notes 1 The category “youth(s)” is used in the plural throughout the text since I do not consider it to be a monolithic or homogeneous unit of analysis. In other words, the analysis presented in this chapter adopts an intersectional approach that acknowledges the diversity and inequalities that exist within the “youth” category. 2 The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007–13 under grant agreement no. 613174 for the SAHWA Project (www.sahwa.eu). This publication reflects only the author’s views. The European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein. 3 For more information, see Sánchez-Montijano et al., 2017). 4 Check LAU, 2016. 5 References to qualitative data indicate the country (DZ = Algeria, MA =Morocco, TUN = Tunisia, EG = Egypt, LB = Lebanon), source (FG = focus groups, LS = life stories, LSV = life stories videos, FE = focused ethnographies), and number. 6 For more information and discussion on the methodologies of the ethnographic fieldwork, please refer to the National Case Study—Lebanon (LAU, 2016). 7 According to the World Bank (2012), the service and banking sectors formed 73.4% of the gross national product (GNP) in 2012, while the industrial sector formed only 20.5% and agriculture 6.1%. The trends also show a -2% decrease in agriculture and a -8% decrease in industry, in favour of the service sector (Abou Jaoude, 2015). 8 Sectarian leaders. 9 The ANND report on the informal sector in Lebanon states that “the share of Palestinian migrants is 6% of the total employment, Syrian refugees are at 18% and other migrants (mainly domestic workers) are at 13%” (ANND, 2016). 10 The six governorates are: Beirut, Mount Lebanon, the North, the South, Nabatieh and the Beqaa. 11 The Information International firm conducted the survey. For more information on the sampling method, please refer to Sánchez-Montijano et al. (2017). 12 Beirut Madinati was the name of the campaign that ran for municipal elections in Beirut in 2016 against a coalition of the ruling parties. The name of the campaign translates into English as: “Beirut, my city.”

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LAU (Lebanese American University) (2016). National Case Study—Lebanon. Beirut: SAHWA Project. Available at: http://sahwa.eu/content/download/1428/10757/file/ LB.pdf, (Accessed: 2 April 2017). Leenders, R. (2012). Spoils of truce: Corruption and state-building in postwar Lebanon. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Makarem, H. (2014). Actually Existing Neoliberalism: The reconstruction of downtown Beirut in post-civil war Lebanon. Doctoral dissertation, LSE, University of London. Available at: http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3078/1/Makarem_Actually_Existing_Neolibera lism.pdf, (Accessed: 2 April 2017). Meier, D. (2015). “Popular Mobilizations in Lebanon: From Anti-system to Sectarian Claims”, Democracy and Security, 11(2), pp. 176–189. Nahas, C. (2011). “Financing and political economy of higher education: The case of Lebanon”, Prospects, 41(1), pp. 69–95. Nizameddin, T. (2006). “The political economy of Lebanon under Rafiq Hariri: An interpretation”, The Middle East Journal, 60(1), pp. 95–114. Picard, E. (2000). The Political Economy of Civil War in Lebanon, in Heydemann, S. (ed.) War, Institutions and Social Change in the Middle East. California: University of California Press, pp. 292–322. SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017). Data File Edition 3.0. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). Sánchez García, J., Pampols, C. F. and Laine, S. (2014). Contemporary Youth Research in Arab Mediterranean Countries: Mixing Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies. Available at: http://sahwa.eu/OUTPUTS/Other-publications/SAH WA-Concept-Paper-Contemporary-Youth-Research-in-Arab-Mediterranean-Countr ies-Mixing-Qualitative-and-Quantitative-Research, (Accessed: 29 June 2017). Sánchez-Montijano, E. and Girona-Raventós, M. (2017). “Arab Mediterranean youth migration. Who wants to leave, and why?” EuroMesco Policy Brief, 73. Sánchez-Montijano, E., Martínez, I., Bourekba, M. and Dal Zotto, E. (2017). SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 Descriptive Report. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). Tabar, P. (2010). Lebanon: A Country of Emigration and Immigration. Institute for Migration Studies, LAU Press, p. 7. Traboulsi, F. (2012). A History of Modern Lebanon, 2nd edn. London: Pluto Press. UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) (2008). Poverty, Growth, and Income Distribution in Lebanon. Beirut: UNDP. Available at: www.lb.undp.org/con tent/dam/lebanon/docs/Poverty/Publications/Poverty,%20Growth%20and%20Incom e%20Distribution%20in%20Lebanon.pdf, (Accessed: 15 March 2017). UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) (2013). ‫ﺩﻭﺭ ﻣﺠﻠﺲ ﺍﻟﻨﻮﺍﺏ ﻭﺍﻟﻠﺠﺎﻥ ﺍﻟﻨﻴﺎﺑﻴﺔ‬ ‫ ﺩﺭﺍﺳﺔ ﻭﺗﻮﺻﻴﺎﺕ‬:‫ﻓﻲ ﺯﻳﺎﺩﺓ ﻓﺮﺹ ﺍﻟﻌﻤﻞ ﻟﻠﺸﺒﺎﺏ‬. (The Role of the Parliament and Parliamentary Committees in the Increase of Job Opportunities for the Youth: A Study and Recommendations). Beirut: UNDP. Available at: www.lp.gov.lb/Resources/Files/ 8416db08-8d5f-4a64-bb7b-421943d74574.pdf, (Accessed: 7 March 2017). UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) (2016). Arab Human Development Report 2016. Youth and the Prospects for Human Development in a Changing Reality. New York: UNDP. Available at: www.arab-hdr.org/reports/2016/english/ AHDR2016En.pdf ?download, (Accessed: 7 March 2017). UNICEF Lebanon (2013). Education for Children and Adolescents in Lebanon: A Human Rights-Based, Equity-Focused Analysis of the Situation in Collaboration with

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the Ministry of Higher Education (MEHE) and Consultation and Research Institute (CRI) (August). Unpublished draft. World Bank (2012). Republic of Lebanon Good Jobs Needed: The Role of Macro, Investment, Education, Labor and Social Protection Policies. World Bank Report No. 76008-LB. Available at: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/ 13217, (Accessed: 2 April 2017).

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Part II

An overview of Arab Mediterranean youth

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6

Arab Mediterranean youth1 Religion and politics Ken Roberts UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL

Siyka Kovacheva UNIVERSITY OF PLOVDIV

Stanimir Kabaivanov UNIVERSITY OF PLOVDIV

1 Introduction2 On 14 January 2011 sustained demonstrations in Tunisia in which young people were prominent led to the resignation and flight of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who had been de facto president of this single-party state since 1988. This success in Tunisia encouraged demonstrators in Cairo, and on 11 February 2011 Egypt’s President Mubarak resigned. Subsequently the “Arab Spring” spread across North Africa and into the Middle East. In all countries where elections were held in 2011 or 2012 (Egypt, Libya and Tunisia), the winner was an Islamic party. None won an absolute majority of votes cast or seats in elected assemblies, but Islamic parties and candidates always won more votes and seats than any other parties and thereby became their countries’ government formers. After seven years, in 2018, we can affirm that in 2011–12 the international community, its politicians and journalists, and most academics, misread the events that they were witnessing. Many envisaged a repeat of “the events of 1989” when popular revolutions in Eastern Europe toppled the region’s communist rulers, led to the spread of Western-type representative democracy, and subsequent social and economic transformations. Idealistic pro-democracy Arab youth were supposed to be triggering similar developments across North Africa and the Middle East. Nevertheless, now, the striking feature about the region is how little has changed in all the countries except Syria and Libya where civil wars are unresolved. A main legacy of “the events of 2011” had been the emergence of Daesh, a new umbrella organisation for violent Islamist jihadism. In 2011 the world and its future looked rather different. This was the year when, following the “Arab Spring”, the Indignados mobilised in Spain,

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followed by the Occupy movement which spread from New York throughout North America then across the Atlantic (Castells, 2012). These mobilisations, in all of which young people were prominent, joined ongoing protests in Greece against the austerity policies that were being imposed by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. There had been earlier mass mobilisations against prevailing forms of globalisation and in favour of global justice in Seattle in 1999 at a meeting of the World Trade Organization, then in Genoa in 2001 at a meeting of the G8. These protests were followed by the pro-democracy “colour revolutions” in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004 (Roberts, 2015). It was possible in 2011 to envisage Arab youth joining global youth mobilisations that would change the world (Porta and Mattoni, 2014). The internet and smartphones, intersecting with older media, had made what was formerly improbable into a real possibility.

2 Youth and politics That said, a mainstream strand in Western research into youth and politics has continued to suggest that nothing fundamental has changed. Public opinion has been polled regularly in Western Europe and North America since the Second World War, and has tracked a progressive decline in political interest and engagement among successive youth cohorts since the 1950s (Chauvel and Smits, 2015). Needless to say, this alleged decline has been contested. Levels of political engagement are shown to depend on how broadly or narrowly “politics” and “engagement” are defined. It has been argued that instead of joining mainstream political parties and voting in elections, young people have gravitated into single-issue new social movements, new forms of active citizenship on community projects of various types, and participation in cyberspace (Benedicto, 2013; Birdwell and Bani, 2014; Kimberlee, 2002; Manning, 2013; Smith et al., 2005; Soler-i-Martí, 2015). Then there is mundane everyday politics—discussions and debates in families, colleges, workplaces, bars and any other settings where people congregate (Bang, 2003). This is where the anger was kindled which exploded onto the streets of Tbilisi in 2003 and in Kiev in 2004 (Beachain and Polese, 2010). Perhaps most ominously for political elites, it has been shown that large numbers of young people are not apathetic and disinterested so much as aggressively anti-politics, choosing to distance themselves from all their countries’ political elites (McDowell et al., 2014; Pilkington and Pollock, 2015). Hence the concern and efforts of political elites to encourage forms of youth participation whereby the elites can connect with their young citizens (Kovacheva, 2000; Loncle et al., 2012). How all age groups participate in politics, work and consumption has certainly been transformed by new communications media—mobile phones and the internet in the 1990s, followed by broadband, social media and smartphones in the 2000s. These new technologies were first used prominently in

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the demonstrations in Seattle in 1999 and Genoa in 2001. The new technologies were available to activists in Georgia and Ukraine in 2003 and 2004, and in all the “events of 2011”. These technologies have made it possible for global political generations to be envisaged which are destined to transform the entire world (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2009; Edmunds and Turner, 2005; Juris and Pleyers, 2009; Porta and Mattoni, 2014). However, an alternative reading of the trends and related mobilisations is that the latter have been short-lived explosions of outrage which simmer throughout intervening years, then following the eruptions very little changes (Benedicto, 2008; Kovacheva and Kabaivanov, 2016; Spannring, 2005).

3 Who speaks in the name of Arab youth? Most attempts to frame the debate about the Arab Spring have been by Western scholars (AlMaghlouth et al., 2015); the term “Arab Spring” itself was coined in Western media. This chapter is another contribution from outside the region, albeit reflexively so, and we use Western benchmarks as a source of contrasts as well as similarities with what happened in North Africa and the Middle East in 2011 and subsequently. Experiences of people of all ages who live inside the region have differed from those living elsewhere whose views are confined to occasional snapshots in international media. The region exploded onto world newspaper headlines and television screens in 2011, since when it has rarely been visible. Protests appeared to erupt suddenly with politically dramatic outcomes in some countries, then all was quiet on the media front. Actually protests in which young people were prominent had been recurrent or ongoing in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, and our evidence (presented below) shows that although no longer international news, the numbers of young people involved in political protests have not declined since 2011. Their experiences, and their historical memories, are different from the glimpses through which the rest of the world learns about the region. All the coastal countries of the South and East Mediterranean have long histories as colonies, then subsequent authoritarian rule either by monarchs appointed by departing imperial powers, army officers who overthrew these neo-colonial regimes or led their countries’ struggles for independence, or political parties that led these campaigns. Throughout the colonial and postcolonial centuries and decades, all the countries have developed their own distinctive political cultures and institutions, However, a feature common to the entire region is that, in contrast to many Western countries, there has been no “rise of no religion” (Woodhead, 2016). There has been no loss of faith among the Moslem majorities and Christian minorities in the region (Janmohamed, 2016). There are also region-specific features of the youth life stage in South and East Mediterranean Arab-majority countries. During the second half of the 20th century the populations of these countries doubled then doubled again. A remarkable achievement in all the countries has been the improvements in

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living conditions and medical services which have been responsible for hauling down rates of infant and child mortality. Another remarkable achievement has been the enlargement of educational opportunities throughout decades when the numbers of children and young people have grown strongly. Illiteracy has been all but eradicated among current cohorts, and rising numbers have been enrolling in, then graduating from higher education. Unfortunately these achievements have not been matched in the countries’ labour markets. Youth unemployment has been held in check during the latest “demographic surge” only through the creation of swaths of informal, lowpaid and other types of precarious jobs, and most young women never venture into the labour market. There have been knock-on effects for family and housing life stage transitions. The supply of housing has been overwhelmed leading to the spread of non-legally constructed shanty towns on city fringes and over-crowding within cities and also in rural districts. Majorities of young people from all kinds of family and educational backgrounds now lack visible routes to acceptable adulthoods. These are the contexts in which they may turn to politics or religion, and both politics and religion in the region are unlike their counterparts on the Mediterranean’s northern shores.

4 Evidence Here we use the findings from the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) of nationally representative samples of 15–29 year olds in five South and East Mediterranean countries to explore the connections between politics and religion, and with the benefit of hindsight to develop a better understanding of the events of 2011 themselves and their legacies. As stated above, our evidence is from surveys in 2015–16 of nationally representative samples of approximately 2,000 15–29 year olds in each of five South and East Mediterranean countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon), all the littoral Arab majority states except Libya and Syria where conditions at the time made survey work impossible. The surveys were overseen by local social science partners who contracted the fieldwork to survey organisations that had experience, and existing tried and tested methods (which varied from country to country), of surveying nationally representative samples. Respondents were members of the target age group who were resident in representative samples of households. All respondents were interviewed at home, by same-sex interviewers, using a standardised and fully structured questionnaire (all questions were closed) which was available in English, French and Arabic. This instrument was pilot tested in each country, following which the local research partners ensured that the questions and answer categories could be applied with the same meanings in each country. In Lebanon, refugees from the war in neighbouring Syria, who were mostly living in camps, estimated at around 1.25 million, approximately a fifth of the country’s population, were not included in the survey. The interviews included questions about each respondent’s family background (parents’ education and occupations), the

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respondent’s own education, and labour market careers if they had completed their education. Whether respondents were married, “in a relationship” or single, and whether they were living with their parents or elsewhere, were also recorded. Employers, the self-employed, employees, apprentices and family workers were asked about their monthly incomes. Individuals without earned incomes were asked about their sources of money for personal spending. There were additional questions on housing and family relationships, and uses of free time, but here we focus on the samples’ political and religious activities and proclivities. The questionnaire surveys were complemented by qualitative fieldwork in three contrasting regions in each of the five countries, but here we deal solely with the survey evidence. This is partly due to limitations of space, but also because, unless they were selected for study on account of their involvement in politics, the young people who provided stories about their biographies and daily lives rarely mentioned either politics or religion. When religion was mentioned, this was usually by young women in relation to dress, where those interviewed insisted that whether to wear the veil and hijab were matters between themselves alone and Allah. Also, one young man in Tunisia confessed (or boasted) that he had done everything forbidden in Islam. We restrict our analysis to 20–29-year-old respondents in the surveys. This is because some questions were about participation in “the events of 2011” when the 15–19 year olds in 2015–16 (which was when the surveys were conducted) would have been aged 10–14: too young in most cases to have already become politically aware and active. In examining the links between educational attainments and other variables we restrict the analysis to those aged 25–29 at the time of the fieldwork. In younger age groups the respondents’ highest qualifications at the time of the research would not necessarily be their ultimate attainments. Throughout the analysis we compare responses in the five countries, and we also make comparisons between groups with different levels of educational attainment, between males and females, and between respondents living in rural and urban settlements. We deal first with politics, then religion, then search for relationships between young people’s engagements in these two life domains.

5 Politics 5.1 Political participation: lack of trust Some results from the SAHWA survey could have been from any group of European countries. The similarities include low levels of trust in the countries’ politicians. The South and East Mediterranean countries are low-trust societies. No big institutions are trusted. Young people trust only their families, close friends and other people like themselves. Trust in politicians and political institutions is abysmally low. Respondents were asked to score a

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series of institutions and groups on a trust scale with a range from 0–10. The highest mean score awarded to politicians, political parties and the countries’ parliaments was 3.2 for Egypt’s parliament. The lowest scores were 0.9, awarded to Lebanon’s parliament and its politicians. Trust in politicians lagged behind trust in the media, religious leaders, the legal system and the European Union, and in all these cases the mean scores in all five countries were beneath the mid-point of 5.0. Politicians’ trust scores were extraordinarily low even by European standards, very likely reflecting how young people’s life chances had been allowed to deteriorate inter-generationally while politicians and their families led prosperous lives. 5.2 Official politics Europeans are used to young people recording low levels of interest and engagement in official politics—lower than most other socio-demographic groups. So it is not out of line that the proportions who followed national political news daily in our research countries were never higher than 11% which was recorded in Lebanon and Tunisia. The young people were not ignoring radio, television and newspapers, and instead following national political events on their laptops and smartphones. They had other uses for these new media. The percentages who said that they always or often voted in elections ranged from a low of 11% in Lebanon to a high of 47% in Egypt. The percentages who “felt closer” to one political party than to any of the alternatives ranged from a low of 2% in Egypt to a high of 20% in Lebanon— a reversal of the positions when the measurement was voting. The percentages who “belonged” to a political party were 4% in Egypt (more than the number who “felt closest”), 5% in Algeria, 6% in Tunisia, 18% in Morocco and 21% in Lebanon. The Morocco and Lebanon figures would be considered extraordinarily high in any European country. The inter-country variations in our survey may reflect the significance and potential benefits of party membership. This can open the possibility of a political career as an elected representative, or appointment to positions in government administration or in businesses in which a government has a stake. This was not the case in Egypt where the military was the most likely route upwards. 5.3 Everyday politics It has been claimed in the West that young people have been withdrawing from official politics in favour of alternative ways of mobilising and achieving change. Thus the numbers who are politically engaged rise with broader definitions of politics and engagement. This proves true in the South and East Mediterranean countries. What we call “everyday politics” is engaging in political discussions, exchanges of information and views, and participating in political arguments with friends, in families, with colleagues at school or work, in the streets,

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squares and bazaars. These are the places that generate the “buzz” which can then find expression in other ways of doing politics. However, the percentages of respondents who discussed national politics regularly or often with anyone ranged from just 22% in Morocco to 44% in Lebanon. The percentages who discussed politics regularly or often with friends ranged from 11% to 27%. 5.4 Community politics Community politics, as defined here, involves working to make a difference in charities, neighbourhood and women’s associations, student and labour unions, and any other civil society groups. The percentages involved in at least one such association ranged from 13% to 37% in the different countries. 5.5 Protest politics Protest politics are defined as the types of mobilisation that spread across North Africa and the Middle East in 2011. Respondents in three countries in our surveys—Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia—were asked whether they had taken part in any of the activities that were part of these events. The activities were meetings, donating money, collecting signatures or signing petitions, being part of night watches, taking part in demonstrations, engaging in violent action for social or political ends, and participating via the internet. The proportions who had taken part in at least one of these events were 8% in Tunisia, 15% in Egypt and 20% in Morocco. Most young people had not been on the streets or in the squares, among the crowds of protesters. The “Arab Spring” questions were not asked in Algeria where attempts to assemble in Algiers had been dispersed quickly, or in Lebanon where protests by relatively small numbers fizzled out early in 2012. However, respondents in all five countries were asked whether they had taken part in the same list of activities during the previous year, 2015–16 (see Table 6.1). The proportion who had been involved in Morocco in 2015–16 was actually higher than in 2011 (36% against 20%), and the percentages who had been involved in 2015–16 were not much lower than in Morocco in Lebanon (33%) or in Algeria (27%) where there had been no “events of 2011”. None of the 2015–16 protests had toppled the countries’ regimes and they were not widely reported in international media but significant participation by young Table 6.1 Participation in protest activities (%)

Pre-“events of 2011” 2015–16

Algeria

Egypt

Lebanon

Morocco

Tunisia

– 27

15 11

– 33

20 36

8 7

Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

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people was achieved. Young people in South and East Mediterranean countries appear to resemble their European and North American counterparts in being less likely to commit to long-term involvement in any parties or movements than to take part in apparently spontaneous outbursts of anger and indignation. Short-lived outbursts appear typical of young people’s political participation throughout the present-day world (Benedicto, 2013; Spannring, 2005; Kovacheva and Kabaivanov, 2016). These are what Bayat (2013) calls “non-movements”. They erupt, most likely having been kindled in what we call everyday and community politics, then disappear (for a time). Participants have varied grievances. They are united only by what they are against. This applied in the “Arab Spring” countries in 2011 (Asselburg and Wimmen, 2016). For many participants it appears that the protest is the product, an end in itself, basically an exciting outlet for feelings of frustration and outrage (Castells, 2012). The figures in Table 6.1 must be read bearing in mind the different timescales within which the questions would have been answered. In the case of the events of 2011, in Egypt and Tunisia the questions would have been answered in the contexts of the weeks that preceded the “revolutions”. In Morocco protests continued throughout 2011 and into 2012 until the monarch conceded some of his powers to the elected parliament. Here there was a longer timescale for young people to become involved at some time or another. When asked in relation to the previous year, the time frame was always 12 months. Here the relatively low rates of participation in Egypt and Tunisia compared with the other countries may reflect disappointment at the outcomes of the 2011 revolutions, and in Egypt the repressive controls being exerted by the government led by ex-General Sisi who had replaced the elected President Morsi in 2013. As stated earlier, there is a narrative that has become accepted internationally which claims that there was an upsurge in youth protest activity across North Africa and the Middle East in 2011 since when this has subsided. This narrative is probably wrong. Protests had been recurrent throughout the decade preceding 2011 and, according to our evidence, have continued since then despite disappearing from international news media. 5.6 Overview Table 6.2 profiles each of the five countries and compares the proportions of their young people who were doing politics in different ways. To repeat, the levels of engagement in official politics are not low by Western standards. Communist countries achieved much higher levels of participation in their versions of democracy (Roberts, 2009). Nevertheless, since 1989 rates of participation in Central and Eastern Europe have fallen to typical Western democratic levels. A genuine difference vis-à-vis Europe are the high rates of engagement in protest politics in some of the South and East Mediterranean countries—higher than the proportions who voted always or often in Algeria, Lebanon and Morocco. In Lebanon and Morocco the proportions who voted

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Table 6.2 Differences in political engagement by countries (%)

Community politics (belongs to at least one association) Everyday politics (discussing with at least one other party) Vote regularly or always Protest politics in 2015–16

Algeria

Egypt

Lebanon

Morocco

Tunisia

31

26

37

28

13

32

33

44

22

40

25 27

47 11

11 33

13 36

27 7

Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

regularly or often were lower than the proportions who engaged in politics in all the alternative ways. Table 6.3 presents the percentages in each country according the number of ways in which they were “doing politics”. Except in Tunisia, between 12% and 17% can be considered political hyperactivists. They were “doing politics” in at least three out of our four possible ways. At the other extreme, in all the countries between 32% and 44% were completely unengaged. Against European benchmarks, these figures suggest that South and East Mediterranean youth are quite highly politicised. For those who become politically engaged, involvement in official politics is unlikely to extend beyond voting in elections. This apart, those who were “doing politics” were most likely to be protesting or involved in some form of community action. Levels and types of political engagement varied within all the countries between socio-demographic groups. However, the surprising finding is that the differences were rare and usually narrow. The main and most consistent difference was that, whatever the way of doing politics, the most highly educated Table 6.3 Percentages who were involved in different numbers of different kinds of political activities

None Any one of voting in elections (official politics), everyday, community and protest politics Any two Any three All four

Algeria

Egypt

Lebanon

Morocco

Tunisia

37 29

32 35

33 31

44 28

43 36

20 10 4

21 9 3

19 14 3

15 10 2

17 4 1

Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

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were the most likely to be involved. This finding is common in youth surveys worldwide. The absence of some differences among South and East Mediterranean youth are as noteworthy as the differences that we found. There were very few differences, and these were all minor, between levels of political engagement in rural and urban areas. Mass media had probably eliminated cultural differences, while countryside-to-city migration, leaving links between family members in rural and urban areas, would have narrowed social distance. Males were more likely than females to have been involved in protest politics, whereas none of the other ways of doing politics were gendered. Young Arab women were not politically passive, though there were wide gender differences in other uses of free time and in rates of participation in the countries’ labour markets.

6 Youth participation in the sphere of religion This is different. The levels and patterns of political engagement described above will be recognisable and even familiar in many respects for Europeans. With religion the southern shores of the Mediterranean become somewhere else. Our survey findings probably reveal a 21st-century “turn to” religion. We have no directly comparable historical evidence, but in the 1950s and 1960s the post-colonial governments of the recently independent North African countries all embraced some version of socialism (which was popular globally at that time). The governments were modernisers. Religion was traditional. Here there are similarities between 21st-century South and East Mediterranean countries and Central and Eastern Europe’s newly independent states which began recovering their national pre-communist histories and identities after 1989. 6.1 Private religiosity Respondents in our survey were asked about the importance of religion in 16 life domains: food, clothing, appearance, emotional relationships, travel, family celebrations and others. Importance was measured on a scale from 1 (extremely important) to 5 (not at all important). The mean scores across all domains were 2.1 in Algeria and 2.2 in Tunisia (indicating very high levels of religiosity), 2.3 in Morocco, 2.6 in Egypt and 3.0 in Lebanon, the exact midpoint on the scale, but indicating that Lebanon was the least religious country among the five. This evidence supports claims that there has been no loss of faith among Arab Islamic youth (Janmohamed, 2016). There were no major differences between socio-demographic groups. Rural youth were not religious and traditional compared with modern, secular city dwellers. The universityeducated rated religion as just as important in their lives as did young people with no more than primary schooling. These findings present orthodox versions of modernisation theory with a full-frontal challenge (Roberts et al., 2017). Although nuanced to admit differences between world regions,

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modernisation theorists have insisted that economic modernisation is always followed by social and cultural modernisation in which traditional (including religious) ways of thinking and behaving give way to rational, scientific thought and action. Modern mindsets are supposed to take root initially among highly educated urban youth (Inglehart, 1977, 1997; Welzel, 2013). This theory is currently being defied by Arab-Islamic youth in South and East Mediterranean countries. However, we must note that the similar group mean scores disguise wide differences between individuals which existed within all, not between, sociodemographic groups. The range of individual mean scores was from 1 (the most religious possible) to 5 (the least religious point on the scale). 6.2 Public religiosity With public religiosity, indicated by frequency of attendance at a mosque (or church or the equivalents of other minorities), we encounter a more nuanced picture (Table 6.4). In Algeria, Egypt and Morocco between 29% and 32% of respondents were attending three or more times each week. However, in all five countries at least 46% of the samples were rarely or never attending. In Lebanon it was 67% and in Tunisia 88%. In Lebanon the most likely explanation is that its young people were simply less religious than those elsewhere, but this explanation does not match the high private religiosity scores that were recorded in Tunisia. A likely explanation is that young Tunisians were finding other ways to express their faith while avoiding mosques that had been subject to high levels of state supervision and regulation before and since 2011. The main difference between socio-demographic groups was that males were heavily over-represented among the frequent mosque attenders. Some 36% of males against just 6% of females were attending at least three times a week. Levels of educational attainment were unrelated to frequency of attendance, and there was little difference between rural and urban areas.

Table 6.4 Mosque/church attendances (%)

Every day At least three times a week Once or twice a week A few times a month Rarely Never

Algeria

Egypt

Lebanon

Morocco

Tunisia

22 10 8 7 17 35

19 10 12 11 18 30

4 3 12 14 27 40

20 12 10 11 17 29

5 2 2 4 16 72

Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

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6.3 Religion and politics linkages Was the strong religious commitment of most (but not all) young people in the research countries making a difference to their politics? Here we should set aside the success of Islamic parties in elections that were held in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia in 2011 and 2012. At that time it was only Islamic movements that had built support over several decades, sometimes operating legally, otherwise underground, which were able to mobilise nationwide support sufficiently quickly to become serious challengers to successors of former and incumbent regimes. However, given high levels of private religiosity, and over a third of young males attending a mosque (usually) at least three times a week, it is entirely possible that Islamic parties could mobilise sufficient support to become long-term challengers or government formers. In practice, however, there were ways in which the samples’ levels of religious commitment were making no difference to their politics, and in this, as in many other instances, “no difference” can be a socially and politically significant finding. So first, levels of religious commitment were making no difference to levels of political engagement. Religious commitment was neither an alternative to, nor was it heightening political activity. There were some political activists who were highly religious, others with weak or no religious commitment, and every other possible combination. 6.4 Democracy and alternative political systems Second, religiosity was making no difference to the young people’s ratings of different political systems—democracy, technocracy and autocracy (Table 6.5). We did not use these terms in the interviews. Autocracy was “A system led by a strong group that depends neither on a parliament or elections”. Technocracy was “A system where experts—and not the government—take decisions on what is best for the country”. Democracy was “A regime in which representatives depend on and are accountable to the citizens”. Representative democracy won this “ballot” by wide margins in every country and within every socio-demographic group. Our evidence shows that Arab youth in the region are aspiring to and searching for the democratisation of their countries. In this respect the “international community” read the events of 2011 correctly. Arab youth were and still are pro-democracy. However, this did not necessarily mean that they shared one view about the form that democracy should take. Some may have preferred more frequent and deeper participation than just voting every three, four or five years or so. There were some noteworthy differences between the countries. Algeria and Morocco were the two countries where majorities did not rate democracy as a “very good” system, but even in these countries democracy had more support than any of the alternatives (see Table 6.5). Ratings also varied by educational levels. The most highly educated expressed the strongest support for democracy, but this was the most highly rated system in all socio-demographic

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Table 6.5 Views on different political systems (%) Algeria

Egypt

Lebanon

Morocco

Tunisia

Autocracy Very good Good/acceptable Technocracy

11 24

3 6

9 14

10 37

6 5

Very good Good/acceptable Democracy

23 46

40 46

23 50

19 37

41 32

Very good Good/acceptable

40 38

69 28

61 35

24 40

78 16

Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

groups. However, majorities everywhere also rated technocracy as very good, good or acceptable, and small minorities ranging from 3% in Egypt to 11% in Algeria rated autocracy as a very good system. Here, levels of religiosity made absolutely no difference. Table 6.6 divides the sample into those with the strongest religious commitment—those who were the most frequent attenders at mosques and on average had the highest private religiosity scores—and the rest whose religious commitment was moderate, low or nil. The highly religious were as strongly pro-democracy as the rest of their age group. We can conclude safely that in the countries included in this research, Arab youth’s Islam is not anti-democracy. The most faithful are not aspiring to live under theocratic rulers or absolute monarchs as in Saudi Arabia. Table 6.6 Opinions on different political systems by levels of religiosity (%) Religiosity: high

Religiosity: moderate to low

Very good Good/acceptable Technocracy

8 20

7 16

Very good Good/acceptable Democracy

30 40

30 42

Very good Good/acceptable

53 32

55 31

Autocracy

Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

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7 Religion and politics: separate or fused? Where religiosity did make a difference was on views about the proper relationship between politics and religion. Respondents were presented with four statements about religion and politics with which they were asked to agree strongly, agree, disagree or disagree strongly. There was no neutral option. Two statements were pro-separatist: “Religion should not influence people’s political decisions”, and “Religion is a personal affair that should be separate from socioeconomic life”. The other statements favoured the politicisation of faith and a fusion of religion into government: “People with strong religious beliefs should take on political responsibilities”, and “Religious leaders should influence the government’s decisions”. The responses by country are in Table 6.7. There were inter-country differences. There was least support for “fusion” in the countries with recent experience of Islamic governments—Tunisia in 2011–14 and Egypt in 2012–13. During this brief time frame in Egypt an elected assembly in which a party representing the Moslem Brotherhood was the strongest group was dissolved by the (pre-2011) judiciary, and elected President Morsi was deposed by the army. The main difference between socio-demographic groups was by educational levels. The university educated were the most overwhelmingly pro-separation. There were also differences by levels of religious commitment. There was less support for separation and more support for fusion among the most religious respondents (Table 6.8). However, we should note that more respondents from the highly religious group endorsed the separatist than the fusion statements. Also, we have seen that high religiosity usually co-existed alongside support for democracy. The majority of the most highly religious respondents did not wish to impose an Islamic government on resistant fellow citizens. Wanting to be governed by Table 6.7 Percentages who agreed strongly or agreed with propositions about religion and politics

Religion should not influence people’s political decisions Religion is a private affair that should be separate from socioeconomic life People with strong religious beliefs should take on political responsibilities Religious leaders should influence the government’s decisions

Algeria

Egypt

Lebanon

Morocco

Tunisia

64

67

86

59

85

49

71

84

55

81

47

36

17

62

17

50

30

18

64

18

Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

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Table 6.8 Percentages who agreed strongly or agreed with propositions about religion and politics

Religion should not influence people’s political decisions Religion is a private affair that should be separate from socioeconomic life People with strong religious beliefs should take on political responsibilities Religious leaders should influence the government’s decisions

Religiosity: high

Religiosity: moderate or low

64

75

60

70

47

32

50

31

Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

people with strong religious beliefs is not the same as wanting a government to impose these beliefs and related practices on resistant others. The most faithful can be the most insistent that religion should be a personal choice, an expression of freedom, rather than enforced from above (Janmohamed, 2016). Yet we must also note that other surveys (Tessler, 2015; Tessler and MillerGonzales, 2015) have found that majorities of young people across North Africa believe that non-Moslems should have fewer political rights. Is this compatible with democracy which the majority also support? Possibly so within Arab-Islamic mindsets. Also, within our samples, there was a small minority with strong religious commitment, who wanted religion and politics to be fused, and who also believed that autocracy was a very good political regime. They were implicitly pro-theocracy: Islamic societies ruled by religious leaders. Are these young people potential jihadists? Not necessarily, but some believe that their views should prevail even in the absence of democratic endorsement. A limitation in working with our data set is that despite the large total number of respondents, this small minority cannot be located using any standard socio-demographic indicators. They may be well educated or minimally educated, in cities or the countryside, male or female, attending mosques regularly or rarely or never. What we can conclude securely is that this group is a tiny minority. Most young people in South and East Mediterranean countries are faithful, and also pro-democracy, and favour keeping religion and politics separate.

8 Conclusions The main differences that we have recorded on politics and religion have been between the five countries. Within all countries the main differences have usually been by educational levels. The best-educated were always the most engaged in politics, the most pro-democracy, and the most likely to want religion and politics kept separate. However, all socio-demographic groups

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were answering our questions on politics and religion in specific national contexts. Engagement in protest politics during the previous 12 months was lowest in Egypt and Tunisia. Voting regularly was relatively rare in Lebanon and Morocco. Morocco was the country where support for democracy was weakest. It was followed by Algeria which had been governed with the army retaining oversight since independence in 1962 (Aghrout and Zoubir, 2015). Morocco and Algeria were the countries where there was most support for religious leaders entering politics. We cannot explain any of these differences with our survey evidence. Any attempted explanations would be pure speculation. Explaining all withincountry differences, including the main differences which were by educational levels, needs more detailed attention to the relevant socio-demographic groups. Also, all the countries’ political systems—the contexts within which young people’s political orientations develop—are unique historical formations, and each must really be treated as requiring a dedicated case study.

Notes 1 The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007–13 under grant agreement no. 613174 for the SAHWA Project (www.sahwa.eu). This publication reflects only the authors’ views. The European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein. 2 We acknowledge the contributions of research teams from The Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), Barcelona who coordinated the project; the Centre of Arab Women for Training and Research, Tunis; the Centre de Recherche en Economie Appliquée pour le Développement, Algiers; the Insitut des Hautes Etudes de Management, Rabat; the Lebanese American University, Beirut; and the American University in Cairo, who supervised the survey work in their respective countries.

References Aghrout, A. and Zoubir, Y. H. (2015). Algeria: Reforms without change? in Zoubir, Y. H. and White, G. (Eds.) North African Politics: Change and Continuity. London: Routledge, pp. 145–155. AlMaghlouth, N., Atvanitis, R., Cointet, J.-P. and Hanafi, S. (2015). “Who frames the debate on the Arab uprisings? Analysis of Arabic, English and French academic scholarship”, International Sociology, 30, pp. 418–441. Asselburg, M. and Wimmen, H. (2016). “Dynamics of transformation, elite change and new social mobilization in the Arab world”, Mediterranean Politics, 21, pp. 1–22. Bang, H. (2003). A new ruler makes a new citizen: Cultural governance and everyday making, in Bang, H. (Ed.) Governance as Social and Political Communication. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bayat, A. (2013). Life as Politics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Beachain, D. O. and Polese, A. (2010). “‘Rocking the vote’: New forms of youth organisations in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union”, Journal of Youth Studies, 13, pp. 615–630.

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Beck, U. and Beck-Gernsheim, E. (2009). “Global generations and the trap of methodological nationalism for a cosmopolitan turn in the sociology of youth and generation”, European Sociological Review, 25, pp. 25–36. Benedicto, J. (2008). Young people and politics: Disconnected, sceptical, an alternative, or all of it at the same time? in Benedicto, J. and Blasco, A. L. (Eds.) Young People and Political Participation: European Research. Young People’s Studies Magazine, 81, June, Observatory of Youth in Spain, Madrid, pp. 13–27. Benedicto, J. (2013). “The political cultures of young people: An uncertain and unstable combinatorial logic”, Journal of Youth Studies, 16, pp. 712–729. Birdwell, J. and Bani, M. (2014). Introducing Generation Citizen. London: Demos. Castells, M. (2012). Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Chauvel, L. and Smits, F. (2015). “The endless baby boomer generation: Cohort differences in political participation in nine European countries in the period 1976–2008”, European Societies. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14616696.2015.1006113. Edmunds, J. and Turner, B. S. (2005). “Global generations: Social change in the twentieth century”, British Journal of Sociology, 56, pp. 559–577. Inglehart, R. (1977). The Silent Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Inglehart, R. (1997). Modernization and Postmodernization. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Janmohamed, S. (2016). Generation M: Young Muslims Changing the World. London: Tauris. Juris, J. S. and Pleyers, G. H. (2009). “Alter-activism: Emerging cultures of participation among young global justice activists”, Journal of Youth Studies, 12, pp. 57–75. Kimberlee, R. H. (2002). “Why don’t British young people vote at general elections?” Journal of Youth Studies, 5, pp. 85–98. Kovacheva, S. (2000). Keys to Youth Participation in Eastern Europe. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Kovacheva, S. and Kabaivanov, S. (2016). “Differences and inequalities in civic participation among Bulgarian Youth”, Sociology and Anthropology, 4(4), pp. 228–240. Loncle, P., Cuconata, M., Muniglia, M. and Walter, A. (2012). Youth Participation in Europe: Beyond Discourses, Practices and Realities. Bristol: Policy Press. Manning, N. (2013). “‘I mainly look at things on an issue by issue basis’: Reflexivity and phronesis in young people’s political engagements”, Journal of Youth Studies, 16, pp. 17–33. McDowell, L., Rootham, E. and Hardgrove, A. (2014). “Politics, anti-politics, quiescence and radical unpolitics: Young men’s participation in an ‘ordinary’ English town”, Journal of Youth Studies, 17, pp. 42–62. Pilkington, H. and Pollock, G. (2015). “Politics are bollocks: Youth, politics and activism in contemporary Europe”, Sociological Review, 63(S2), pp. 1–35. Porta, D. and Mattoni, A. (Eds.) (2014). Spreading Protest: Social Movements in Times of Crisis. Colchester: ECPR Press. Roberts, K. (2009). Youth in Transition: Eastern Europe and the West. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Roberts, K. (2015). “Youth mobilisations and political generations: Young activists in political change movements during and since the twentieth century”, Journal of Youth Studies, 18, pp. 950–966. Roberts, K., Kovacheva, S. and Kabaivanov, S. (2017). Modernisation Theory Meets Tunisia’s Youth During and Since the Revolution of 2011. Barcelona: CIDOB. Available at: doi.org/10.24241/swsp.2017.3.1.

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SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017). Data File Edition 3.0. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). Smith, N., Lister, R., Middleton, S. and Cox, L. (2005). “Young people as real citizens: Towards an inclusionary understanding of citizenship”, Journal of Youth Studies, 8, pp. 425–433. Soler-i-Martí, R. (2015). “Youth political involvement update: Measuring the role of cause-oriented political interest in young people’s activism”, Journal of Youth Studies, 18, pp. 396–416. Spannring, R. (2005). Some qualitative findings on young people’s attitudes towards political participation, in The Central European Dimension of Youth Research. Trnava: Central European Network of Youth Research, pp. 20–35. Tessler, M. (2015). The Civic Orientations of Arab Publics: Selected Findings from the Arab Barometer. PowerPoint presentation. Available at: www.arabbaromter.org, (Accessed: 13 November 2015). Tessler, M. and Miller-Gonzales, J. (2015). Meghrebi youth in the wake of the Arab Spring: General observations and evidence from Tunisia and Algeria, in Zoubir, Y. H. and White, G. (Eds.) North African Politics: Change and Continuity. London: Routledge, pp. 18–43. Welzel, C. (2013). Freedom Rising: Human Empowerment and the Quest for Emancipation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Woodhead, L. (2016). “The rise of ‘no religion’ in Britain: The emergence of a new cultural majority”, Journal of the British Academy, 4, pp. 245–261.

7

“Getting out from the shell of fear”?1 Forms of youth political engagement and the impact of social inequalities in the MENA countries Siyka Kovacheva UNIVERSITY OF PLOVDIV

Stanimir Kabaivanov UNIVERSITY OF PLOVDIV

Boris Popivanov SOFIA UNIVERSITY

1 Introduction The events in 2011 which spread as a wave of change from Morocco to Egypt and beyond opened up political opportunity structures for youth participation in politics. The 20 February Movement in Morocco empowered thousands of young people to take to the streets. In Egypt the protests gathered both marginalised and well-educated, middle-class “Facebook” and “Twitter” youth (Palencia, 2015), unorganised individuals and organised groups such as the Youth of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Youth of Kefaya, the Front of Coptic Youth and young people from the Tomorrow Party, the Democratic Party, the Labour Party, and the Wafd Party (Durac, 2015; Korany, 2014). Not only the physical spaces in Arab cities but also the virtual spaces of the new social media became “discursive territories” (Christensen and Christensen, 2013) for youth self-expression, identity formation and political communication. Young people’s posts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs influenced political debates in the region, communicated political messages, and were used as tools for organising gatherings and other protest actions (Khalil, 2012; AlSayyad and Guvenc, 2013; Markham, 2014). While the interplay between traditional and new media fostered the creation of an agreed symbolic meaning of the events, it did not reach all young people in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, nor all public spaces and geographical territories in the countries starting the protests. The youth and other protest movements remained separate, often acting in competition with one another, prone to internal fracturing without clear ideological inclinations (Sika,

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2012). These features of the Arab uprisings of 2011 prompted scholars to question the utility of using social movement theory (Durac, 2015) or named them “non-movements” (Bayat, 2010). Six years after the “Arab Spring” in the southern Mediterranean and the fading of its democratic promise, issues of entrenched social inequalities and lack of social justice are back on the agenda of academic and policy research in the region. At present youth crowds in the city squares in North Africa and the Middle East are rather rare events although occasional mass mobilisations are still taking place in protest against corruption, elite irresponsibility and the social exclusion of the vast majority of the new generation. Currently, Arab young people seem disinterested in politics, disinclined to vote in parliamentary elections and distrustful of political parties and trade unions. Some are trying to leave their countries in search of better job opportunities or, in the worst cases, to a lesser degree, to join terrorist organisations. Yet young Arabs are not absentees from public life in the region and have their own styles and spaces of participation. The ongoing processes clearly indicate a distance between the youth and the “mainstream” in the MENA societies of today. Identifying the factors behind the youth exclusion from politics is among the aims of this book and requires contextualisation in the main dimensions of youth life in the region. To this purpose, engagement is viewed as one of the dimensions identified in the SAHWA Project and refers to “the knowledges, practices, opportunities and representations young people have at their disposal to form, preserve, oppose, disrupt and improve the general rules under which they live” (see the Introduction to this book). Taking stock of the international comparative project “SAHWA. Researching Arab Mediterranean Youth: Towards a New Social Contract”, which focuses on the experiences, views and prospects of young people in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon,2 the chapter analyses the combined data set from a representative survey of 10,000 young men and women (2,000 in each country)3 and the rich collection of qualitative data from focus groups and narrative interviews. The research questions are: What are the regional and country-specific features in the attitudes and practices of youth engagement (institutional and non-institutional) in politics in the MENA countries after they experienced the mass revolts of 2011? What factors explain the differences in the levels and forms of involvement in public issues among different groups of Arab youths inside the separate countries?

2 Theoretical perspective We build upon the widely accepted division of the forms of political participation into institutional and non-institutional (protest) engagement (Verba et al., 1978; Dalton, 1998). Recent research has pointed out that new trends shape youth political participation in the West which needs more refined inquiry approaches. Instead of holding a consistent ideological orientation

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and demonstrating loyalty to a political collective as a party or movement, young people turn toward more individualised forms of political participation such as political consumerism (Feixa et al., 2009; Stolle and Micheletti, 2013). Studies have shown youth inclination to identify leisure as a form of resistance to neoliberal positions (Riley et al., 2010). Ekman and Amnå (2012) have pointed to the growing significance of latent forms, the so-called stand-by engagement and non-participation. Unemployment has been identified as a strong predictor for a low interest in politics, distrust in parties and political institutions, and low belief in them (EACEA, 2013). Differences in the levels and forms of political involvement between young men and women have been examined in various surveys without reaching conclusive results about the one-directional influence of gender (Brooks, 2009). The family background of young people, including parental education, occupational status and income (Nolas, 2014), has also been measured to have a significant influence upon political participation. In the MENA region, similar differences and inequalities among the youth are also present, often in an intensified form (Singerman, 2013; OECD, 2016; Antonakis-Nashif, 2016). A specific feature in the MENA context is the increasing importance of the emerging middle class, whose political influence is growing (Sumpf, 2014), but which is still highly vulnerable to austeritydriven reductions in state apparatus, educational systems and social protection (ESCWA, 2014). Research into the class stratification in the MENA region is still a developing academic field due to the lack of systematic statistical data, the high heterogeneity and fragmentation of the region, and the interplay of colonial, postcolonial and capitalist trends (ESCWA, 2014). Other socioeconomic differences in access to power also play a role in the forms of political engagement, placing the young in a situation of marginalisation (Murphy, 2012; Steavenson, 2015). Young women and men face significantly different opportunities and constraints in Arab countries (Zubaida, 2014; CAWTAR, 2017; Barsoum, 2017). Religion, which is often seen as offering solutions to social problems in the region, is not only a unifying factor but a differentiating one as well, because within religious communities there is significant differentiation in the tolerance towards violence (Buijs, 2009). New technologies and the spread of social media are positively assessed as a factor which could help the youth develop a political consciousness, challenging the status quo if their demands are not met by reforms (Palencia, 2015). The divides between the poorer and richer neighbourhoods of the large cities, and between them and the rural areas, between educated and non-educated youths, between those in secure employment and those in precarious jobs, also play a significant role in youth mobilisations (Zemni, 2015). From this perspective this chapter tests several hypotheses. Firstly, politics is commonly negatively assessed by youth in the region as the domain of corrupt elites and passively practised in the form of voting at elections. Then, we hypothesise that socioeconomic inequalities do have an importance in explaining the differences among the youth. We presume that gender will

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strongly differentiate, with the political involvement of Arab young women being less in all forms of public engagement than men, as traditionally women in the region are expected to stay at home caring for the family and not take an active stance in public life. Where young people live is a social space with political significance. During the Arab uprisings in 2011 it was the urban population that was most active in the protests. Our hypothesis is that young people in urban areas will be more active in various protest forms of political engagement while the rural youth will tend to be more inclined towards institutional participation such as voting. The family young people come from is also expected to exert a significant influence on their political participation. Here we analyse two predictors: parents’ education and parents’ occupation status. We expect that young people whose parents are university educated and middle class will be more active in institutional politics. Another type of family influence is whether politics is discussed at home. Our hypothesis is that young people who are used to discussing politics with their parents will be more active in all forms. Another group of predictors concentrate on young people’s own socioeconomic status. We hypothesise that those still in education and the officially employed will be more active in all forms; those unemployed and inactive economically will be less engaged in all forms of political participation. In addition, those with higher income are expected to be more active in institutional political forms while those with lower income are expected to be more active in non-institutional protest forms. Young people’s marriage status will also have an influence on their participation. Our hypothesis is that the single are more active than the married in protest politics, while married young people will be more active in institutional politics. Besides the predictors arising from the structural conditions of young people’s lives we also included a set of more subjective characteristics of the young respondents. Their value orientations towards politics and public life are included in our model as intermediate variables. From the SAHWA survey we used the following variables measuring young people’s sociopolitical orientations: following political news, trust in institutions, support for democracy as a political system, attitudes towards gender equality, religiosity, and wish to emigrate to a foreign country. Our hypotheses are that those who follow political news more regularly and express greater trust in institutions will be more active in politics. Young people who are more prodemocracy and pro-gender equality will be more engaged in all forms. Based on Western literature we expect that those who are more religious and more determined to leave their home country will be less active politically.

3 The impact of socioeconomic differences: who participates, where and how? A short review of the social and political context of youth participation is necessary to understand young people’s perceptions and practices of

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engagement. The structure of opportunities and constraints in the region as a whole and within the separate countries still bears the marks of the policies of former authoritarian regimes of the institutional prioritisation of youth and the new impetus the 2010–11 uprisings have given to them (Kovacheva et al., 2017). For example, the Moroccan constitution adopted in the immediate aftermath of the revolution prescribes in its Art. 33(1) an obligation of the public institutions to stimulate youth participation in the political life (Morocco, 2011), while the later Tunisian constitution proclaims (Art. 8) broadening and expansion of youth participation in the political development (Tunisia, 2014). Symbolic appraisals of the active youth have been taken up in various countries—as in Tunisia, where 14 January, the day of overthrowing the dictatorship, is officially celebrated as “Revolution and Youth Day”. Concrete state-driven measures have been promoted as well. In Tunisia, the new election law stipulated that political parties should nominate at least one person under the age of 35 in the top four of the electoral lists; in Algeria, the new law prescribes a quota of 16 (out of 567) seats in the parliament and a quarter of the seats in local councils reserved for young people, while at the same time every minister in the government is obliged to appoint two young associates aged between 30 and 40; in Morocco, the organic law on parliament reserves 30 seats in the lower chamber urging the political parties to arrange their election lists in accordance with that. One should add numerous laws and regulations in all MENA countries officially designed to encourage youth associations, dialogue with authorities and the protection of social and political rights. Both intentions and results have been regularly criticised as formal, half-hearted or insufficient. In the Algerian case introducing youth quotas in governance is perceived as a mere “diplomatic scheme” by the ageing political elite to reserve the primary role for itself (CREAD, 2016). In Tunisia, to mention just a second example, the realities of the first post-2011 legislature reveal that 79% of members of parliament were 40 years old or more while only 4% were under 30 (when at that time approximately 51% of the population were under 30). Protest movements have opened up a window of opportunity for elite replacement by younger people but the current elites have largely averted it through different tactics of repression and co-optation, thus actually reducing authentic generational rotation. The political paths of development in the five cases since 2011–12 show growing cross-country differences. In Morocco, the 20 February protest movement did not manage to gain sufficient support (especially in rural areas) and lost momentum, failing to achieve substantial results at the post-uprising immediate snap elections. The political scene has remained dominated by the king’s political discourse exploiting the strong traditional and religious roots of the monarchy in society. Thus serious improvements in defence of freedoms and rights of protest have lacked solid political and ideological advocacy. In Tunisia, where the democratic reforms went furthest, the post-revolutionary power was taken by the moderate Islamists of Ennahda but their later move in a conservative direction brought them to a deadlock in a wave of protests.

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Forced to step down, they were replaced by secular nationalists who faced radicalising Islamist resistance and even terrorist attacks with the ultimate response of imposing strong, however short-term, restrictions on human rights. Algeria’s regime co-opted moderate Islamists in a civilian government supported and sometimes directed by the military. Despite the challenge of the recent boycott of elections by major opposition parties, the political context prevents mass participation through substantially reduced freedom of press and rights of demonstration, and the effective postponement of constitutional reforms. In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood-backed government under President Morsi became increasingly authoritarian and was removed violently from power and a new military regime under Abdel Fatah al-Sisi was established and, despite subsequently winning elections, engaged in political repression. In Lebanon, the heavy heritage of civil wars and foreign interventions is still strongly felt and the political process is focused on balancing between conflicting interests of internal confessional and regional powers. The permanent institutional crisis which left the country two years without a president has encouraged participation mostly on the basis of religious and political party affiliations. As we see, in some cases the strength of traditions reintroduced the old elites’ obstructions to genuine youth engagement. In other cases, internal political struggles limited initial promises of democratic reforms. The aggregate opinions of young people themselves are evidence of young people’s disillusionment with the political developments in their countries. In Table 7.1, the striking figures from Tunisia obviously have a contextual explanation, since the study’s fieldwork was conducted at the time of the imposition of extraordinary measures by the government in 2015 and the significant reduction of human rights they brought about. In Egypt, the figures Table 7.1 Assessment of political participation by young people (%)

Everyone is free to say what they think now Everyone was free to say what they thought before 2010–11 Everyone is free to enter/join a political party or movement now Everyone was free to enter/join a political party or movement before 2010–11 All ordinary citizens can influence the government now All ordinary citizens could influence the government before 2010–11

Tunisia

Egypt

Morocco

2% 44%

27% 11%

14% 11%

3%

26%

17%

49%

11%

11%

1%

10%

16%

10%

4%

12%

Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017. Not available in questionnaires in Algeria and Lebanon. Respondents are required to answer on a scale between 1 and 5, where 1 stands for “fully disagree” while 5 denotes “fully agree”. The table presents the share of those marking “5”.

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suggest a more positive comparison between the current situation and the Mubarak times, although obviously lack of trust still remains widespread, with good reason in the ongoing political shakeup. In Morocco, one can hardly say an important change has taken place which corresponds to the vitality of the traditional power structure in the country. Youth scepticism about widening the opportunities of the new generations to influence the political environment and their own living conditions has not evaporated. Low confidence in public political institutions is considered to be a common feature of the MENA youth in the mid-2010s in all the five countries studied by the SAHWA Project (Laine et al., 2016, p. 6). In some cases, young people are found to be reluctant to speak about participation, fearing to announce any affiliation to some particular political or social group, uneasy about the very sense of engaging in public, regarding politics as corrupt and disinteresting, and suspicious about the pluses of foreign aid and models (ibid., pp. 7–14). Such considerations are vividly illustrated in the words of one of the SAHWA interviewees: As a Moroccan young [person], I don’t know enough on politics even if my father is affiliated to a political party. Within my family, we don’t understand what politics means, we always keep thinking that politics is not important, it’s blah-blah, so can we expect to participate? So if I want to learn, whom should I contact? What are the institutions that are there for me, I’m here and I want to learn. (MA_FG_4: 5) The ambiguous impact of the foreign (especially European Union) instruments for triggering democratic participation in the region should also be noted. The survey shows that young people might value freedom and justice as parts of their understanding of a better society and a better life but they range low on the list of priorities, which continue to focus on the social and economic spheres (Martiningui and Nigro, 2016). When speaking about emigration as a central phenomenon in the region, it turns out that political and security motivations for leaving one’s own country occupy the least important place (with 3% of “yes” answers in Tunisia and Morocco, and practically zero in Algeria, Egypt and Lebanon), well below push factors such as lack of professional opportunities, poor living conditions, inadequate education, low incomes, etc. (Sánchez-Montijano and Girona-Raventós, 2017). The evidence is that the most crucial political upheavals in the region—the Arab Spring revolutions— have not caused a decisive change in the migration flows (Boucherf, 2017). A short look at the most frequently used words and terms in the group discussions with policymakers, youth practitioners and entrepreneurs, and young people with different ethnic, social, political, regional and employment backgrounds throughout all the examined five countries (with the help of NVivo software) serves to additionally enrich the picture. Politics and

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political institutions are very rarely mentioned in the discourse of the Lebanese youth where the most sensitive and widely discussed topics seem to be those related to education and its deficiencies, gender balances and religious affiliations. “Education” and “school” are prevalent in Tunisia as well, together with a focus on work and family, while “political” and “revolution” stand firmly behind, suggesting they are no longer at the forefront of young people’s concerns. “Without” has a significant presence in Tunisia, as do “problem” and “lack” in Algeria, which is a reason to read an existing dissatisfaction with the overall youth conditions in both countries. Algeria is similar to Tunisia in another respect: the domination of “education”, “work” and “family” as outstanding issues. Here, “politics” and “change” lag behind such important terms as “values” and “culture”, while terms related to state youth policies are least mentioned. In Morocco and Egypt discussions reveal a more consistent use of politically oriented words. It is notable that in Egypt “participation”, “engagement”, “association”, “public”, “community” and their derivatives constitute almost half of the most frequently used expressions together with educational terms and those related to economy (“job”, “market”, “business”, etc.), at the expense of family matters. By analogy, the “economic” cluster is equally strong in Morocco (with a distinct accent on “entrepreneurs” and “entrepreneurship”), and politics in its various forms is substantially covered in the young people’s speech (Kovacheva et al., 2017). This quantitative analysis underlines the heterogeneity of the MENA youth and the common perception of the youth as young people in different sub-groups that vary not only from country to country but also within one and the same country. Closer scrutiny of the discussions conducted presents the intensity of political speech in the Egyptian cases as primarily an issue of negation: politics is regarded and analysed as a sphere that prompts most of all disaffection in the youth. There are not many examples of commenting on political chances and perspectives (bearing in mind that Egypt was the only country among the five that witnessed the establishment and mobilisation of youth-led political parties during the Arab Spring revolutionary waves, although all of them failed to achieve any significant goals). The groups interviewed seemed to reach an easy consensus on this “disaffection with politics” and preferred to discuss in greater length the activities of youth in the civic sector. These field observations are confirmed by Korany et al. (2016): according to them, non-interest in politics among the Egyptian youth is to be attributed to exhaustion and disappointment with the recurring (and disputably fair and transparent) elections and political instability in the country. The participants in the Moroccan discussions, in turn, generally acknowledge the key role of politics and the rising engagement of policymakers with youth issues in the last few years, with the specification, however, that there is much to be done in the future: I think that what happened in the last years in the Arab world and Morocco has changed at least the vision of the actors in relation to

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youth. These actors are now taking into account the opinion of youth. It was a sort of breath of fresh air that gave hope to these young people in order to invest in public affairs and intervene in political debates. So I think there has been a positive impact but not yet in terms of important enrolment of these young people in political action. (MA_FG_3: 4) … the most interesting thing we earned in Morocco is to get out from the shell of fear. Here we were always afraid to talk about monarchy. Since 2011, the young people may talk, express themselves. This can be seen in social networks, people may criticise, and I believe this is good. (MA_FG_2: 6) The readiness of young people to become aware of their political rights and their own importance as a generation in shaping the country’s future is greeted by some and questioned decisively by others. Participants tend to refer to those in power as “them” in contrast to “us”—denoting the ordinary people. In Tunisia, the discussions paint a portrait of youth which is “active” (“dynamic”, “rebellious”, “modern”), but at the same time heavily disappointed with the status quo and devoid of any positive expectations for the future: “It looks like we live in a desert, where we follow a path the end of which is unknown” (TN_FG_2: 5). The political sphere as such is perceived as a producer of problems rather than solutions, as the main culprit for poor education, high unemployment, lack of social justice, ostentation and lies. The formation of an intergenerational gap in Tunisia is also pointed out by CAWTAR (2016). Young people’s discourses touch upon issues such as illegal migration, the temptation of jihad, and fraud among politicians. The interviewees speak about the advantages of freedom of speech gained since the Jasmine Revolution, at the same time underlining the abundance of unfulfilled promises which makes political involvement useless: The entire system is corrupt! What to say? … They talk too much; every month we are told … We’ll do this, we’ll do that! We are fed up! Speeches are everywhere!! On television … everywhere, we are tired! If there are solutions, okay! Otherwise! (TN_FG_3: 4)

Since 2011 nothing has changed, nothing took place actually. The senior responsible arrives in Gafsa, makes a tour of the city, and then says: “everything is fine.” No! … the only new thing is the opening of the mall Carrefour. (TN_LS_3e: 8)

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Young people’s dissatisfaction with politics is commonly cited as a general problem in Algeria as well. In the discussions realised there, the stress often falls on the “communication problem”—the lack of genuine dialogue between young people and the authorities. The blame is put on both sides but the result is nevertheless discouraging youth political participation. Having seen that politicians compile their programmes and carry out their policies without even consulting the young, having faced the nepotism of politics, the young people opt to stay away. Protests, voting and involvement are seen to make no difference: They do not take our views; they do not give any importance to our views. When we talk to them they say: we will see … (DZ_FG_2: 4) Similar is the pattern observed by the participants in the Lebanese discussions. They refer to a political elite incapable of respect for young people and offering them stimuli for political engagement. Political patronage and politically driven privatisation of public goods (the term used is “strategic neglect”) contribute to the mass alienation from political participation. The field research confirms that limited employment opportunities and the dominant clientelist culture reinforce the youth perception of disenfranchisement, including from the political sphere (Fakhoury, 2016). In all the cases considered, politics is not much valued. Despite recognition (not everywhere!) that positive changes have occurred since the Arab Spring waves, there remains a widespread conviction that a young person’s political engagement does not matter greatly to improve the overall “system”. Attitudes towards politics and participation constitute one side of the coin, the other being occupied by the respective practices of participation. Our focus lies on the national “agoras” of engagement as outlined by Laine et al. (2015) in their typology, and as conceptually separated at the local and international levels. Thus, we distinguish between four main forms: 1 2 3 4

Membership of political parties and movements; Active participation in institutional politics (election campaigns, party meetings); Passive participation in party politics (voting); Participation in protest politics (demonstrations and strikes).

Informal channels of participation such as culture-oriented and communitybased activities with political connotations are much more numerous than the explicit protest politics we are limiting our analysis to in this chapter. Voting remains by far the most common form of youth engagement in politics, involving half of the respondents (Table 7.2). This rather passive form is followed by young people’s engagement in institutional politics in the form of joining party meetings and election campaigns. The most demanding

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Table 7.2 Main forms of political participation Form of political participation

Description

Participation in a political party and/ or movement 9.6% (945) Passive institutional participation 42.6% (4,200) Active participation in institutional politics 19.4% (1,916)

Those taking part in a political party or movement as a donor, member or volunteer Those who have cast their vote either always, often, sometimes or rarely Those who have attended political meetings, signed petitions and taken part in internet campaigns in the past 12 months Those who have participated in demonstrations, strikes and violent actions in the past 12 months

Participation in protest politics 12.1% (1,195) Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

form of institutional participation—becoming a member of a political party or movement—is rarest, with one in ten young people practising such a form. Protest politics such as joining strikes, demonstrations and violent actions has attracted 12% of the young respondents in the five countries. We establish significant differences between the countries in young people’s political participation (see Table 7.3). The expectation that young people from countries that experienced mass mobilisation during the Arab Spring would be more active in all forms of institutional politics—in party membership and in activities in support of political parties such as working in election campaigns and political meetings and in voting—did not turn out to be true. Researchers drawing on the SAHWA survey data are liable to conclude that the observed little confidence in institutions often leads young people to “active” and “passive” forms of disengagement from the public political process, as by passive disengagement is meant the perception of politics as something which does not concern them while active disengagement refers to actively avoiding anything that has to do with the current allegedly distant and corrupt political sphere (Laine et al., 2016). Young people from Tunisia Table 7.3 Cross-country differences in political participation (%) Algeria Participation in a political party or movement Passive institutional participation Active institutional participation Participation in protest politics

Egypt

Lebanon

Morocco

Tunisia

4.7

4.1

17.7

16.9

5.2

43.8

68.1

14.1

47.6

40.3

21.4

8.6

29.6

34.3

4.3

21.2

2.6

15

18.1

3.8

Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

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and Egypt are less likely to engage in protest politics influenced by the recurring outbursts of political violence in both countries. Also, according to the SAHWA data, the youth in Morocco and Lebanon are most active in the institutional party politics measured as “belonging to a political party and a political movement as a participant, donor, volunteer or sympathiser”. Here, Morocco’s tradition of local associations and Lebanese community-based party politics provide part of the explanation. Additional analysis of the data allows for differentiation between the activities in the forms presented in the table. When we look more closely at the rate of participation in various forms outside party politics, we can see that the young respondents in Algeria report the highest shares in these noninstitutional channels: 20% have joined strikes and 19% demonstrations in the past year, followed by the young in Morocco with 17% for demonstrations and 16% for strikes. Those forms are very rare among young people in Egypt and Tunisia at present and the shares of those actively involved cannot reach 5% for the past 12 months. The Lebanese youth take a middle position. Violent actions are the least common form in all countries. The new social media are used for political information and mobilisation most often in Lebanon with 11% of young people having engaged in such activities via the internet over a one-year period. We should note, however, that this form does not replace the other forms of active engagement in noninstitutional politics and comes third overall.

4 Measuring the strength of economic, social and political inequalities in participation In this section, we examine the following research question: What factors (in terms of gender, economic background, education, place of residence, employment status and political awareness) explain the differences in the levels and forms of involvement in public issues among different groups of Arab youth? While a lot of these cross-country differences can be explained by the varying historical and present-day political contexts in each of the studied countries, there may still be some common class and status inequalities that shape young people’s political participation in the given MENA countries. Taking stock of the SAHWA survey data, an important contribution in this respect was made by Backeberg and Tholen (2017). They study the driving factors of youth exclusion and its economic, social and political components in the MENA countries, and conclude that political exclusion has a stronger impact on youth conditions than economic exclusion. Voting abstention and unwillingness to engage in the political process among the young people significantly shape the structure of youth exclusion; they correlate strongly with the social and economic conditions in which these people live. In order to explain the differences in young people’s political engagement, we created a regression model for each form as a dependent variable and

.218 .025 .221 .057 .746 .162 .280

.196 .131 .069 -.295 -.069 -.246 1.878 .142 .221

Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

.006 .045 .452 .943 .466 .000 .572 .843 .034 .551 .570 .208

-.658 .189 .124 -.017 -.351 -.505 .070 .000 .495 -.141 .142 -.249

Gender of the respondent Education (EDU21 simplified) Age group of the respondent Household stratum (ID5) Country Father’s education level (INF16) Mother’s education level (INF19) Purchasing power income (EMP324) Simplified marital status (MARSTATcomb) Gender equality (labour market) POL622A Gender equality (education) POL622B Gender equality (political participation) POL622C Gender equality (family code) POL622D Confidence in religious associations POL66L Confidence in religious leaders POL66R National affairs parents—freq. speaking MIG526CA Regional affairs parents—freq. speaking MIG526DA International affairs parents—freq. speaking MIG526EA Constant Cox & Snell R Square Nagelkerke R Square

Sig

B

Regression factors

Participation in political party or movement

Table 7.4 Social inequalities as factors in political participation

-8.445 .230 .334

-.223

-.272

.213 .094 .002 .047

-.392 .070 1.970 .074 .792 -.184 .037 .000 1.072 -.322 .191 -.176

B

.000

.251

.242

.177 .115 .976 .770

.094 .508 .000 .760 .063 .146 .769 .100 .000 .216 .482 .396

Sig

Passive institutional participation

4.182 .206 .293

-.509

.113

.088 .158 .070 -.327

-.098 .163 .344 -.127 -1.192 -.268 .322 .000 -.713 .337 .281 -.570

B

.034

.003

.582

.550 .004 .182 .026

.647 .062 .024 .570 .042 .022 .006 .429 .002 .140 .235 .003

Sig

Active institutional participation

2.168 .083 .153

-.279

.056

-.023 .042 .107 -.324

-.576 .056 .022 -.253 -.556 -.147 .166 .000 -.430 .436 -.356 .121

B

.295

.178

.826

.904 .538 .113 .071

.047 .605 .901 .373 .333 .291 .233 .667 .151 .090 .219 .581

Sig

Participation in protest

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included different economic, social and political factors as predictors. The four logistic regression models measured the probability of SAHWA respondents getting involved in the different forms of activities described in Table 7.2. We have deliberately stayed away from a multinomial logistic regression model as it is hard to justify (it depends on country-specific factors) which form of participation expresses stronger involvement. Regression models aim not only to explain what drives different forms of political participation but also to test a list of hypotheses regarding significance of different social characteristics. The results from the analysis are presented in Table 7.4. The regression models provide better explanations of passive and active institutional participation—as compared to protest forms and participating in a political party or movement. This is not so much a fault of the social factors that we have included in our models as of the smaller numbers of respondents practising these forms of participation. The large survey sample is reduced to those few who declare having taken part in politics and, as we saw already, politics is not the most popular life domain among the present-day Arab youth. In line with our hypotheses, gender emerges as one of the factors with good explanatory power in the first model. Men join political parties and political movements more often than women. Party membership is a public sphere where men are expected to be active while women are not believed to belong there. As in the labour market, where more than half of the young women after finishing school are not active and stay at home, so on the scene of political parties and movements young women are similarly almost invisible. Educational inequalities also have a significant impact on the first form of political participation (membership of political parties and movements), and the third form (active institutional participation). The highly educated respondents take part in political meetings, make donations, sign petitions and get involved in internet campaigns more often than those with fewer years of schooling. The educational level of the respondent seems not to influence voting and protest politics. As young people grow older and when they start forming their own families, they become more inclined to vote. Thus age is a very strong predictor of participation in passive institutional politics. The marital status of the respondent is an important factor for all forms, except protest participation. We can see from the regression results that respondents who are married or in a relationship prefer passive institutional participation or membership of a political party or movement. On the other hand, those who are single prefer more active forms of participation. Parental education is a factor with a strong impact on some of the studied forms of participation, where the father’s education is important for political party or movement selection, while the mother’s education also influences active institutional participation. Parents’ educational level is a good indicator of the class background of their offspring. The higher the educational

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capital of the family, the greater the young people’s engagement in party politics both as members and supporters of party meetings and campaigns. Two of the other hypotheses were not confirmed in the analysis. The household stratum (rural or urban area) is not a statistically significant factor for choosing any form of political participation. Income (measured by purchasing parity) is also not statistically significant; however, we can attribute this to the fact that we see very wide deviations in income levels—with a mean of 756 and standard deviation of about 922. Among the value variables that we included in the regression models, the attitudes toward gender equality and confidence in religious associations do make a difference. There is little evidence of the significance of gender equality beliefs on the decisions to engage in passive participation or to enter a political party or movement. However, this factor is important for getting involved in active institutional participation and in protest politics, where labour market equality seems to be top of the agenda. Confidence in religious associations is important for joining political movements and following active institutional participation forms, but it does not seem to matter that much for passive participation forms and protests.

5 Conclusions Academic research on the MENA countries in the aftermath of the Arab Spring events reveals a number of emerging new opportunities for greater youth involvement (including legal and institutional ones), but also partial and still unconvincing results. The changes appearing in the models and realities of participation seem to be highly dependent on the existing imbalances in the social structures in the respective societies and also on the character of the channels provided by the new political regimes. Official statistics indicate low levels of youth participation in elections and membership of political parties and at the same time growth of youth organisations—remaining, however, with still limited span and coverage. The field studies conducted under the SAHWA Project generally confirm the picture. The political sphere is considered to a large extent freer than before the revolutionary waves but within relatively narrow borders and subject to sudden twists. Youth scepticism is all-pervasive. Disaffection and disappointment with the status quo are terms that fairly accurately summarise the overall attitudes of the generation. Education, work, family and socioeconomic issues as a whole occupy much more of the attention and interest of the young people. Politics is no longer a significant danger or threat (if ever it was), but remains distant and seemingly unattractive. It is neither a push for resistance or emigration, nor a stimulus for defending one’s values and life prospects. Several other attitudes are widely distributed across the region and allow commonalities to be spoken of among the present MENA youth. They include the mass conviction that one’s own involvement in politics cannot actually influence the overall “system”, the perception that the political

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sphere is still some kind of a “reserved seat” for older generations, and simultaneously, the generally acknowledged need for change—although often without the personal engagement of those who advocate it. All these fit the trends of “active” and “passive” disengagement as Laine et al. (2015) describe and analyse them. Social, cultural and economic differences—both between the five studied societies and inside each of them—matter. We are facing motives and practices of political participation which suggest great awareness of the peculiarities of the current political situation and simultaneously high dependency on the traditional environment and the social conditions. The figures show that, as expected, it is the better educated (except for protest activities and voting), those with better parental education, the older and the married (especially for passive forms of participation) who tend to engage more actively in politics. Contrary to our expectations, places of residence and incomes do not play a significant role. Our findings generally confirm the conclusions in the literature about the importance of gender, family background, unemployment and emerging social group divisions in MENA youth participation although there is insufficient evidence for a strict class determination of political behaviour. New technologies and social media are often emphasised by researchers (including because of their large presence during the Arab Spring upheavals), but they do not seem the focus of the young people’s perception of community building and political participation. Individualised forms of participation (Feixa et al., 2009) and stand-by engagement (Ekman and Amnå, 2012) better conceptualise the youth attitudes and activities we managed to observe. Even the term “non-movement” (Bayat, 2010) should be used with some reservations since it implies a constant state of mobilisation. The factors influencing political involvement prove to be very similar to those influencing social inclusion (Backeberg and Tholen, 2017). Generally, socially included young people in the MENA region tend to engage more actively in politics. The only more substantial differences relate to the role of incomes (which do not affect participation so much but are central to social exclusion) and gender (since the status of men as the breadwinners of their families often puts them at the same risk of social exclusion as women). Disappointed by politics, the young people with more limited socioeconomic resources are withdrawing from all forms of participation. The youth in the MENA countries seems to be “getting out from the shell of fear” but are still on “a path the end of which is unknown”.

Notes 1 The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007–13 under grant agreement no. 613174 for the SAHWA Project (www.sahwa.eu). This publication reflects only the authors’ views. The European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein.

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2 For the quotation of ethnographic fieldwork data the system used has been: Country acronym_Technique_Number of the report, page number (when available). Country (DZ = Algeria, MAR = Morocco, TUN = Tunisia, EGY = Egypt, LB = Lebanon); technique (FG = focus group, LS = life stories, FE = focused ethnographies, NI = narrative interviews, LSV = life stories videos). 3 More information about SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) can be found in Sánchez-Montijano et al., 2017.

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8

School-to-work transitions in Arab Mediterranean countries1 Leonie Backeberg UNIVERSITY OF BREMEN

Andreas Etling UNIVERSITY OF BREMEN

Jochen Tholen UNIVERSITY OF BREMEN

1 Introduction In the Arab Mediterranean countries (AMCs), economic participation in terms of integration into the labour market is a major step towards the achievement of material goods and non-material objectives.2 Having a decent job allows young people not only to rent or to buy a house, but also to become financially independent, which is further expected to impact young people’s political and social life (e.g. enabling marriage). As identified in the introductory chapter of this book, engagement, culture, migration, education and economy are fundamental dimensions of youth. By studying young people’s role in the labour market in Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia, this chapter touches on all five dimensions, while specifically exploring the last two. While youth unemployment is one of the most pressing issues in many societies internationally, the transition from school to work poses a major problem in most AMCs, as the increase in youth unemployment rates has been particularly dramatic in this region. Although educational opportunities are better than ever before, today’s younger generation is facing serious obstacles in entering the labour market and is therefore pushed to the margins of society. Due to its impact on long-term life perspectives, we identify the transition from school to work as a challenge of utmost importance for the region. Three major factors shape transition processes in Arab Mediterranean societies. First, demographic changes resulting in the so-called youth bulge put tremendous pressure on educational systems and labour markets. Second, strict cultural norms and the central role of marriage impose a way of life on young people that leaves little room for deviations and identity-forming processes. Third, it can be observed that the labour market in the AMCs is

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divided into a so-called primary labour market, characterised by the availability of permanent contracts and good working conditions, and a secondary one, where fixed-term contracts and unprotected work dominate (Gebel and Heyne, 2014). As many graduates are denied access to the primary labour market, rigid labour markets and the dominant role of the public sector present a major challenge to the young seekers of entry into labour markets. In the following pages, we aim to shed some light on the socioeconomic factors that either contribute positively to young people’s career start or lead to marginalisation. In particular, this chapter argues that a successful schoolto-work transition is not only a matter of education, but of social origin too. Accordingly, our key question is this: Which social and demographic factors determine the success of young people’s school-to-work transition? Measuring school-to-work transitions and decent employment is fraught with numerous problems. The International Labour Organization (2013), for instance, provides a number of decent work indicators, ranging from unemployment rates, social security contributions and average wages to working time and safety at work. As informality and unstable working conditions are a key problem in the Arab Mediterranean region, this study looks in particular at young people’s employment status and type of contract in order to quantify successful transitions. Using quantitative and qualitative data from the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) (quantitative tool) and SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork 2015 (qualitative tool), we provide an analysis of school-to-work transitions in five Arab Mediterranean countries: Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia. The SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) collected data from 10,000 young people aged between 15 and 29. The data set obtained allows for crosscountry comparisons in a region that has experienced several social and political upheavals in recent years (Sánchez-Montijano et al., 2017). Although this study does not compare developments over time as a panel study would do, the data point to severe structural labour market problems not only in countries that were affected by the upheavals, but also in those that have undergone regime change, such as Tunisia and Egypt. To specify our empirical findings from the survey and to get a better understanding of the everyday challenges encountered by young people in regard to labour market participation, we will recap information from a selection of 24 life stories collected within the research framework of the SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork 2015. This chapter is structured as follows: section 2 provides the theoretical background for the subsequent analysis and discusses the theory on dual labour markets in the context of Arab Mediterranean countries. Section 3 presents the labour market data derived from the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017), while the next section analyses the role of young people’s socioeconomic background. Section 5 presents the conclusions and places the results in context.

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2 Youth labour market Generations of researchers have investigated the reasons for unemployment and unsuccessful transitions from school to work (cf. Doeringer and Piore, 1970; Dickens and Lang, 1985; Taubman and Wachter, 1986; Atkinson and Hills, 1998; Günther and Launov, 2012; Gebel and Heyne, 2014; Raffe, 2014; Ashton, Maguire and Spilsbury, 2016). Theoretical considerations are as diverse as empirical findings. Neoclassical economics, for instance, is based on the assumption that the labour market largely resembles a product market, where individuals and firms maximise their utility. In a market with flexible wages and prices, unemployment is largely attributed to relocation processes (Hamilton, 1988). However, there is very broad consensus in the research community that neoclassical theory provides an incomplete picture of labour market processes, as it disregards the institutional framework and the heterogeneous characteristics of individuals. Human capital theory takes account of the latter and states that finding a decent job is a matter of education. By focusing on the supply side of labour, differences between people but not firms are being analysed. According to human capital theory, unemployment resulting from a mismatch between labour supply and demand can only be fought if unskilled workers receive further training and, as a consequence, are able to compete in the market. Theorists of the segmented labour market approach claim that neither the neoclassical nor the human capital model provides sufficient explanation for unemployment. Especially when it comes to permanent unemployment, the distribution of wages as well as discrimination within labour markets are not fully captured (Dickens and Lang, 1985; Taubman and Wachter, 1986). Although the literature on segmented labour markets itself covers many different perspectives, Taubman and Wachter (1986) argue that they are all interested in causal connections between unemployment and the segmentation of labour markets. A prominent model within this strand is the theory on dual labour markets, which divides the market into two sectors: a primary sector, characterised by good working conditions, career opportunities and relatively high wages, and a secondary sector dominated by bad working conditions, unstable employment and low and volatile earnings (Doeringer and Piore, 1970; Sengenberger, 1987). However, labour market segmentation does not result from differentials in wages or in returns to education, but from a lack of social mobility between the two sectors (Günther and Launov, 2012).

3 Labour market segmentation in Arab Mediterranean countries Gebel and Heyne (2014) argue that labour markets in many developing countries, and particularly in the AMCs, are highly segmented between the formal public sector and the informal private sector. They further admit that Arab Mediterranean labour market segmentation and the privileges associated with public sector employment are rooted in the socialistic and state-

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planning eras in most of these countries. Public employment has always been a political tool; public sector jobs were largely offered to those supporting the political elite and especially the members of those elites, and traditionally comprised stable working conditions, social security and a wage above the average. Yet, the oil crises of the 1990s triggered a process of liberalisation due to which political and economic regimes have changed and public employment opportunities have significantly decreased (Fargues and Fandrich, 2012; Bardak, 2015). Most of the people employed in the public sector today hail from a generation that transited from school to work before the public sector had to contend with serious cut-backs. In contrast, private employers often opt for fixed-duration contracts or do not register their employees at all (grey or black economy). Both options affect the youth in particular, as many have no choice but to accept lowquality jobs if they want to avoid unemployment (Atkinson and Hills, 1998). In the AMCs, the number of so-called young labour market outsiders who switch to the informal sector because they cannot get access to the primary job market is especially high. Accordingly, the growth of the informal sector, which covers all kinds of employment relationships that are neither regulated nor protected (Chen, 2007), needs to be seen in the context of rising youth unemployment rates. Moreover, studies suggest that the transition from formal to informal work is smooth, a progress closely linked to the weak impact of institutions in Arab Mediterranean countries (Gebel and Heyne, 2014; Kaufmann, Kraay and Mastruzzi, 2010). Loayza (1994, 1997) shows that the higher the tax burdens and labour market restrictions and the weaker and less efficient governmental institutions are, the greater the settlement of economic actors in the informal sector. Only if the costs of informal employment—through, for example, fines or a lack of acceptance in the business environment—exceed the benefits in the form of cheap labour and low deductions from revenues will companies and individuals engage in the formal sector. However, Günther and Launov (2012) demonstrate that the informal sector is not always a strategy of last resort. Based on utility maximisation considerations, some people voluntarily engage in informal work. Accordingly, the range of activities young people are engaged in is highly versatile: young men work in the agricultural and construction sector, are self-employed, sell goods at one of the many street (mostly informal) markets, or work in small family businesses. However, for young people, family businesses may be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, family businesses are a vital part of the economic structure in the AMCs and constitute a social security net for family members. On the other hand, they limit young people’s future prospects as tasks and training are limited, working conditions are poor, and the probability of becoming financially independent is low (Gebel and Heyne, 2014). Further, evidence from the literature suggests that women are taking care of various family duties and are consequently less likely to complete the transition process. Barsoum, Ramadan and Mostafa (2014), for instance, find

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that unemployment rates of young women far exceed those of men. The authors address gender disparity as a key problem in Egypt and argue that, primarily, young women carry out work in the family’s household or business without receiving a regular payment. Based on these findings we put forward the first hypothesis: Hypothesis 1: In particular, young women find themselves in precarious employment or do not participate in the labour market at all. The transition from school to decent employment may be especially difficult not only for women but also for the rural youth, as unregulated agricultural work dominates rural labour markets. The demographic changes observed in the five AMCs encompassed not only population growth but also an increase in the share of urban residents. Arouri et al. (2014) note that young people’s intentions to migrate to urban spaces are based on better job prospects and a larger range of economic opportunities. Further, the authors observe a positive relationship between economic growth and the urban population share, suggesting that urbanisation promotes human capital accumulation. If economic growth and better educational opportunities go hand in hand with the creation of jobs, we may gain evidence from our data for the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 2: The youth in urban areas have better employment opportunities, better working conditions, and a higher probability of finding a job in the primary labour market. It is often observed that returns on investments in education and training are particularly low in the Arab Mediterranean region. Investigations into the patterns of unemployment reveal that the youth bulge resulting from tremendous population growth, with its dramatic consequences for the labour market, as well as educational policies, have fuelled the rise in youth unemployment rates (Assaad and Barsoum, 2007). The assumption that education no longer guarantees decent jobs is emphasised by Binzel and Carvalho (2017). Referring to the example of Egypt, they contend that about 50 years ago, the country guaranteed public sector employment to those with secondary or tertiary education in order to encourage investments in education and to increase social mobility. Yet, these labour market and education policies caused long queues for public sector jobs, contributed to high youth unemployment rates, and reduced private sector employment (Assaad, 1997). Bardak (2015) contends that preparing young people for public employment and not for competitive private employment has remained the thematic priority of public schooling. Empirical studies also provide little evidence of a human capital effect (Assaad, Krafft and Salehi-Isfahani, 2014). Accordingly, we put forward hypothesis number 3:

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Hypothesis 3: Higher education in general does not correlate with better job opportunities. Binzel and Carvalho (2017) find evidence of a large increase in the levels of education and inter-generational educational mobility over time, as well as a decline in employment opportunities for today’s younger generation. Most interestingly, however, this does not apply to all social strata. In the case of Egypt, there is no significant decline in employment rates for the group of young people whose fathers held high-ranking positions. Similarly, Assaad and Krafft (2017) argue that successful transitions are not only a matter of personal educational attainment but also of the resources provided by the family. In line with Binzel (2011), the authors notice the key role of family resources and networks in social mobility. Insofar as our last hypothesis refers to the assumption that a youth’s social origin matters in employment opportunities: Hypothesis 4: Social origin shapes young people’s employment opportunities. The objective of the next two sections is to provide further information on the jobs young people are most likely to obtain and the mechanisms through which they do so. We expect to find evidence that labour market segmentation significantly hinders young people from getting a job well in line with their qualifications, independent of their gender, social origin, or place of residence, and does not allow them to live a life they value.

4 Employment structures in Arab Mediterranean countries We will test our hypotheses on school-to-work transitions using quantitative (SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017) and qualitative data (SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork 2015) from the European Union’s SAHWA Project. The centrepiece of the project is the survey in which 10,000 young people aged between 15 and 29 years participated in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and Algeria. The representative SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) was carried out throughout the years 2015 and 2016 and provides varied information on issues relating to youth, such as education, employment, political and civic life and migration. In order to provide representative data sets, particular attention was paid to social origin and gender (for methodological details see Sánchez García, Feixa Pàmpols and Laine, 2014; and Sánchez-Montijano et al., 2017). In addition to the quantitative analysis, details from the life stories will be presented. This information is extracted from the SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork 2015, which covers life stories, focus groups, focused ethnographies and narrative interviews as well as life story videos. The interviews were conducted in Arabic and French and translated into English.

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The revised data set used for the following analysis includes only employable respondents, i.e. people who are neither in school nor students. In addition, our figures do not reflect underemployment or young women who did not enter the labour market for cultural or family reasons. Tables 8.1 and 8.2 present some general information on the employment situation of youth in the five countries. Both tables indicate that unemployment rates among respondents vary across countries. The differences between countries are significant: youth unemployment rates in Lebanon and Egypt amount to 15% and 20% respectively, while they are significantly higher at 54% in Algeria, 59% in Morocco, and 63% in Tunisia. In a first step towards assessing the impact of labour market segmentation on youth employment prospects, Table 8.1 distinguishes between employment in the public and private sectors. It provides evidence that the majority of young job-seekers find employment in the private sector, while only a minority is employed in the public sector. This holds especially true for four out of five countries; in Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia merely 5%–7% of the respondents were employed in the public sector. A comparison of public and private employment rates in each country reveals additional information on country-specific employment structures. While only a small number of the working population are employed in the public sector in Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia, this ratio is much higher in Algeria: in Egypt and in the Lebanon the section of employment in the private sector is about 80%, whereas in Morocco and Tunisia this ratio is roughly one-third. Further evidence comes from the SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork 2015, which supports the empirical findings by indicating that the attractiveness of the public sector varies between countries. In Algeria, the public sector is still an employer of first choice among youth; this does not seem to be the case in Egypt, where wages in the public sector are low and employment opportunities rare (DZ_LS_7; EGY_LS_2). In order to further distinguish between formal and informal employment, Table 8.2 presents a classification according to the type of contract. Under the Table 8.1 Employment in the public and the private sector Employed Public

Algeria Egypt Lebanon Morocco Tunisia

Unemployed

Total (employable)

Private

Freq.

%

Freq.

%

Freq.

%

Freq.

%

116 54 44 29 49

13.26 6.72 5.60 5.85 4.68

284 586 621 173 338

32.46 72.98 79.01 34.88 32.31

475 163 121 294 659

54.29 20.30 15.39 59.27 63.00

875 803 786 496 1,046

100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00

Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017, own calculations.

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Table 8.2 Employment status Unemployed

Employed Permanent contract

Fixed-term contract

Total (employable)

No contract

Freq.

%

Freq.

%

Freq.

%

Freq.

%

Freq.

%

Algeria

174

19.89

81

9.26

145

16.56

475

54.29

875

100.00

Egypt

190

23.66

49

6.10

401

49.94

163

20.30

803

100.00

Lebanon

405

51.53

53

6.74

207

26.34

121

15.39

786

100.00

Morocco

110

22.18

9

1.81

83

16.73

294

59.27

496

100.00

Tunisia

141

13.48

68

6.50

178

17.02

659

63.00

1,046

100.00

Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017, own calculations.

assumption that young people with a contract of indefinite duration find themselves in the primary labour market, it stands out that, except for in Lebanon, no more than one in four successfully enters this segment of the labour market. Accordingly, the secondary labour market is comparably large. The Lebanese labour market seems to offer many more opportunities to young graduates than any other market in the Arab Mediterranean region, as unemployment rates are low and permanent contracts dominate. Above all, the informal sector, which covers all working relationships that are neither protected nor regulated through contracts, constitutes a significant part of the secondary labour market. In Egypt, for instance, unemployment rates are comparatively low, but about 50% of the respondents engage in economic activity without having signed a formal contract. Consequently, we only observe a shift from unemployment towards informal employment as decent employment is as rare in Egypt as it is in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. Overall, our analysis suggests that a significant percentage of young people in the five AMCs are excluded from participating in the labour market. This development not only directly affects the well-being of the unemployed, but may also have societal repercussions. A respondent from Tunisia stated that unemployment encourages many of his peers to resort to illegal immigration, theft and drug dealing. Further, he argues that the state’s failure to generate jobs, the lack of quality in academia, the public’s disenchantment with social and economic conditions, as well as the distrust in political leaders, push young people towards religious fundamentalism (TUN_LS_1). Thus, illegal immigration and religious fundamentalism are both deeply rooted in unsuccessful transitions from school to decent employment. 4.1 Access to labour markets across social groups The processes undermining young people’s transition from school to work are manifold. Based on the data at hand, we cannot draw any conclusions on whether tax evasion, labour market restrictions, low efficiency of government institutions or other factors determine the development observed. However,

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by further examining the role of the respondents’ sociodemographic characteristics, such as gender, education, family background and social mobility, and area of residence, this analysis aims at providing further insight into school-to-work transitions in Arab Mediterranean countries. Table 8.2 serves as a starting point in this regard for the subsequent analysis. 4.2 Gendered differences The survey data reveal significant gender differences around type of contract. Figure 8.1 presents the row of percentages for male and female respondents, respectively. The most striking characteristic observed is that women are less likely than men to participate in economic activities. Female unemployment rates are especially high in Morocco, followed by Tunisia and Algeria. Depending on the country considered, female unemployment rates are approximately 15 to 35 percentage points higher than those of males: while the gap between male and female employment is moderately narrow in Tunisia, Algeria and Lebanon, it is especially wide in Morocco and Egypt. If housewives were added to the group of unemployed women, female unemployment rates would be significantly higher. It is further noteworthy that female and male employment structures differ considerably. Although Figure 8.1 suggests that women are less likely to obtain a permanent contract, this impression fades after a more detailed analysis. If only the conditional frequencies, i.e. the distribution of the

Figure 8.1 Current job situation by gender (%) Note: Low = primary or less, Intermediate = Middle or secondary, High = Higher education Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

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employed across employment type (both among men and women), are considered, proportionately more women than men are in permanent employment in all countries but Tunisia. In Lebanon, about 60% of the male and female workforce is granted labour rights and social security through a formal contract, whereas in Egypt only 28% of the employed men and 38% of the employed women had signed a contract and were thus considered to work in the primary labour market. Accordingly, regarding the total population in employment, young male graduates are much more likely to suffer from poor working conditions. Summarising, our findings on the gender dimension of school-to-work transitions provide mixed evidence for hypothesis 1. Although more women than men cannot or do not want to participate in the labour market, their working conditions tend to be better once they are in employment. Unprotected and unregulated work largely affects young men, who might be more willing to accept jobs in the secondary and informal sector. They might choose these jobs as expected earnings tend to be higher than in the primary sector or because they cannot get a decent job but urgently need to earn money for themselves and their families, independent of the working conditions. 4.3 Place of residence differences Figure 8.2 indicates that unemployment is not limited to rural areas. While a large majority of the youth living in the rural areas of Tunisia and Morocco are unemployed, the data do not confirm this trend for any other country.

Figure 8.2 Current job situation by stratum of residence (%) Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

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This is particularly true in Egypt, where unemployment seems to affect urban youth in particular, though the effect remains limited. Similar to the previous figures, Figure 8.2 also reflects informal labour being a major problem in Egypt, in urban as well as rural areas: about 50% of the respondents in both areas had not signed a contract and were thus denied basic labour rights and social security. If we consider the group of working people only, this number increases by 10 to 15 percentage points. Due to high unemployment rates in Morocco, the share of young Moroccans in the informal sector appears to be moderate and stable across regions. Yet, the conditional frequencies indicate that about 60% of those employed in rural areas are undeclared workers, whereas only 30% in urban areas are not legally protected. Although the distribution of informal work is much more balanced across regions in other Arab Mediterranean countries, it is striking that young graduates in urban areas tend to be slightly more likely to obtain a permanent contract than the youth in rural areas. However, our data do not provide confirmation of substantial differences between rural and urban areas as claimed in hypothesis 2. They rather imply that informal markets may be an important issue in urban areas, but unregulated jobs at farms and factories remain a key problem in rural regions. 4.4 Education level differences Analogous to Figures 8.1 and 8.2, Figure 8.3 presents the percentages by type of contract for each level of education. Unemployment does not follow a linear trend in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. It affects young people with a low level of education only slightly more than those with a high level of education. However, these differences are more distinct in the other countries. In Lebanon, young university graduates are clearly less likely to be unemployed than their peers who left school earlier. In contrast, investments in education do not seem to pay off in Egypt, where unemployment affects young people holding a university degree in particular. Evidence of the link between unemployment and the level of education remains twofold, as education affects not only the employment status itself, but also the type of contract. Figure 8.3 shows that young people with higher qualifications are more likely to get a permanent or at least a temporary job. These results hold true for all countries in our survey, even if shares are based on the working population only. The conditional frequencies indicate that education does actually matter once the person has successfully entered the job market: about 40% of those who found a job and hold a university degree signed a formal contract of unlimited duration. In contrast, only about 25% of those in employment but with a low level of education were offered a permanent position, but about 72% of them work in the informal sector without being safeguarded by a contract. Taking this, hypothesis 3 has been (partially) confirmed.

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Figure 8.3 Current job situation by educational level of respondent (%) Note: Low = primary or less, Intermediate = Middle or secondary, High = Higher education Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

Overall, the results draw attention to different policy issues. On the one hand, our findings imply a mismatch between the qualifications obtained in higher education institutions and the qualifications demanded by the labour market, as in this segment, unemployment rates are particularly high and investment in education rarely induces employment. On the other hand, an insufficient number of jobs in general might also hamper young people’s transition from school to work. Thus, two important components of a successful transition process, viz., the education system and the structure of the job market, are under the influence of the national governments. We find further evidence in the qualitative data of the SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork. Young people in the five AMCs are well aware of the uncertain financial returns and employment prospects of education. The Egyptian respondents ascribe very little value to a national degree, when asked about ways to increase the personal labour market opportunities. Thus, pursuing an international degree is seen as a valid alternative which promises much better labour market prospects (EGY_LS_2). On account of the vague labour market benefits of a tertiary degree, some respondents report that people do not consider taking up studies at university, but rather pursue direct entry into the labour market (DZ_LS_7). A further analysis of the quantitative data reveals that public employment offices have very low

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placement rates, which draws attention to the need for improvement of labour market institutions in the region. 4.5 Familiar status and social mobility differences In order to examine the impact of family background on the young respondents’ labour market opportunities, Figure 8.4 presents the employment type as a function of the educational level of the respondent’s father. The results provide broad evidence for hypothesis 4. Figure 8.4 suggests that the father’s level of education is correlated with the employment prospects of the succeeding generation. While Figure 8.3 demonstrates that education has little impact on the overall risk of unemployment in Morocco, Figure 8.4 paints a different picture: the risk of being unemployed is almost twice as high for young people whose father left school after four years or less vis-à-vis their peers whose father attended an institute for higher education. This trend is also observed in Tunisia, albeit to a lesser extent. In Algeria, Egypt and Lebanon we observe an inverted effect, as young people’s employment prospects decrease with an increase in the father’s level of education. However, except for the case of Egypt, the effect is negligible due to its very limited extent. Similar to previous observations, the structure of the Egyptian labour market differs from those of the other countries included in this study. Instead of being unemployed, many young people from a low social stratum, or more precisely those whose father has a low level of formal education, have got jobs in the informal secondary sector. This seems to be in sharp contrast with the stance of young people whose parents are better educated and rather well situated towards informal work. Overall, our results suggest that young people who grew up in upper-class families have a good chance of getting a permanent contract and thus successfully entering the primary labour market. Various factors might contribute to this development: under the assumption that the average family income increases with the educational level of the respondent’s father, young people from formally well-educated families might simply be able to afford higher or private education and thus get better and more specific training oriented towards the demands of the labour market. In this respect, evidence from the life stories indicates that young people with a weak social background drop out of school or do not attend higher education schemes. Instead of attending school, they accept jobs requiring lower qualifications and carrying lower wages to support their families financially (MAR_LS_4; DZ_LS_7). Young people who are the first in their families to achieve a higher education degree seem to lack appropriate information to make the right choices concerning their field of study. They cannot rely on family support in the administrative process, even if their families highly value education. Even more alarming, however, is that public institutions also provide inadequate support in this selection process (DZ_LS_7;

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Figure 8.4 Current job situation by educational level of respondent’s father (%) Note: Low = primary or less, Intermediate = Middle or secondary, High = Higher education Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

EGY_LS_2). This lack of information might result in bad decision-making concerning higher education and consequently lead to lower chances for young people from lower social strata to find a job in the primary labour market. Some respondents further claim that nepotism and social connections dominate the labour market (LB_LS_3). Thus, families from a higher social stratum might have a better social network and contacts. In times of crisis, connections (referred to as wasta) are an important channel through which young graduates gain access to decent employment in the Arab Mediterranean labour markets. This assumption is supported by an additional analysis of the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017): While about one-third of the respondents got their current position through family contacts, another third landed their jobs through personal contacts. These results point to the weak performance of public job placement services, which only play a minor role in the job recruitment process.

5 Conclusions and discussion Examining school-to-work transitions in the context of labour market segmentation in Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia, this chapter adds to the body of literature on the challenges of adolescence in Arab

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Mediterranean countries. Using qualitative and quantitative data from the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) and SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork 2015, we aimed at achieving a better understanding of the challenges young people face when entering the labour market. In particular, we were looking at the impact of education, gender, social origin and the stratum of residence on young people’s employment prospects. Our analysis is based on the assumption that labour markets in the five AMCs are segmented into a primary sector, characterised by decent working conditions and contracts of indefinite duration, and a secondary sector, where employment relationships are insufficiently regulated and protected. Except for Lebanon, all countries in focus suffer from very high youth unemployment rates and the dominance of informal work. In Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, at best, every second young person in the age between 15 and 29 years is in employment. Our analysis also suggests that Egypt is to be distinguished from the Maghreb countries and Lebanon: although unemployment rates in Egypt are rather low, a majority of the employed do not have a formal contract and are therefore to be located in the informal, secondary labour market. While we find little evidence of a correlation between rural and urban employment, suggesting that both spaces involve different kinds of employment, the results in the gender dimension are more significant. Across all countries, young women’s labour market participation rates are much lower than those of their male peers. However, differences in male and female employment structures can be observed: once in employment, young women are more likely to be in decent employment than young men, who often work in the secondary sector. Further, we find evidence that social origin tends to matter in transition processes. For example, the type of contract is strongly associated with social class in Morocco, where the unemployment risk doubles if the respondent’s father attended only primary school or did not receive any formal education at all. Again, Egypt constitutes a special case, as many young people from a low social stratum prefer engaging in the secondary sector to being unemployed. Those whose parents are better off do not engage in the informal sector, but are either able to enter the primary sector or do not work at all. A finding thoroughly discussed in the literature is that investments in education are not rewarded by the labour market. Our analysis does not fully confirm this hypothesis without restrictions: in all countries but Egypt, the level of education is positively correlated with young people’s job opportunities. In four out of five countries, investments in human capital as a kind of cultural capital seem to be rewarded by the labour market. The methodology chosen, however, does not control for any correlation between the respondent’s level of education, family resources and social networks. As other studies confirm that labour market opportunities are closely linked with young people’s social environment, the respondents’ level of education might in fact act as a mediator for these variables. Moreover, two-thirds of the SAHWA respondents stated that they found their current job through personal or family contacts, indicating that connections and nepotism dominate the job

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search, which substantially impedes social mobility. The labour market segmentation approach thus seems to be more rewarding than the classical human capital theory. This finding further shows that institutional quality shapes young people’s trajectories in various ways: the state not only fails to assist all young people in transiting successfully from school to work, but contributes to the mismatch between labour market demands and educational outcomes by not modernising the educational landscape adequately. Similar to the reasons for unsuccessful transition processes, their consequences are diverse: exclusion of young people from decent work not only prevents them from reaching their personal financial goals, but constitutes a national economic problem and negatively affects social development. Our analysis endorses the assertion that, in the process of transition, young people are not granted the opportunity to accumulate economic capital and to become independent. This economic marginalisation of young people in the five AMCs is delaying the process of transition to adulthood, with negative consequences for the individual as well as for society as a whole. Facilitating successful transitions from school to work will remain a challenging but indispensable task the five AMCs have to face.

Notes 1 The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007–13 under grant agreement no. 613174 for the SAHWA Project (www.sahwa.eu). This publication reflects only the authors’ views. The European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein. 2 For the quotation of ethnographic fieldwork data the system used has been: Country acronym_Technique_Number of the report, page number (when available). Country (DZ = Algeria, MAR = Morocco, TUN = Tunisia, EGY = Egypt, LB = Lebanon); technique (FG = focus group, LS = life stories, FE = focused ethnographies, NI = Narrative Interviews, LSV = life stories videos).

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Atkinson, A. B. and Hills, J. (1998). “Exclusion, Employment and Opportunity”, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion Paper, CASE/4. Bardak, U. (2015). Continuity and Change in Youth Migration Patterns from the Mediterranean, in Kamel, L. (ed.) Changing Migration Patterns in the Mediterranean. Rome: Edizioni Nuova Cultura, pp. 21–36. Barsoum, G., Ramadan, M. and Mostafa, M. (2014). Labour market transitions of young women and men in Egypt. Work4Youth Publication Series, No. 16. Binzel, Ch. (2011). “Decline in Social Mobility: Unfulfilled Aspirations among Egypt’s Educated Youth”, IZA DP, 6139. Binzel, Ch. and Carvalho. J.-P. (2017). “Education, Social Mobility, and Religious Movements: The Islamic Revival in Egypt”, The Economic Journal, 127(607), pp. 2553–2580. Chen, M. A. (2007). Rethinking the Informal Economy: Linkages with the Formal Economy and the Formal Regulatory Environment. DESA Working Paper, No. 46. Dickens, W. T. and Lang, K. (1985). “A Test of Dual Labor Market Theory”, The American Economic Review, 75(4), pp. 792–805. Doeringer, P. B. and Piore, M. J. (1970). Internal labor markets and manpower analysis. Lexington: Heath Lexington. Fargues, Ph. and Fandrich, Ch. (2012). Migration after the Arab Spring. MPC Research Report 2012/09. Gebel, M. and Heyne, St. (2014). Transitions to Adulthood in the Middle East and North Africa: Young Women’s Rising? New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Günther, I. and Launov, A. (2012). “Informal employment in developing countries”, Journal of Development Economics, 97(1), pp. 88–98. Hamilton, J. D. (1988). “A Neoclassical Model of Unemployment and Business Cycle”, Journal of Political Economy, 96(3), pp. 593–617. ILO (International Labour Organization) (2013). Decent Work Indicators—Guidelines for producers and users of statistical and legal framework indicators. Geneva: International Labour Office. Kaufmann, D., Kraay, A. and Mastruzzi, M. (2010). The Worldwide Governance Indicators. Methodology and Analytical Issues. The World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, No. 543. Loayza, N. V. (1994). Labor Market Regulations and the Informal Economy. The World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, No. 1335. Loayza, N. V. (1997). The Economics of the Informal Sector—A Simple Model and Some Empirical Evidence from Latin America. The World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, No. 1727. Raffe, D. (2014). “Explaining national differences in education-work transitions: Twenty years of research on transition systems”, European Societies, 16, pp. 175– 193. SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017). Data File Edition 3.0. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). Sánchez García, J., Feixa Pàmpols, C. and Laine, S. (2014). Contemporary Youth Research in Arab Mediterranean Countries: Mixing Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies. SAHWA Concept Paper. Sánchez-Montijano, E., Martínez, I., Bourekba, M. and Dal Zotto, E. (2017). SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 Descriptive Report. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB).

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Political chronotopes of youth engagement1 Towards more inclusive and enabling environments Sofia Laine FINNISH YOUTH RESEARCH NETWORK

Martta Myllylä FINNISH YOUTH RESEARCH NETWORK

1 Introduction Already before the 2010–11 revolutions, young people in the Arab Mediterranean countries (AMCs) felt frustrated by the deficiency of decent jobs and public services, political corruption, and lack of government accountability (World Bank, 2015). Now, six years after the uprising the post-Arab Spring context of political disappointment and youth hesitation to engage or even talk politics is clearly evident, especially in Tunisia and Egypt (the initiators of the so-called Arab Spring)—which also had “relative success” in comparison to other “Arab Spring countries” such as Libya, Syria and Yemen (Korany and El Sayyad, 2017, pp. 4–5). Today’s young people in the Arab Mediterranean have never experienced a supportive, effective government that listens to their demands, and therefore many youths think that none of the current or future political parties could, or would, help them. That leads to a low voting rate and lack of trust in the government among the young (Sánchez-Montijano et al., 2017; Williams, 2016; Dickson, 2013). It doesn’t help that the youth policy in these countries is weak. As noted in an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2015) study, youth policy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is often isolated, lacking a “whole of government” approach, and young people often find themselves in “observer status” in policy cycles without much opportunity to shape political outcomes. In this kind of situation, it is important to underline that the lack of young people’s voting and participation in institutional politics in Arab Mediterranean countries does not directly indicate lack of interest in politics (Dickson, 2013). They might be disengaged from the traditional ways of conceiving politics but at the same time find spaces in which to influence and engage in their local surroundings and livelihoods or even transnationally and globally (Farthing, 2010).

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As one of the responses to this situation, in the post-2011 situation, some of the youth began to turn to civic activity instead of political activity (Honwana, 2013), especially in Tunisia and Egypt, where the public sphere was opened to a diversity of opinions and actions after the 2011 revolution. Instead of voting, many youths may be engaged in politics by reading or watching the news on the TV or internet, by participating in debates, and via their own creative approaches and platforms, which are often outside the political spheres controlled by older generations (Kincaid, 2017). What is more, the youth bulge in the Arab Mediterranean countries is often seen as a “problem”, not an opportunity. Young people who played an active role in the 2011 upheavals in the region have been side-lined in the political processes. Young people in the Arab Mediterranean region have commonly been characterised as disengaged and having very little trust in formal politics (see e.g. Roberts et al., 2017). This is not the whole picture, and therefore new concepts of analysing the political behaviour of the young are greatly needed. In this chapter we study both institutional and youth cultural forms of youth political engagement in five Arab Mediterranean countries: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Lebanon. Through triangulation of the data from the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) and the SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork 2015, our aim is to analyse the experiences of the Arab Mediterranean youth in the “post-Arab Spring era”. Our main research questions are: 1 How do the youth experience the institutional politics, and how they experience the older generations’ attitude towards their age group’s involvement? 2 How do the youth experience the youth cultural spaces of engagement and how do they experience older generations’ attitude towards this kind of involvement? These two very different time-spaces are analysed by applying Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of chronotopes. After introducing Bakhtin’s chronotopes and the data and methods used in section 2, the two analytical sections 3 and 4 focus on the chronotope types— Castle, Road and Saloon—used in this chapter. In the concluding section we explain how the analysis gives evidence of the fact that there exist generational gaps in the political engagements. Our data and analysis show that the timespaces where the youth can have full agency, be creative and heard by their peers are the physical and virtual streets, internet cafés and coffee shops that also enable identity construction outside tradition, authority and family (i.e. older generations). At the end we discuss potentially more inclusive environments in the near future that would also support and enable better inter-generational dialogue.

2 Introducing the chronotopes, data and methods As we will partly show in this chapter, the variety of young people’s political engagement in Arab Mediterranean countries may be read through some political chronotopes applied from Mikhail Bakhtin’s chronotope. These are analysed more carefully in two sections of the chapter. Chronotope (Bakhtin,

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1981, p. 84) literally means “time-space”. The term points to the essential connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships, the inseparability of space and time, where time is the fourth dimension of space. Chronotopes are always coloured with emotions and values that vary in their degree and scope (Bakhtin, 1981). The chronotope, functioning as the primary means for materializing time in space, emerges as a centre for concretizing representation, as a force giving body to the entire novel. (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 250) In this chapter we will explore the SAHWA Project data using three of Bakhtin’s five chronotope types: the Castle, the Road and the Saloon.2 As we will explain in more detail in the forthcoming sections, the Castle stands for the time-spaces of institutional politics, the Road for political engagement via the internet (i.e. the virtual street) or the physical street (use of the public sphere), and the Saloon for encounters and dialogues. The choice to focus only on these three of the five chronotope types was made because the earlier studies referred to above have shown that those young people who do want to engage try to do it via either (political) institutions (Castle) or public spheres (Road and Saloon). The choice to focus only on these three chronotopes was made after going through both the data and literature. The data focus mainly on the institutional engagements and, secondly, on more creative and “youthful” ways of political engagement. The theory of chronotopes will hopefully open up new understanding of the political time-spaces and their differences in the Arab Mediterranean. By doing this, we continue the analysis of different youth time-spaces made by José Sánchez García (2016) when analysing youth spaces in Cairo. The data used in this text come from the SAHWA Project, which gathered a unique set of both qualitative data (through a multi-sited ethnography of three ethnographic locations in each of the five countries),3 and very extensive quantitative data (involving around 2,000 respondents in each of five countries, with 9,860 respondents in total). Through analysing the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017)4 and SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork 2015 research data, we critically discuss and analyse the possibilities for and challenges to more inclusive and enabling environments of youth political engagement in five Arab Mediterranean countries: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Lebanon. The SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork 2015 data were gathered between March and December 2015, and the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 data were gathered between August 2015 and January 2016. We read the qualitative data as “novels” and searched for quotations for the Castle, the Road and the Saloon. We were aware of the challenging political situations in Tunisia and Egypt when the data were gathered. In Tunisia the state of emergency law was put in place in November 2015 after several terrorist attacks, and was

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extended several times (it was still ongoing at time of writing in May 2017).5 The law allows, for example, the banning of strikes and meetings, the temporary closure of theatres and bars, as well as measures to control the media. Egypt was without a parliament from 2012 to 2015, and in January 2016 the Egyptian parliament finally convened. There was some reluctance among young respondents to speak about their political stances or participation, as some seemed to “fear to announce that they are affiliated to a certain political or social group” (AUC, 2016, p. 16). It is highly important to keep in mind the time specificity while analysing the SAHWA data from different countries.

3 Survey data for Castle and Road chronotopes Castle and Road chronotope types emerge in the results of the SAHWA Youth Survey in a question where the 15–29-year-old respondents were asked which political activities they had participated in over the last 12 months. In Figure 9.1 “Party politics” and “Electoral campaign” fit the Castle and the other two fall under the Road chronotope. These data also show how the youth in Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon had lost their interest and trust in politics. As a young Egyptian explains: “There is a phase of let-down after [the excitement of] standing for their political and civil engagement rights, [especially] after the elections have ended, people had high hopes but they did not see any change at the end, it has all been erased” (EG_FG_4: 7). The political situation in Egypt when the data were gathered may be one reason why there is not much about political institutions or elections in the qualitative data.

Figure 9.1 Participation in different political activities at least once during the last 12 months in five countries (%) Note: Full description of each activity: “participate in party political meeting or activities”, “participate in electoral campaigns”, “political participation via the internet”, “participate, attend or help demonstrations”. Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

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Figure 9.2 Participation of young men and women in different political activities at least once during the last 12 months in four countries (%) Note: Only statistically significant differences reported. Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

Also, young people do not actively report their engagements in institutional politics, as is visible in Figure 9.1. Figure 9.2 shows how young men in general participate more actively than young women in different political activities. In Lebanon gender difference is visible in all analysed fields, while in Morocco there are no statistically significant differences between girls and boys in any of the activities. It is interesting that while the internet as a virtual street can be seen as enabling girls’ political activity, girls report less “political participation via the internet” than boys in four countries. 3.1 Political Castles in the hands of older generations and in a dialogue with religious institutions [Political work] is an environment reserved for a class where everyone knows everyone, and where responsibilities seem to pass from father to son […] It is an environment, she describes, of suspicion [that] it is better to depart from. (TN_FG_2: 5)

This definition of political work by one of the young informants in Tunisia is an example of a description of the Castle political chronotope, which stands for parliament, political representatives and national assemblies, mosques, churches and religious leaders—as the political and religious institutes intertwine in different ways in these five countries—not forgetting Morocco’s monarchy and the real king and real castle. The traces of generations are arranged in visible forms in the use of symbols, objects and performative rituals as well as

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human relationships (Bakhtin, 1981). The Castle is the space and time that is combined with historical time, strict norms, hierarchy and tradition. It’s a chronotope where young party/religious group members or elected young people can engage. Either they behave similarly to their older counterparts or on the best occasions present a “fresh approach” that enables “productive collaborations between the dynamism and the experience of [their elders]” (Pleyers, 2010, p. 75). The chain of generations in institutional politics was also found as a result in a SAHWA scientific report (Roberts et al., 2017) where political engagement among young Tunisians was found to correspond most strongly with university education and growing up in a politically engaged family. Castles are powerful. As the data from Morocco reveal: “However they [young people in the focus group interview] all agree to say that for a very long time all Moroccans feared the political power in place” (MA_FG_2: 10). As Hicham Alaoui (2016) describes, the Maghreb countries (Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria) constitute a special entity culturally, socially and geopolitically, not only because of their governance but also because of the citizens: in Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria the citizens are not as ethnically or religiously divided as, for example, in Egypt or Lebanon. What is common to these five countries is the fact that the political power is in the hands of the elite, which has not changed much during the last decades. In Morocco, the Castle is the Makhzen—the governing institution in Morocco, centred on the king and consisting of notable royals, top-ranking military personnel, landowners, security service bosses, civil servants and other wellconnected members of the establishment. It has been said that Algeria is moving towards a similar power-elite setting (Alaoui, 2016). Though the Castle can change, changes may be slow, as a young man from Morocco explains: In Morocco, change started with the new King more than ten years ago. As he became king he realised that Moroccan people were under-estimated, and he changed his vision, he saw that the actual Moroccan citizen had abilities, and that is when change started. (MA_FG_2: 10) Young people from Morocco addressed the importance of change in the political system and in society but from their point of view the change should be slow enough not to cause revolts—as occurred in North Africa and the Middle East in many countries from 2011 onwards. We can’t talk about politics because the majority lack confidence, they are unaware of the political process and how they can be active and participate, […] but this problem is not just for youth […] (MA_FG_3: 5)

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In the SAHWA data it is evident that the young people in these five countries do not trust the political system or politicians (Sánchez-Montijano et al., 2017). At the same time, it also seems that the older generations lack the motivation and/or the capacity to involve the younger generation in politics. This makes the young people disinterested in politics. There is very little confidence in the Castle among the Arab Mediterranean youth, as this quotation from Algeria shows: the Algerian young person does not trust anymore in the politics [politicians]: they say that they make us nothing, they have no principles, they are liars. They do not believe them, the politics are not inclined to listen to the young people; they have divided the country; they left nothing to us. (DZ_FG_9: 11) In Lebanon, Egypt and Tunisia the political situation is much more unstable than in Morocco and Algeria. This was reported in the data from Lebanon: Lebanon continues to suffer from a political vacuum, most aptly reflected in the absence of a president. […] these kinds of political instability (and insecurity) [have] immense ramifications when exploring youth opportunities in Lebanon. (LB_FE_2: 2) 3.2 Electing actors for the Castle Elections are a crucial moment in the Castle chronotope, as that is when the representatives or actors in the Castle are selected. The Castle represents both political power and resistance to it (Feixa et al., 2016). At a general level, in all the five countries, young people do not feel concerned about voting. In Morocco, some of the youth explained that “Voting does not change much here. We elect a government with no autonomy at all, and it cannot make decisions, even small decisions. The only person who has power in our country is the King, therefore whether we decide to vote or not does not make a great change. But we need to choose the right people” (MA_FG_2: 9). Some Tunisian young people participated in the 2014 elections as observers and lament the absence of young people, calling for the need for more serious work at the level of raising consciousness (TN_FG_4: 5). In Egypt, two young people who helped campaign for candidates in the parliamentary elections explained their aspirations: how they plan and work towards running for local councils which, in their opinions, will have great potential and provide opportunities for young people (EG_FG_3: 6). In Algeria, corruption was mentioned as one of the reasons behind the fact that young people do not want to participate in politics:

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The most flagrant case in this context is that few young people who practice politics in the structures [to] which they have acceded realise [that] the day of the establishment of lists of party candidates in a given election they will all be excluded in favour of other persons who arrive through corruption. (DZ_FG_4: 7) The ethnographic data from Algeria also show clear geographical differences in the young people’s awareness of elections and of their rights to participate, run as a candidate or vote. In the rural areas young people are more attached to religious purposes and are not as aware of their political rights as those in the bigger cities (DZ_FG_8: 7). 3.3 Castle of religion—Castle of politics The SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (Figure 9.3) measures the relevance of religion in the public and private spheres through four statements: 1 2 3 4

The religious leaders should have influence over the government’s decisions; It would be desirable [for the country] for more people with strong religious beliefs to take on representational posts or political responsibility; The practice of religion is a private affair that should be separated from socioeconomic life; Religion should not influence people’s political decisions.

Statements 1 and 2 measure the role of religious persons/leaders in political decision-making, statements 3 and 4 position religion in society at a more general level. Statement 3 specifically measures the practice of religion, but also mentions the socioeconomic dimension. Regarding statement 4, it is somewhat unclear whether this refers to individual political decisions (e.g. voting) or political decisions made by the ruling party. Figure 9.3 shows that in Egypt, Tunisia and Lebanon, attitudes towards the relationship between religion and politics are consistent and, moreover, very similar in all three countries. Depending on the country and the statement, 64%–86% of respondents disagree with the claim that religious leaders should have influence over government’s decisions or should take political responsibility. Similarly, most young people in these countries believe that religion is a private matter that should be distinguished from politics: depending on the statement and country, 68% to 87% of respondents agree with the fact that religious practice should be a private matter, and should not affect people’s political decisions. In Tunisia and Lebanon, opinions are a bit more secular than in Egypt. Tunisia is an example of how it is possible to bring modern political Islam and democracy together: individual rights and religious norms

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were both taken into account in the Tunisian constitution in 2014 (Lanas Cavada, 2017). In Lebanon, the political system is based on two major legal foundations, both of which obstruct the renovation of the practices making up the political culture. The first is sectarianism, which organises the division of power between the various components of the Lebanese society and grants religious authorities total control over key social institutions such as marriage, divorce and inheritance. It allows these religious powers to oppose the evolution of civil laws. [She] wasn’t very optimistic about Lebanon’s future. In some ways, she felt that it was too late for things to change for the better. The political problems were too deeply engrained into daily life—most especially religious sectarianism. […] She believes that such issues of class and religious sectarianism would not change until the political situation did. (LB_LS_3: 2) The second foundation of this system is the electoral code that requires people to vote in their villages of origin. Although the country has witnessed drastic demographic change since the mid-20th century, the electoral system retains the village as the focal point of political representation. The result is a growing gap between the real country and its political projection. Together, these fundamental rules combine to ensure the reproduction of the traditional religious patriarchy in which people are primarily identified in terms of sectarian affiliations. But in Lebanon every school has their own perspective (religious and/or political) and then they have their own hospitals and institutions. (LB_FG_1: 12) Finally, on top of these two legal principles, a third element structures the functioning of the Lebanese polity: the fact that the political leadership was constituted during the Lebanese wars (1975–90). Having emerged as militia leaders, these ageing politicians became the symbols of the rampant corruption and deadlocks of a sectarian order that nourishes a quasi-perpetual institutional crisis. The power or authority of the teacher to favour particular students over others due to political affiliation and/or religion continued into the Lebanese University (public university) where certain degrees were stereotyped based upon the aforementioned background: “We have problems with favouritism. There are the political parties … There are also now centres/organizations at the Lebanese University … you know … all

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political parties also have particular religious affiliations … and then we have favouritism over religion in general”. (LB_FG_1: 5) In Morocco and Algeria, attitudes towards religion and politics are different (Figure 9.3). In Algeria, almost half (49% for statement 1 and 45% for

Figure 9.3 Attitudes towards the link between religion and institutional politics (%) Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

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statement 2) and in Morocco, more than half (63% for statement 1 and 62% for statement 2) of respondents agree that religious leaders should have political influence. In addition, in these countries more than one-third of respondents disagree that religious practice should be private and that religion should not have an impact on people’s political decisions. Correspondingly, in Morocco and to some extent Algeria the representative system is not valued as highly as in Egypt, Lebanon and Tunisia (where a representative democratic regime is seen as the best), and thus a governing system based on experts is also appreciated. In Morocco and Algeria, there are also more young people than in the other countries who accept an administration of a “strong unparliamentary group” independent of the election result (Maïche et al., 2017).

4 The Road and the Saloon: physical and virtual streets of youth political engagement As the first analysis part of this chapter clearly showed, young people are greatly excluded from the Castle, i.e. institutional politics and the power-elite. The other chronotopes analysed in this chapter, the Road and the Saloon, are where the young generation’s activities are numerous—and this time the older generation is more or less absent. The Road stands here for both physical and virtual streets. In earlier youth studies it has been underlined how today’s youth live in the contingent interrelationships between digital and physical, public and private, visible and invisible (Suurpää et al., 2015). The street has a special function in urbanism and representations of urban youth lives. The Saloon (or parlour) is a place where encounters occur, but in contrast to the Road, in Saloons networks spin, dialogues happen, and historical and sociopublic events are woven together (Bakhtin, 1981). Often encounters in the Saloon last longer than on the Road. Therefore historical time as well as biographical and everyday time are concentrated and intertwined with each other in Saloons, such as coffee shops, internet cafés and restaurants (Laine, 2016). Saloons can be seen as extensions of the Road, i.e. a youthful “spot” to hang out next to the Road, next to the physical street and a place to connect on the virtual street. What characterises the Road chronotope is its unique quality as a particularly good place for random encounters where people “who are normally kept separate by social and spatial distance can accidentally meet” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 243). The Road is both a point of new departures and a place for events to find their declaration. In these spaces time has a flowing shape. Just as some described the Castle as threatening, the Road may also be seen as a threat: “The family, the school, the mosque do not play their role. There is a single institution which plays its role, at present, it is the street. [… There he] learns to smoke the cigarette, then the cannabis, […]” (DZ_FG_9: 5). This is quite a traditional way to see the physical streets, i.e. as a threat, a place with a bad reputation. This kind of an attitude may be connected with assumptions of “hanging around” in the streets with no purpose. When reflecting on the

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empirical data from the SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork 2015, the divide between the family and the street was a phenomenon that was visible in the data from Tunisia and from Algeria: The lack of stable jobs and the long periods of unemployment mean that young people spend most of their time together, usually in the street. (DZ_FG_8: 8) Anyhow, as the young people from Algeria explained, the dynamics between job opportunities, education and the older generation are much more complexed. For example: “Family doesn’t play its role, because of the high cost of living, the father is busy working to secure the basic needs of living, and he [leaves] the responsibility of education to the street …” (DZ_FG_7: 12). It was also mentioned how “parents lose their control of their kids when the youth go to school or to the street. Young [people] passes a lot of time on the streets and may abandon their studies. As a result, the street has become an area of education for these young [people]” (DZ_FG_8: 12). In the present post-Arab Spring era, it is difficult to see which way the young people find a job easier: through studying and educating themselves or through networking on the (physical and virtual) streets. […] for the young [people], once in the street with another young [people] it is beneficial because that’s how he is building a personality! For one receives an education for 30 years [… There] are young people who live all the time with the family, they rarely go out, their parents are too afraid for them! It’s true they will have all, but ultimately these kids will have less later on! […] one that does not come out and remains all the time at home … will become naive […] (CAWTAR, 2016, p. 8) As explained above, to recognise the importance of the street in youth identity construction doesn’t mean that they underestimate the risks of the street (e.g. consumption of alcohol, deviance, depravity). What characterises this “global generation” is the lack of employment possibilities even for the well-educated, and at the same time, global connections (Glasius and Pleyers, 2013). Especially in the Arab Mediterranean countries these young people have been called “the middle class poor” (Bayat, 2011), meaning those who are middle class in culture and education but excluded from the middle class economically. When their transition to adulthood is blocked economically, as well as in the political institutions, alternative paths may be found via the Road or the Saloon. At its best, the Road can provide space for diverse positive engagements for the young. Those young people who can take advantage of the Road could be those whom Pleyers (2010, p. 76) calls alter-activists. These young people participate in creative forms of action, emphasising process and

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experimentation. The Road is a suitable space for alter-activists’ ad hoc campaigns, direct democracy and flexible forms of commitment. In Morocco the 20 February movement is a clear example of how the young people took the streets as a political space: For me, before 20 February, there were two ways of political participation of youth: political parties or unions and the third way doesn’t exist before. But during 20 February, it was the street; young people who wanted to participate, to say something or change things, they were in the street or in the 20 February commissions, or in the demonstrations. (MA_FG_3: 5) What is important to underline is the fact that the physical street is highly gendered in these five countries. The physical streets are very masculine: boys can use the space and find precarious jobs from the streets, but as one young person in Algeria describes, “among young people there is retreat in moral values, especially in terms of respect between the two sexes … girls cannot go out into the street without harassment” (DZ_FG_7: 12). In some reflections, especially those related to Tunisia and Egypt, the gendered use of the physical street is explained through security: “in the current security situation, we cannot have our ladies walk in the street after 11 and 12 at night alone, the security situation is getting even worse all around the country” (EG_NI_1: 6). 4.1 Internet—virtual street When the physical streets and coffee shops are very masculine, the virtual Road can better enable girls’ political engagement in Arab Mediterranean countries. Studying the use of blogs by Muslim women, Ahmed (2016) shows that through social media, Muslim women can express emotions, desires and thoughts about their lives, and thus become visible. While the norms of Islamic society limit the access of women to public space as well as their visibility and mobility, social media provide these women with a public sphere through which stereotypes can be challenged and replaced by alternative images and voices that transgress conservative norms (Ahmed, 2016; Skalli, 2006). Social media also enable activism by providing a platform for discussion and connecting like-minded individuals and alliances. Skalli (2006) asserts that especially for educated women who live in a constrained environment (whether politically or religiously), social media empower them to transgress and challenge their societal norms, and participate in activism. Similarly to the physical streets, the youth in the SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork data reflected on how they are aware that there are some “threats” on the internet, but different from the physical streets, young people’s parents are not aware of this:

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[…] the parents don’t know the dangers. Because they do not know the internet, they do not know how to handle it, and so they really do not know what young people can do with it. I think they only see the benefits of the internet and they ignore the danger. (DZ_FG_3: 12) What is more, similarly to the physical streets, urbanisation goes hand in hand with the use of virtual streets, as this example from rural Algeria explains: The local youth seem to be attracted to internet use. To do this activity, they must move to Messaad where Internet cafés are located. But this requires a fee that young [people] cannot always assume. (DZ_FG_6: 8) For example, cafés in Cairo have been noted in earlier studies as a defining element in social relationships which are constructed not only among young people themselves, but also between the young people and the rest of the community. In every neighbourhood (upper-class, middle-class or poor), it is possible to find these social centres. In Cairo, coffee shops are safe public spaces for young women. These spaces stand for “modern” and “world” (WiFi access), but with a respect for “religion” as these spaces do not serve alcohol (Sánchez García, 2016). Those young men who lack resources to enter the Saloon will most probably spend their leisure time on the physical Road or internet at home. For young females the internet at home is often the only option. The lack of recreational and other open and safe spaces is one of the reasons why young people spend their leisure time on the internet—if possible: I spend my free time on the internet (the other world), we live in a routine, there is nothing new, every day the same thing, there are no public or recreational spaces where we can go in our leisure time, even if I find [a recreational space] there is no safety and there is no trust in our country. (DZ_LS_3: 7) The youth studied in this chapter can be seen as part of today’s global wired generation. Edmunds and Turner (2005) define the global generation as beginning between 1990 and 2000 (including people whose transition from childhood to adulthood took place during that time), and highlight electronic communication technology as the primary characteristic of this generation. Social media are a time-space for this young generation to grow their more global or transnational identity. The virtual Road is a chronotope in which to build a global youth identity that rises above cultural differences. The “global” or “transnational” Road opens up alternative possibilities for these young people’s identity work, and for their activism and resistance, which

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would be more easily silenced if they were only expressed in their physical nation-state environment. Social media are also a useful tool for civil society and non-governmental organisations (NGOs): Then there is the civil society, one has to search, seek associations. Now with the existence of [the] internet, it makes things easier. You look for and you find some NGOs, offers for training, and you start at some point. (MA_FG_3: 4–5)

5 Conclusions The aim of this chapter has been to answer through analysing the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) and the SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork 2015 data, how the youth experience institutional politics as well as the youth cultural spaces of engagement (i.e. everyday life politics), and how they experience the older generations’ attitude towards their age group’s involvement and their use of leisure time6. As our analysis in the previous sections has shown, there exist clear generational gaps in the political engagements in the Arab Mediterranean: young people do not feel heard or welcome in institutional politics—the Castle—as full members, even though the “youth bulge” should democratically mean more representatives and attention in the political decision-making. One reason behind the disinterest in politics is the lack of older politicians’ motivation to train the young politicians and take them into account: “at present the political parties do not train the young people in their movement, that is to invest in them and to make good citizens …” (DZ_FG_9: 11). It is important to keep in mind that in general in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt, to protest or carry out “political” activities in physical public space is forbidden by several laws. Therefore it is important to also understand this kind of activity as a manner of resistance and resilience with dangerous consequences for the practitioners (EuroMed, 2016). For example, the Moroccan government imposes movement and travel restrictions on activists. As an example, during a trainee teacher protest movement in February 2016, some activists were forbidden to leave their cities and were thus prevented from protesting (EuroMed, 2016, p. 11). In Algeria, a common practice of the authorities is to “clone” the organisations or independent trade unions in order to cover their tracks and bring favourable government policy discourse on behalf of originally critical organisations (EuroMed, 2016, p. 12). In Tunisia, after the terrorist attacks in 2015, a rhetoric criticising civil society organisations spread, arguing that the defence of human rights undermines the fight against terrorism. Therefore a coalition of Tunisian associations presented a manifesto in April 2016, reiterating its condemnation of terrorism and demanding that security policies not conflict with human rights

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(EuroMed, 2016). In Egypt many protesters were accused of endangering state security for having publicly protested, or NGO workers for having published reports on violations of human rights by the authorities. Egyptian law on associations is denounced as one of the most restrictive in the world, and the use of the safety pretext to silence any critical voice is particularly dramatic in the country (EuroMed, 2016). Despite the risks explained above, the time-spaces where the youth can have agency to be creative and be heard are the physical and virtual Roads and Saloons that enable identity construction outside traditional norms, authority and family (i.e. older generations). This has been stated as one of the positive outcomes of the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings in 2011 and the “democratisation processes” that are still going on: the end of certain political regimes in 2011 made a change particularly in young people’s subjectivity (Glasius and Pleyers, 2013). This new subjectivity will transform the region over the next decades, when this youth of 2011 will became older and gain societal power. Currently the young global generation occupy Roads and Saloons as “spaces of experience” (Glasius and Pleyers, 2013) to get their messages across: Others have chosen art (theatre, video, podcasting, graffiti, etc.). I think it’s a new form of political participation, as well as the cyber activism. I think that social networks are now tools for change, tools for pressure. (MA_FG_3: 5) Graffiti and theatre need physical public spaces for the young people’s engagement and argumentation to be shown. What was visible in the data was the lack of public or recreational spaces where young people could go in their leisure time. Instead they spend leisure time in Saloons, on street corners or on the internet. The social media time-spaces create a “global village” where the young can meet people from different corners of the world and start exchanging thoughts and ideas. This “blurs [the] psychological boundaries of identity framed within [the] nation state, as well as civic obligations defined by such boundaries” (Haste, 2010, p. 169). For Alaoui (2016), a key problem in Algeria and Morocco is the weak role of public opinion in political life. In post-Arab Spring Tunisia and Egypt the situation is a bit better. For him, the only way to get rid of the frustration of the people is through dialogue and compromise: “as long as the government refuses to give institutional tools to the citizens, tools that would allow the people [to] participate in societal problem-solving, the citizens do not have any other possibilities than [to] blame the people in power.” In both countries citizens do not have a clue how the political decisions have been prepared, and who is responsible for the decisions at the end (Alaoui, 2016, p. 13). Already different national youth councils exist in the Arab Mediterranean countries that would be good partners for the governments to start more structural dialogue with the younger generations.

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If the five countries studied in this chapter have the motivation to move towards more inclusive and enabling environments for youth political engagement, we recommend giving tools and enabling a diversity of chronotopes (time-spaces) in which the inter-generational dialogues can happen— not only welcoming the younger generation better to institutional politics but also creating public physical and virtual spaces for inter-generational dialogue to legitimately take place. We will close with the words of a young person from Morocco: If we consider this in terms of democracy, I think we have to take all these forms into account. It’s very important for youth that they have the opportunity to engage in whatsoever they want. (MA_FG_3: 6)

Notes 1 The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007–13 under grant agreement no. 613174 for the SAHWA Project (www.sahwa.eu). This publication reflects only the authors’ views. The European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein. 2 Two other chronotope types, the Threshold and the Town, are left out from this chapter in order to fit in the proper analysis of the selected three. The Threshold stands for crisis and a break in a life, time is “instantaneous; it is as if it has no duration and falls out of the normal course of biographical time” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 248). In earlier study, these chronotopes have been used to analyse demonstrations (Laine, 2016). The Town chronotope is a space for cyclical everyday time. As Bakhtin (1981, p. 247) formulates, “here there are no events, only ‘doings’ that constantly repeat themselves”. Bakhtin explains that time in the Town is mainly without event and seems to stand still. Therefore Towns “often serve as a contrasting background for temporal sequences that are more charged with energy and event” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 248), and when analysed in terms of youth political engagement the Town is often a rural village where “nothing happens”. 3 In quotations from the qualitative data we use the codes: DZ = Algeria, TN = Tunisia, MA = Morocco, EG = Egypt, LB = Lebanon, FG = focus group summaries, FE = focused ethnographies, LS = life story summaries and NI = narrative interview summaries. 4 Numbers of respondents: Tunisia N=2,000; Lebanon N=2,000; Egypt N=1,970; Morocco N=1,854; Algeria N= 2,036. For more information see Sánchez-Montijano et al., 2017. Data corpuses are weighted to represent the youth population of each country. Statistical analysis was conducted by cross tabulation and Chi-Square analysis. 5 Source: www.news24.com/Africa/News/tunisia-extends-2015-state-of-emergency-201 70216 (Accessed: 4 May 2017). 6 We want cordially thank three other members of the Finnish Youth Research Network’s SAHWA Project team: Karim Maïche, Henri Onodera and Bruno Lefort. Without our common discussions and co-work, this article would not have been possible. We also want to thank Yên Mai for her help in thematising the qualitative data.

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References Ahmed, T. (2016). “Unveiling in the New Public Sphere: Narratives of Transgression by Muslim Women in the World of Blogs”, Bodhi Kala, 3(2), pp. 31–39. Alaoui, H. (2016). “À l’écart des grands conflits du monde arabe. Le Maghreb entre autoritarisme et espérance démocratique”, Le Monde Diplomatique, 11, 12–13. Available at: www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2016/11/ALAOUI/56776, (Accessed: 23 May 2017). Amir-Ebrahimi, M. (2008). “Transgression in Narration: The Lives of Iranian Women in Cyberspace”, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 4(3), pp. 89–118. AUC (The American University in Cairo) (2016). National Case Study, Egypt. Available at: http://sahwa.eu/OUTPUTS/Other-publications/National-Case-Study-Egypt, (Accessed: 13 February 2018). Bakhtin, M. (1981). Forms of time and the chronotope in the novel 1937–38, in The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bayat, A. (2011). “A New Arab Street in post-Islam Times”, The Middle East Channel, 26 January. Available at: http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/26/a_ new_arab_street, (Accessed: 23 November 2017). CAWTAR (Center of Arab Woman for Training and Research) (2016). National Case Study, Tunisia. Available at: http://sahwa.eu/OUTPUTS/Other-publications/Na tional-Case-Study-Tunisia, (Accessed: 13 February 2018). Dickson, S. (2013). “To vote or not to vote: Youth political agency in post-revolutionary Tunisia”, Independent Study Project Collection, pp. 1–32. Available at: http://digitalcollections.sit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2649&hx0026;context=is p_collection, (Accessed: 29 August 2017). Edmunds, J. and Turner, B. (2005). “Global generations: Social change in the twentieth century”, The British Journal of Sociology, 56(4), pp. 559–577. El Heity, A. (2017). “Cycling in Egypt Compared to the French Experience”, Centre for Mediterranean Integration. Available at: http://cmimarseille.org/blog/cycling-e gypt-compared-french-experience, (Accessed: 2 June 2017). Euro-Mediterranean Youth Programme (EuroMed) (2016). “Shackled Freedoms: What Space for Civil Society in the EuroMed?” Available at: www.statewatch.org/ news/2016/sep/euromed-rights-shackled-freedoms-report-16.pdf, (Accessed: 29 August 2017). Farthing, R. (2010). “The politics of youthful antipolitics: Representing the ‘issue’ of youth participation in politics”, Journal of Youth Studies, 13(2), pp. 181–195. Feixa, C., Leccardi, C. and Nilan, P. (2016). Postscript: Youthopia and the Chronotopical Imagination, in Feixa, C., Leccardi, C. and Nilan, P. (Eds.) Youth, Space and Time. Agoras and Chronotopes in the Global City. Den Haag: Brill, pp. 415–419. Glasius, M. and Pleyers, G. (2013). “The Global Movement of 2011: Democracy, Social Justice and Dignity”, Development and Change, 44(3), pp. 547–567. Haste, H. (2010). Citizenship Education: A Critical Look at a Contested Field, in Sherrod, L. R., Torney-Purta, J. and Flanagan, C. A. (Eds.) Handbook of Research on Civic Engagement in Youth. New Jersey: Wiley, pp. 161–188. Honwana, A. (2013). Youth and revolution in Tunisia. London: Zed Books. Kincaid, S. (2017). “Exploring Collaborative Civic Leadership Among Young Tunisians: Inviting Despair, Creating Hope”, DOMES: Digest of Middle East Studies, 26(1), pp. 4–31.

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Korany, B. and El Sayyad, M. (2017). “Youth political engagement during the Arab Spring: Egypt and Tunisia compared”. SAHWA scientific paper. Available at: www. sahwa.eu/OUTPUTS/SAHWA-Scientific-Papers/Scientific-Paper-on-youth-politicalengagement-in-Egypt-and-Tunisia, (Accessed: 2 June 2017). Laine, S. (2016). Creating Agora Chronotopes on Young People’s Political Participation in Transnational Meetings, in Feixa, C., Leccardi, C. and Nilan, P. (Eds.) Youth, Space and Time. Agoras and Chronotopes in the Global City. Den Haag: Brill, pp. 65–84. Lanas Cavada, S. (2017). ”Mitä kuuluu Tunisialle kuusi vuotta kansannousujen jälkeen?” Available at: https://lahi-itanyt.fi/mita-kuuluu-tunisialle-kuusi-vuotta-kansa nnousujen-jalkeen/, (Accessed: 23 May 2017). Mai, Y. and Laine, S. (2016). “Blogging Activism of Young Educated and Global Women in an Authoritarian Society”, Participation and Conflict Journal, special issue 9(3), pp. 893–917. Maïche, K., Onodera, H., Lefort, B., Laine, S. and Myllylä, M. (2017). “Breaking the triple marginalisation of youth? Mapping the future prospects of youth inclusion in Arab Mediterranean countries”, SAHWA Policy Report. Available at: www.sahwa. eu/OUTPUTS/SAHWA-Policy-Reports/Policy-Report-on-youth-marginalisation-inthe-AMCs, (Accessed: 2 June 2017). OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) (2015). “Youth in the MENA Region: How to Bring Them In”. Available at: www.oecd.org/mena/ governance/Youth-in-the-MENA-region.pdf, (Accessed: 29 August 2017). Pleyers, G. (2010). Alter-globalization. Becoming actors in the global age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Roberts, K., Kovacheva, S. and Kabaivanov, S. (2017). “Scientific Report. Modernisation theory meets Tunisia’s youth during and since the revolution of 2011”. Available at: www.sahwa.eu/OUTPUTS/SAHWA-Scientific-Papers/Scientific-Rep ort-on-youth-political-engagement-in-Tunisia, (Accessed: 2 June 2017). SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017). Data File Edition 3.0. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). Sánchez García, J. (2016). From hara to midam: Public spaces of youth in Cairo, in Feixa, C., Leccardi, C. and Nilan, P. (Eds.) Youth, Space and Time. Agoras and Chronotopes in the Global City. Den Haag: Brill, pp. 293–317. Sánchez-Montijano, E., Martínez, I., Bourekba, M. and Dal Zotto, E. (2017). SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 Descriptive Report. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). Skalli, L. (2006). “Communicating Gender in the Public Sphere: Women and Information Technologies in the MENA Region”, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 2(2), pp. 35–59. Suurpää, L., Sumiala, J., Hjelm, T. and Tikka, M. (2015). “Studying youth in the streets of the media city—Field notes on a relational perspective”, Observatorio (OBS*), pp. 171–191. Williams, M. (2016). “Youth, Peace, and Security: A New Agenda for the Middle East and North Africa”, Journal of International Affairs, 69(2), pp. 103–112. World Bank (2015). Inequality, Uprisings, and Conflict in the Arab World. Available at: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/303441467992017147/Inequality-uprisin gs-and-conflict-in-the-Arab-World, (Accessed: 29 August 2017).

10 The transformation of youth cultural norms and values1 A gendered analysis2 Ilenya Camozzi UNIVERSITY OF MILANO-BICOCCA

Daniela Cherubini CA’ FOSCARI UNIVERSITY OF VENICE

Carmen Leccardi UNIVERSITY OF MILANO-BICOCCA

Paola Rivetti DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY

1 Introduction This chapter focuses on the processes and practices of cultural innovation emerging among young Arab Mediterranean generations during recent years and particularly after the 2011 uprisings. If cultural innovation is a process that redefines dominant representations of reality, identities and agency, this process is shaped by time—that is by the relations between past, present and future. It is fundamental to bear in mind that preserving or innovating, and choosing continuity over discontinuity, implies putting in relation these three temporal dimensions. As a matter of fact, in order to create a capacity for innovation, it is necessary to begin from pre-existing visions of the world that need to be reelaborated and revised to make sense in the present. The past is the starting point, the present opens up new possibilities and prefigures future opportunities one aspires to. Taking into consideration this temporal framework, our analysis examines more specifically the transformations in young people’s cultural values and attitudes towards gender norms and relations through a comparative and gendered perspective. This means that our approach emphasises the impact that gender—conceived as a social construction that includes norms, values and modes of social organisation—has on young men and women’s attitudes

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towards issues such as the roles of men and women in society, politics and the family, or the expected notions of femininity and masculinity they adhere to. Such notions and approaches do not exist in a vacuum; in fact, they are influenced by broader political, economic and social structures. It follows that this chapter discusses the transformation of gender norms and values as they happen within such broader structures, which are characterised by multiple mechanisms of exclusion and marginalisation of the young at the social, political, economic and cultural levels. It is not surprising, then, that the notion of “waithood” is often recalled to describe the condition of suspension and marginality in which the youth in Arab Mediterranean countries (AMCs) live. However, taking social innovation and its temporal framework as a reference point, we will discuss how waithood paradoxically can open the door to agency and the possibility of social change, steering towards empowerment. Waithood originates from adverse structural circumstances (in primis the high level of youth unemployment) and limits the opportunity of young people to transit towards an adult life but, at the same time, it stimulates subjective strategies of resistance and creativity. As numerous analyses have shown (Martin Munoz, 2000; Bourdarbat and Ajbilou, 2007; Silver, 2007; Egel and Salehi-Isfahani, 2007), the condition of social marginalisation experienced by young people in the AMCs—which takes different forms, from a general distrust in society and its institutions to disaffection with politics, delay in the transition to adulthood and lack of social recognition—does not equate with a passive stance. The analysis presented in this chapter aligns with this literature, demonstrating that young people emerge as social actors able to act within an unfavourable social context and against all odds. They deploy diverse strategies and forms of resistance to cope with structural limitations and pursue their life projects, goals and choices. However, we also avoid considering Arab Mediterranean youth as champions of the revolution and social change—the narrative alternative to waithood-related passivity. Rather, we locate young people’s capabilities and agency in a specific context, binding them to the actual social condition they experience. This perspective leads to an enrichment and re-signification of the concept of waithood, which becomes ambivalent and even contradictory when it comes to gender norms and relations. Indeed, while it challenges the young people’s linear (and expectedly so) transition to adulthood, at the same time it includes the possibility for innovative practices and roles, as the young people involved in the SAHWA research project explain. On the one hand, they refer to and trust traditional gender norms and values as a form of protection in times of social and ontological uncertainty, contributing to reinforcing them; on the other, they struggle against the traditional patriarchal social and cultural order, giving rise to innovative social practices and engendering cultural innovation. Such “paradoxical” effects of waithood are at the core of our examination. They emerge clearly when it comes to the views and experiences of young

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women and men of their life conditions. Such views and experiences vary dramatically depending on whether women or men are considered. The slowing down of the transition to adulthood (whose main aspect is delayed marriage) for young women involved in the research facilitates investments in education (especially for young women from the urban middle class), encourages professional fulfilment and, in general, opens up new cultural horizons and expectations in terms of gender roles and relationships, and women’s innovative role in the public sphere and politics. Nevertheless, in reality, such expectations are rarely realised. Scant job opportunities, a plague affecting young people in general, is particularly real for young women, a reality that pushes them back into traditional gender hierarchies and roles. A similar paradoxical outcome affects young men too. Though more educated than in the past and generally in favour of gender equality, they suffer from social pressure to form their own family and provide for it. Our analysis not only highlights such paradoxes, it also captures their innovative potential in the field of gender norms and relations, which is linked to the interaction between agency and structure. In order to do this, the chapter relies on qualitative and quantitative data collected during the SAHWA research project in Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia.3 The chapter develops as follows. First, it contextualises this analysis using the current literature on changes in values and cultural norms among the youth in the AMCs. Secondly, it examines the empirical findings collected through the ethnographic fieldwork and surveys in the countries mentioned above, focusing in particular on equal opportunities in education and the labour market, women and men’s political participation, and gender roles and relations within the family and the public sphere. The chapter will then conclude by proposing a reflection on the sociological concept of cultural innovation intertwined with that of gender.

2 Youth values, marginalisation and agency in the AMCs The study of the youth in Arab Mediterranean countries has become a crucial area of interest for scholars and policymakers during the past decades, and more so after the so-called Arab Spring and the protest movements that sprung out of the mobilisations of 2010–11. Academics and researchers have analysed Arab Mediterranean youth’s attitudes, values and cultural norms with a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods, generally presenting a rather depressing picture. In fact, the contradiction between the large number of young people and the little opportunity they have in terms of employment and, more generally speaking, economic and social satisfaction, have led scholars to understand the youth’s life conditions in terms of deprivation and social exclusion (Martin Munoz, 2000; Bourdarbat and Ajbilou, 2007; Silver, 2007; Egel and Salehi-Isfahani, 2007), causing two dominant representations. On the one side, we have representations focusing on the potential threat that this disenfranchised youth may embody, with research discussing topics

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such as radicalism and political violence (Al-Momani, 2011; LaGraffe, 2012). On the other side, we have a narrative focused on the notion of “waithood”, identifying a condition in which young people do not have the resources to proceed with their life and transit from childhood and adolescence to adulthood (Dhillon and Yousef, 2009; Singerman, 2007). Scholarly investigation has in particular focused on the inability and impossibility for young people of acquiring a stable employment position—preferably in the public sector— which in turn hampers their ability to afford marriage and, consequently, have children. In other words, to enter adulthood (Mulderig, 2013). Because of this inability to fulfil the social role that the youth are expected to perform in order to be part of the society of adults, they become “stuck in transition”, unable to complete their journey from one life stage to the other. They are therefore trapped in waithood, an extendible time of uncertainty for productive employment, housing, marriage and family formation, which are the socioeconomic benchmarks that have traditionally defined adult status in the Middle East (Hoodfar, 1997). Both representations present some elements of truth, but tend to homogenise and emphasise some aspects of young people’s life conditions while neglecting others that may be in place and even more relevant. Manata Hashemi (2017), for instance, discusses how class politics play an important role in diversifying the youth’s experience of waithood, as poorer young people rely more fully on the informal job market to become active economic agents. She also argues that the representation of the Middle Eastern youth as disenfranchised and therefore radical subjects only has scant empirical evidence behind it. A large literature argues that poverty and lack of opportunity breed ignorance and extreme worldviews (Khashan, 2003; Kouaouci, 2004; Moaddel and Karabenick, 2008; Salehi-Isfahani, 2008), but little evidence exists for this (Bayat and Dennis, 2000; Krueger, 2007; Esposito and Mogahed, 2007). In fact, as highlighted by Silver (2007), Egel and SalehiIsfahani (2007), it is the accumulation of multiple disadvantages that may throw young people into despair and, possibly, into being lured in by political violence. However, such accumulation is evidently very stratified and as such a linear or consistent normative relation between the different factors is difficult to single out. While the notion of waithood has been crucial in popularising and making the difficult life conditions of Arab Mediterranean youth visible, it has been criticised and renegotiated by a number of scholars. More specifically, scholars critical of waithood have emphasised that the young are an autonomous and creative agent of change, thus questioning the “passive” representation of young people (Sika, 2012; Honwana, 2014; Honwana and de Boeck, 2005). In particular, scholars emphasising young people’s agency have looked at the informal economic sector as a venue to possibly renegotiate youth exclusion from economic production and, consequently, the social world of adults (Singerman, 1995; Hoodfar, 1997). Other terrains of possible negotiations are intimate relationships and access to marriage. For instance, Diane Singerman

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(2007) presents evidence from Egypt that young people have found “nonmainstream” ways to marry, such as misyar and urfi marriages. These are “secret” marriages that include sexual intercourse but are not officially registered and therefore exclude celebrations, ceremonies and economic obligations. It means that, despite being socially minoritarian and heavily deprecated, alternatives to “traditional” marriage exist and are used by young people to access marriage and legitimate intimate relationships when these are restricted by what Singerman calls “the economic imperative”, namely, economic constraints. Echoing Singerman’s findings, José Sánchez García (2015) also argues that during the period of waithood, the Arab Mediterranean youth reclaim their youthfulness by developing their own ways to face the precarious nature of their lives. Migration, informal business initiatives, and even belonging to a football fan club or to a specific music culture allow young people to become agents of social change in their societies. It is crucial, however, to remember that such agency is bounded by the structural conditions in which young people live. In particular, it is not only material structural limitations that are important here; moral factors also guide young people’s choices and agency. Manata Hashemi (2017), Asef Bayat and Linda Herrera (2010) propose that youth agency is motivated by aspirations which are, in turn, bounded by a specific environment and context-specific notions, such as morality and dignity, with specific characteristics built on what is un/acceptable. The three authors also reflect on how coping strategies are often individualised, mirroring a broader general tendency towards individualisation. This is also evident in value surveys that have recently been conducted in the region, which highlight a shift in this direction (Camozzi et al., 2015). On such grounds, what Sari Hanafi calls “the new subjectivities” have been able to flourish. In his work on subjectivity after the Arab uprisings, Hanafi (2012) argues that the revolutions in North Africa have produced “new subjectivities” that have “reflexive individualism” at their core. By this term, Hanafi means that new subjectivities reflect the fragmentation of previous social and economic systems, leaving room for a more individualised, autonomous subjectivity to emerge. This trend towards autonomy and individualism is the common background against which the youth from the AMCs mobilised and made demands of both the ruling regimes and their own societies before and after the revolutionary wave of 2010–13. While scholarship has devoted attention to understanding the varied forms of youth agency—coming to terms with unfavourable structural conditions yet building political and social protagonism—the impact of such agency on gender norms and relations is less well examined. When it comes to gender, in fact, some youth coping strategies against marginalisation may have contradictory and ambivalent effects by challenging, reproducing or even reinforcing traditional gender hierarchies. In her foundational study of working-class Egyptian women participating in the workforce, Arlene MacLeod (1991) analysed the women’s struggle to

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reconcile their economic necessity of working outside the house with their traditional gender role dictating that they should stay home. MacLeod argues that working Egyptian women have severed the Islamic female dress code by covering up more in order to be able to navigate the public sphere with autonomy and independence. By conforming to traditional social norms regarding women’s public appearance and models of modest womanhood, they acquired the right to navigate public spaces in autonomy. They tactically accommodated prevailing patriarchal social norms regarding women’s dress code in order to be able to access jobs outside the house, thus contravening the dominant patriarchal notion that women should stay in the house and men should provide economically by working in the outer world. The veil became the symbol of these women’s struggle to be able to work outside and become economically independent. MacLeod’s research speaks to the nonlinear way in which agency and structure interact when it comes to gender norms and values. Contradictory findings are also reported by scholars researching the interaction between gender norms and agency in the broader context of waithood. Nadje Al-Ali, Zahra Ali and Isabel Marler (2016) report how waithood, on the one hand, dis-empowers young middle-class people because it delays the biographical transition to adulthood, while on the other hand, it gives more time to young people to study and engage in activities that would otherwise be unavailable to them. However, the authors reflect, this “double effect” is gendered and has a different impact on young women and men. Al-Ali, Ali and Marler find that the opportunity to study without the worry of supporting oneself may allow young women to attain higher education but makes them more dependent on their family of origin. While in some cases the family may represent a haven from discrimination in the outside world—as in the case of young Palestinian women living under the Israeli occupation—in others it also can strengthen patriarchal society. It follows that, when adopting a gendered perspective, young people’s strategies to cope or come to terms with marginalisation, which is a multi-level phenomenon and of which waithood is a specific articulation, have ambiguous and ambivalent consequences. While not translating into novel gender models or into radical models of femininity, the increased expectations of highly educated young women inform aspirations to independence and professional fulfilment. These are signs of cultural innovations, which may only play out in a long-term perspective.

3 Young people’s attitudes towards gender roles and relations This section discusses young people’s values and attitudes on gender roles and relations in the public and private spheres (education, labour market, political participation and the family), as outlined by SAHWA qualitative and quantitative data from fieldwork in the five mentioned countries.4 Findings highlight that young people sometimes reproduce stereotypical representations of the roles of men and women, while, at other times, they advance innovative

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models fostering gender equality. As we will discuss in the following sections, gender equality enjoys diverse degrees of support, depending on the topic and the kind of power relations that are challenged or reproduced. For instance, we will see that young people widely support the idea of gender equality in education, while they tend to reproduce conservative models when it comes to the sexual division of labour and related gender roles within the family. Moreover, youngsters’ attitudes on the matter vary according to different social backgrounds, at the intersection of class, education and gender. A clear gender gap emerges from our data, as young women tend to support equality between men and women in terms of social positions and opportunities more strongly and widely than young men. Survey data in particular provide evidence of that. Moreover, young women tend to express stronger support for gender equality than young men, i.e., they often “agree strongly” with statements suggesting gender equality. Female and male views diverge in relation to the issues of women’s rights and equal opportunities in the labour market and in politics, the notion of male authority within the family, and gender equality in the family code. Young women and men’s opinions, however, tend to conform to traditional masculine roles when it comes to the social and economic areas, such as the notion of the male breadwinner. 3.1 Gender and equal opportunities in education and the labour market Dramatic transformations in the field of education have taken place in the last decades in the region and have had a deep impact on women and young people. Women have gained greater access to education, literacy, university enrolment, and to a variety of academic fields. Female literacy rates and other indicators of female education are on the rise, even if they remain lower than male ones, and with significant class and urban/rural cleavage. The young people involved in the research belong to a generation experiencing what a fairer distribution of opportunities between female and male in the field of education looks like. It is no coincidence that this generation advances a clear claim for equality and gender equality in education, as evidence gathered during fieldwork demonstrates. For instance, survey results show that a significant portion of the surveyed young people agree on the fact that “The same upbringing should be given to both boys and girls”, while rejecting the idea that “Education is more important for boys than for girls”.5 Between 47% and 87% of the young participants disagree or strongly disagree with the second statement, while the agreement with the first is even stronger, at between 74% and 97%, depending on the country. This is a field where the attitudes of young women and men are quite similar, although differences still exist and vary in relation to the country considered. However, qualitative data show that these findings are not exempt from contradictions. Relevant inequality persists in the families’ investment in the education of girls and boys. Families also exert strong control over girls, which may lead to their dropping out early from school (CREAD, 2016, pp.

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3–10). Career guidance available to students at school is often gender-biased (LB_FE_1: 13), and girls and boys are steered towards educational fields that are understood to be suitable for each gender.6 On the other hand, qualitative data show young women’s ability to contest the gender discrimination they face within their family and the education system—or at least, their attempts to resist and counteract these exclusionary social forces. Young women understand the key role played by education in determining their social trajectories. They are aware of the absence of alternatives if they drop out of school, and tend to do better than boys when it comes to their presence in the educational system (CREAD, 2016, pp. 3–10). Young women who have not succeeded in this effort and have left school at an early age due to their low economic status and the lack of infrastructure often regret the missed opportunity. This is a common element, for instance, in the life stories and personal narratives of poorly educated young women in rural areas and disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods (MA_FE_1). It follows that indicators on women’s performance in education and young people’s values regarding gender relations in this field should be taken as indicators of sociocultural changes that are currently underway, rather than consolidated outcomes. Another key result concerns the relevance of education to young people’s social inclusion, especially among young women. The young people involved in qualitative interviews highlight the relevance and key role that education plays. Not only do both young men and women consider education a critical factor for their social inclusion and recognition; education also represents the main pathway towards young women’s personal and social empowerment. This becomes clear when we look at the gendered effects of school drop-out. Early school drop-out does indeed have different impacts on the life trajectories of boys and girls. It often results in unemployment, precarious employment in the informal sector or social marginality for the former (TUN_FE_3; DZ_FE_1; MA_FE_1; MA_FE_3), and in the return to the domestic role for the latter (CREAD, 2016). As mentioned, the young women interviewed are deeply conscious of that. Education represents a way to challenge social expectations of their role as women, which revolve around marriage, and to reinforce their ambitions and professional interests. However, the difficult transition from school to work of young people, and especially young women, in part undermines the beneficial effects of greater equality in education. Youth unemployment has reached very high rates in the region and it is indicated as one of the priority problems by the research participants. Skills mismatch, lack of generational turnover, nepotism and difficult access to jobs on a meritocratic and fair basis are among the factors that are most often mentioned by young people as limiting their opportunities in the labour market. Moreover, despite the growing inclusion of women in the labour market during the last decades, deep gender inequality persists in the access to employment and when it comes to working conditions. Horizontal segregation of men and women in the labour market, the gender pay gap, and the

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risk of harassment for working women are widely spread phenomena, as reflected by ethnographic and qualitative fieldwork in almost all investigated countries (TUN_FE_3; MA_FE_1: 9–13; MA_FE_3; LB_FE_1: 13). Our interviewees consider getting a job to be of crucial importance for many reasons, ranging from providing financial stability to matching a specific educational path, being socially included, fulfilling personal expectations, attaining emancipation (for young women above all) and getting married (for young men above all). Nonetheless, the reality is different and all interviewees report negative feelings associated with the present lack of economic opportunities: frustration and sadness, social marginalisation, resignation and pessimism, anger associated either with the desire to fight against the status quo or deviant behaviour, even suicide. For instance, Hekmet, a 21-year-old man from Lebanon, is particularly disappointed about his condition as unemployed as he holds a degree in chemistry. He sets his own experience in a broader picture in which unemployment is the norm for young people. He says that nobody succeeds in getting a job according to his/her educational choice (LB_LSV_6). Therefore, young people are forced to choose between leaving the country, severing ties with family and friends, and coming to terms with uncertainty in everyday life while waiting for a better future. Here again, exclusion from the labour market also has different impacts on young men than it does on young women. For young men, unemployment or precarious employment in the informal sector threaten their ability to save money and reach the economic and social position required to get married. The delay in marriage seems to be the main contradiction faced by young men in the region, with far-reaching consequences in their daily lives, social status and subjective experience, as our empirical data amply reflect, and as we will further discuss in section 3.3. For young women, exclusion from paid work frustrates the social expectations articulated around (although not limited to) self-realisation as individuals in the labour market. Indeed, the gap between expectations and actual opportunities seems to be one of the main contradictions faced by young women. This is especially striking for highly educated women (Barsoum, 2017), who deploy a variety of strategies to adapt to limited opportunities, from leaving the job market and opting for full-time unpaid domestic work for their family to searching for education and job opportunities in sectors that are considered to be more suitable “for girls”. This resonates with the case of Mirna, a 31-year-old woman from Lebanon who currently works as an administrative assistant in the private sector. She has been working in this field for many years even though she obtained a degree in Primary and Preschool Education. As she points out, “many people think that studying is convenient for women” and believe that along with engineering and medicine, education is a field perceived as “good for women”. Nevertheless, jobs in education are described as intensely tiring and not comfortable for women. As a result, strongly influenced by social expectations, Mirna studied

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education but decided to be an employee in an administrative office in order to have fewer responsibilities. Her account reveals the social pressure and the extent of gender discrimination educated women have to face, as well as their bounded agency and choices related to their professional careers (LB_LSV_3). Paid work seems to have a different and more ambivalent meaning for young girls employed in low-skilled, precarious and informal jobs, especially in the agricultural sector (MA_FE_1). The ethnography conducted with young temporary workers in rural Morocco, for instance, shows that many female workers perceive farming/peasant work as hard and risky, both for their well-being and their social reputation as nubile young women. For that reason, most of them plan to leave it when married, in order to improve their social status and be relieved of such tough work. At present and given the rural environment they live in, however, paid agricultural employment is seen by the young female respondents as partially rewarding, as a means to reach financial autonomy and increase their status within the family, and as a meaningful social space they share with their female peers (MA_FE_1: 14–15). These examples suggest that exclusion from the labour market and the processes of social and economic marginalisation that come with it have a contradictory effect on gender models and norms. On the one hand, they elevate young women’s expectations through education, yet, on the other, they recast them into traditional gender roles and hinder their pathways towards the development of alternative gender models and female subjectivities articulated around self-realisation in a variety of spheres, which may include but are not limited to marriage and maternity. For young men, by contrast, the lack of opportunities in the labour market makes them unable to fulfil traditional male roles, casting them into a liminal “waiting” position, as we will describe more in detail in section 3.3. These trends describe the general framework into which young people’s values and attitudes towards men’s and women’s roles in the labour market take shape and should be inserted. Survey data show that although most of the respondents agree with general statements about women’s freedom and presence in the public sphere, the idea of full equality between men and women is still met with resistance, especially when women’s labour participation is seen in competitive terms, as detrimental to men’s duties and privileges. While most of the young respondents agree on the fact that “A married woman should have the possibility to work outside the house if she wants to”, and “Men and women should have the same job opportunities and receive the same salary”, male respondents comparatively seem more reluctant to take up the idea than female respondents. The gender gap in the response to these two statements is 32 percentage points in Algeria, 17.7 in Egypt, 15.8 in Tunisia, 11.9 in Lebanon and 8.2 in Morocco. This is consistent with the fact that the majority of male respondents and a smaller yet significant percentage of the

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female respondents think that “When there is not a lot of work, men should have more right to employment than women”. The survey results suggest that many young people in the region consider women’s participation in the labour market to be an individualised choice that women should be free to make if they wish, rather than a right that women must enjoy on an equal basis with men. This result needs to be linked with the persistence of the gendered division of labour and, in particular, the resilience of the male breadwinner cultural model among the youth in the region (see section 3.3). In this context, women’s opportunities in the labour market tend to be framed as subordinated to the cultural requirement defining men as the financial providers for families, and tend to be accepted as long as they do not conflict with the dominant male cultural and economic functions. 3.2 Young women and young men in politics The research participants who are active in social and/or political organisations, ranging from political parties to non-governmental organisations and informal political activism, articulate an understanding of social and political activism as a form of social recognition and as a strategic tool for attaining public visibility and contrasting youth marginalisation. Despite the contradictory results of the uprisings of 2010–11, young women and men from the five countries under examination believe that collective action is a way to improve the social and economic conditions they live in, eventually benefitting their countries and the national population as a whole. While this is a common perception among young men and women, qualitative data show that significant gender differences persist in the external perception of the intersection between political activism and the gender of activists. Generally speaking, while men’s activism is socially accepted, women’s activism is perceived as less appropriate. However, some common characteristics of women’s and men’s activism exist. For instance, in both cases family background played an important role in determining the respondents’ political engagement (TUN_FE_1). In general, a high level of social and cultural capital inherited from parents determined the respondents’ initial civil and political interest. On the contrary, a low level of cultural and social capital played out as an element discouraging political involvement, although at a later stage. The respondents attending university report receiving political training in that context, confirming the importance of tertiary education in strengthening political engagement. Another important factor that influenced both women and men was the outbreak of the so-called Arab Spring. The revolutionary wave had the effect of strengthening the political commitment of the research participants, as discussed by Wassim, a 25-year-old male student and civil society activist from Tunisia (TUN_FE_1), and Oussama, a 25-year-old male employee and active member of a political party in Tunisia (TUN_FE_1). Wassim states that

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Ilenya Camozzi, Daniela Cherubini, Carmen Leccardi & Paola Rivetti As a student, I didn’t attend the university courses! The movement that started in December 2010 excited us; we were in contact with other regions and personally, I was in touch with some members of PDP (Progressive Democratic Party). We met in some places close to the University of Tunis or elsewhere. We discussed about what was happening.

He highlights how the unfolding of the revolutionary events reinforced his political commitment. Oussama uses the internet as an instrument of political activism. During the revolution, he denounced political and social scandals via Facebook, calling for change. While at the beginning he preferred to use pseudonyms for security reasons, later he found the courage to emerge from anonymity. The day of anger, the 14 of January I could not be in Hbib Bourguiba Avenue but I followed the facts on Facebook and TV. When Ben Ali run away, you can’t image my joy! Gender-determined differences are, however, present in this field too. A key result emerging from the fieldwork is that young people’s political and civil activism is often considered by elder generations as potentially dangerous in terms of weakening traditional hierarchies and social structures. Nevertheless, it is socially tolerated and justified in the case of young men, and is perceived as an expression of masculinity. On the contrary, data from fieldwork suggest that this is not the case for young women. Young women’s political and civil engagement is still conceived as not appropriate, as emerges from the following interviews. Kaoutar, a 22-year-old woman from Morocco, is very resolute when it comes to pursuing her social and political projects. Her awareness of social problems is an evident aspect of her personality, and her political and social activism represent her main interests in life in spite of her family’s disappointment. She is an activist who fights every day for her aims. She is convinced that women have “big potential to help a whole society” and thinks that women’s determination will change the country, even if society is still reluctant to support women’s agency and activism because it is more focused on men’s needs and interests (MA_LSV_5). I think it’s about raising awareness. Sensitising the women to defend their rights. Because I have the same rights as a man. I have the same right to succeed. That would be a step forward for the female cause. I will look like a feminist but I’m not. I’m for equality, not for feminism. Fadma is a 27-year-old woman from Tunisia. She works in a commercial company where she also is a trade unionist. She never engaged with politics until the revolution of 2011. Since then, politics has gained a central place in her life, to her family’s astonishment. She deals with the workers’ problems in

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her company. The following excerpt testifies to her approach to politics and unionism (TUN_LSV_7). There are no trade unionists in my family. Since the 17th December 2010, when Mohamed Bouazizi burned himself in Sidi Bouzid, I started surfing in the internet and Facebook. [After Ben Ali was expelled] I participated in demonstrations and sit-ins. I stayed near Tunis Telecom, where our revolution had started as well. We were very oppressed and we faced many troubles in our workplace. It was a chance to defend and improve our situation. Our revolution was in the media. We call it the revolution for freedom. That was a real opportunity to defend the workers’ demands. So I found myself working in syndicalism. […] At that moment, I was really involved in syndicalism. I started to know more about syndicalism and politics, and started to recognise political faces. Another key element emerging from the empirical data is that both young men and women involved in politics and civil society activism perceive their peers as disaffected with regard to politics. To their eyes, young people should be more involved in civil society because their activism could benefit their countries in a decisive way. Nevertheless, the huge level of unemployment, the need to find everyday solutions to survive and the widespread corruption in state politics push young people away from all forms of civil and political involvement, aggravating their condition of social marginality. A final element completes the picture regarding young men and women’s political and civil involvement in Arab Mediterranean countries. It concerns a basic ambiguity and contradictions among some respondents when interrogated about their political interest. Although strongly disapproving of the adverse contemporary conditions facing young people in the regions and actively involved in finding alternative solutions and forms of resistance to these conditions in their everyday life, many respondents refuse explicitly to get involved in politics. Ayoub, 22 years old and from Morocco, lives with his mother and works as a waiter in a restaurant. His hobby is acting in the theatre and he likes change and innovation: “Anything new I can get involved [in] is welcome. The theatre means a lot to me. The theatre made me feel important and took me away from many things.” His life is rich and absorbing, though full of problems (he provides for his mother and he does not earn enough to marry), but when the interviewer explicitly asks about political involvement as a way to change things he refuses to speak about politics: “There is no space for politics in my head!” (MA_LSV_4). The same goes for Nordin who, as he was illustrating the very bad conditions of young people in Algeria due to unemployment, present and future uncertainty and the lack of opportunity to marry and maintain a family, was asked about the role of the state in young people’s situation. Although he implied that the state was guilty, he refused “to denigrate his State in front of foreigners” (DZ_LSV_8).

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In conclusion, according to qualitative data, young people are scarcely involved in political and civic issues. This engenders surprise, anger and disappointment in those young people who are actively involved in politics. In general, young people’s scant engagement and disaffection testifies to their contemporary social marginalisation; moreover, it confirms and reproduces traditional social representations about gender roles, as young women’s political involvement is perceived as inappropriate by older generations. Young women involved in politics are extremely conscious about the potential and innovation of their agency in terms of challenging traditional gender roles and, more generally, traditional social norms and values that, though they may be weaker, still persist. 3.3 Gender roles, the family and the issue of gender equality in the family code Though the importance of marriage and parenting is not questioned by the young people surveyed (AUC, 2016; CAWTAR, 2016; CREAD, 2016; HEM, 2016; LAU, 2016), there are a number of tensions that emerge from the data when it comes to the definition of gender roles within the family. Survey data point to the wide acceptance beyond gender divisions of the men’s role as the economic provider for the family, but other issues—such as male power and authority within the family—are a terrain of contentious visions, suggesting that different cultural norms among young men and women are emerging. On the one hand, most of the young respondents agree or strongly agree with the statement “Men should be the main economic providers in the family”. This is the statement that causes the least gender-based divisions among the respondents, as the male breadwinner model seems to be equally interiorised by both young women and men. On the other hand, the statement “In a family, men should make the decisions” seems to generate significant divisions between male and female respondents. The share of young men supporting or strongly supporting the statement is 35.7 percentage points higher than the share of young women supporting it in Lebanon, 22.7 higher in Algeria, 20.6 in Tunisia, and 15.1 in Egypt. Qualitative data enrich the analysis and suggest that the adherence to traditional norms of masculinity and, in particular, to the male breadwinner role, poses specific challenges to young men, as they often find it difficult to fulfil expectations because of unemployment or precarious employment. All male interviewees see their condition as extremely problematic when it comes to the possibility of getting married and, as men, maintaining their wife and children according to social expectations. This seems to amplify the sense of uncertainty perceived by both young men and women in relation to their future (LAU, 2016, p. 23). The effects of young people’s unemployment on life transitions is central in Nordin’s account, for instance. He is worried because he is already 22 years old but his unemployment status strongly limits his opportunity to get married and therefore to be socially included. He is engaged but is not able to

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sustain marriage expenses and maintain his future wife. He would like to get married as soon as possible to overcome the impression of being socially marginalised. [Marriage] has a high cost. Then [there is] the housing problem. If you want to get married then her family asks for a high dowry, then [there is] the dinner, the bedroom. These things are expensive. We start with the house. If she doesn’t ask for anything, she will ask for a house alone. If she doesn’t ask for anything, she will ask for a small house far from the family, so there will be no problems. You have the costs, the dinner, the bedroom, her clothes, jewellery, her dowry. They are problems. (DZ_LSV_8) There is a striking contradiction between the sociocultural norms and expectations involving young men as economic providers for the family and the material living conditions of this generation. Young men keep on identifying themselves with an ideal model of masculinity that is difficult to fulfil at the practical level. While the impossibility of getting married puts young men such as Nordin in a marginalised condition of “waithood”, it also stimulates coping strategies and resistance practices. In line with what is suggested by other scholars (such as Singerman, 2007), our findings reveal that young men develop the ability to “navigate” (DZ_FE_1) the informal economy, collecting temporary jobs and combining skilled and unskilled employment opportunities (MA_FE_3). They consequently undergo de-skilling, taking up jobs below their qualification level, when work is available at all. They may also cope with structural conditions by developing emigration projects, which can either be a coping or eluding strategy (LB_FE_1: 17–19). The survey also explored young people’s attitudes to women’s rights and legal equality in the family. In particular, the right to inheritance for women and equality of rights in the decision to divorce are the two items that gather consensus among young people (although young women are more supportive of the latter than young men). When it comes to the portion of inheritance to be allocated to men and women, the principle of equal treatment finds little sympathy among young people, who present variations across the countries surveyed. Here, a trend similar to the one described in relation to the issue of gender equality in the labour market (see section 3.2) can be observed. Young people throughout the region generally agree on women’s rights, such as the freedom to divorce and to receive inheritance. However, when the application of the stated principle conflicts with widely shared gender cultural norms or male privileges (e.g., the economic responsibility of the male family members; or the economic and legal dependence of women on men), less support is expressed by young people, including young women. This ambivalence is consistent with the emergence of signs of cultural innovation, which do not

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solidify into actual novel gender models, but suggest that the contradictions brought about by structural and social conditions may substantiate a transformation of values and gender norms in the longer term.

4 Concluding remarks Numerous studies have used gender as a prism through which multiple aspects of the social life and forms of knowledge can be examined (Sherman and Beck, 1979), and this chapter aligns with this approach. As we have seen, a gendered analysis allows understanding not only of the new dynamics of power relations between young men and young women in Arab Mediterranean countries, but also, on a more general level, how cultural orientations and values of young people in these countries are changing. At the same time, this approach has allowed us to focus on the cultural continuities and discontinuities between older and younger generations of women and men, and to highlight the compromises and mediations between past and present constructed to create forms of balance that both young women and young men consider satisfactory. Undoubtedly, the 2011 uprisings played an important role in giving shape to the changes expressed by the younger generations and creating new levels of self-awareness among young women, especially in relation to their public roles. As a matter of fact, through the prism of gender we can observe how young people—young women and young men—confront fears and uncertainties related to the “waithood” experience. On the one hand, they share the clear contradiction between the (local) impossibility of transforming aspirations into reality and the construction of representations and imaginaries that draw significantly on symbols, information flows, cultural practices and networks of relationships that are territorially unbounded. On the other hand, young women and men are divided by their different weights in the public sphere. In particular, well-educated young women pursue a vision of equal opportunities, which is more and more widespread worldwide, centred around women’s access to the public sphere on an equal footing to men. However, at the moment this remains an ideal and young women have to cope with “different opportunities” in their everyday lives (first of all as regards the job market). As a result, the way young men and young women also produce cultural innovation can be slightly different—with young women experiencing new representations of their identities while claiming equality in gender roles as occurs, for instance, in the world of education (or, for some of them, seeking recognition in political activism). Nevertheless, for both young women and young men cultural innovation can be considered a way of experiencing waithood together with agency. As already underlined, if cultural innovation is a process that redefines dominant representations of reality, identities and agency, this process is shaped by time—that is by the relations between past, present and future. It is fundamental to bear in mind that preserving or innovating and choosing

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continuity over discontinuity means putting in relation these three temporal dimensions. As a matter of fact, in order to create a capacity for innovation, it is necessary to begin from pre-existing visions of the world that need to be reelaborated and revised to make sense in the present. A culture of innovation is first of all a culture within which the new can be appreciated; but it is also, secondly, a culture capable of learning from the past, from experience and memory as a source of meaning. And, of course, looking towards the future. On a practical level, the dynamics of cultural innovation carry the new cultures that are being experimented with and their values and rules into present daily life in everyday actions and interactions. The result of these dynamics is a profound change in the ways both social and personal problems are defined, even before one is able to think of solutions to those same problems. The change of values, which are understood as principles through which we approve or disapprove of certain actions (Sciolla, 1998), constitutes a central aspect of this redefinition. The future appears to be strongly interwoven with the present and the past if, for example, we take the desire for self-fulfilment of young women into consideration, regardless of their education. This is a new level of self-awareness, able to cross the public and private spheres and to gather the most useful aspects from each of these spheres to create a view of oneself under the aegis of self-determination. Of course, we cannot claim that this process only happens to young women. Nevertheless, young women, as we have seen, are the ones who experience the gap between the principles of gender equality on their way to being formally established and the possibility of translating them into everyday life. At the moment, their aspirations to self-fulfilment, based on those principles, cannot find practical expression either in social/gender relations or on a formal level. To conclude, we would like to draw attention to one of the aspects of this social dynamic that is rich in contradictions, namely the professional sphere. The superiority of the social meaning of paid work for men when compared to the meaning of paid work in the case of women is a principle that consistently crosses—even if in different ways and forms—all Arab Mediterranean countries. Thus, while young men are forced to cope with a lack of job opportunities, the precariousness of a thousand odd jobs and with the parallel responsibility of respecting their traditional role as breadwinners, young women experience a more specific—and more sophisticated—level of contradiction. They share with their peers the widespread impossibility of having their knowledge and skills recognised by the market. However, as young women they must face a further problem. On the one hand, the high level of education they attain should guarantee the possibility of adequately competing in the job market with their male peers. On the other hand, this expectation contradicts a resilient and older patriarchal social order that is still present, but which is today more fragile and less legitimate. These young women are forced to cope with this order every day. Therefore, young women are

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suspended between cultural innovation and tradition, between the present and the past. Thus, while in processes of innovation of gender roles agency and its guiding values take on an experimental and explorative role that contests the pure and simple preservation of what already exists, in the adhesion to tradition the opposite is true. Gender roles stay closed within the shell of a necessary separation between what pertains to men and what to women, and this separation cannot be brought back into question. According to tradition women should construct their identities around the private sphere, with the public left to men. Today, as our research results show, in their everyday lives young women are not afraid to break these boundaries. At the same time, they know mediation is still needed. Mediation between the two universes of innovation and tradition is here represented by the young women’s general belief that the male role as the breadwinner is still valid—although their new levels of education, their aspirations and, partly, also their daily reality suggest the opposite. Therefore, they experience a specific ambivalence on the level of cultural norms and values. They are immersed in the new present, clearly projected into the future, but constantly “pushed back” into the past. This ambivalence, which their male peers do not experience, does not, however, limit the strength of their innovative action. In our opinion, this takes shape, rather, as a strategic way of adapting to a world that is changing fast.

Notes 1 The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007–13 under grant agreement no. 613174 for the SAHWA Project (www.sahwa.eu). This publication reflects only the authors’ views. The European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein. 2 The present article is the result of the authors’ shared observations and analyses. Ilenya Camozzi is the author of paragraphs 3 and 3.2; Daniela Cherubini is the author of paragraphs 3.1 and 3.3; Carmen Leccardi is the author of paragraph 4; and Paola Rivetti is the author of paragraphs 1 and 2. 3 The SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017), an international survey that included 10,000 young men and women with different socio-cultural backgrounds, and the SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork 2015, a multisite qualitative fieldwork that includes 25 focus groups, 24 life stories, 8 life stories videos and 12 focused ethnographies. 4 The SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) questionnaire included a specific question in which respondents were asked to express their level of agreement (possible answers: agree strongly; agree; disagree; disagree strongly), with the following statements: 1 “Education is more important for boys than for girls”; 2 “The same upbringing should be given to both boys and girls”; 3 “In a family, men should make the decisions”; 4 “A married woman should have the possibility to work outside the house if she wants to”; 5 “Men and women should have the same job opportunities and receive the same salary”; 6 “Men should be the main financial providers in the family”; 7 “Women should have the possibility of going into politics”; 8 “Women are allowed to travel alone”; 9 “Women should enjoy the right to inheritance”; 10 “Women should receive the same inheritance than men”.

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Moreover, the analysis presented in this chapter draws on the extensive empirical material gathered in the qualitative fieldwork carried out in the five countries. For a general overview of the results (as well as the methods) of the research, see www.sa hwa.eu and Sánchez-Montijano et al., 2017. 5 Authors’ analysis of SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) data set. 6 References to qualitative data indicate the country (DZ = Algeria, MA = Morocco, TUN = Tunisia, EG = Egypt, LB = Lebanon), source (FG = focus groups, LS = life stories, LSV = life stories videos, FE = focused ethnographies) and number.

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Egel, D. and Salehi-Isfahani, D. (2007). Youth Exclusion in Iran: The State of Education, Employment and Family Formation. Working Paper 3, Middle East Youth Initiative. Esposito, J. and Mogahed, D. (2007). Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. New York: Gallup Press. Gana, N. (ed.) (2013). The Making of the Tunisian Revolution: Contexts, Architects, Prospects. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hanafi, S. (2012). “The Arab Revolutions; The Emergence of a New Political Subjectivity”, Contemporary Arab Affairs, 5(2), pp. 198–213. Hashemi, M. (2017). “Aspirations, Poverty and Behavior Among Youth in the Middle East: Some Theoretical Considerations”, The Muslim World, 107(1), pp. 83–99. HEM (Institut des Hautes Etudes de Management) (2016). “National Case Study: Morocco”, SAHWA National Case Studies NCS-MO-1. Available at: www.sahwa. eu/OUTPUTS/Publications/National-Case-Study-Morocco, (Accessed: 1 March 2017). Herrera, L. (2014). Wired Citizenship: Youth Learning and Activism in the Middle East. London: Routledge. Honwana, A. (2014). “Waithood”: Youth Transitions and Social Change, in Foeken, D., Dietz, T., De Haan, L. and Johnson, L. (eds.) Development and Equity: An Interdisciplinary Exploration by Ten Scholars from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Leiden, Boston: Brill, pp. 28–40. Honwana, A. and de Boeck, F. (eds.) (2005). Makers and Breakers: Children and Youth in Postcolonial Africa. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, pp. 19–29. Hoodfar, H. (1997). Between Marriage and the Market: Intimate Politics and Survival in Cairo. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Khashan, H. (2003). “Collective Palestinian Frustration and Suicide Bombings”, Third World Quarterly, 24(6), pp. 1049–1067. Khatib, L. and Lust, E. (eds.) (2014). Taking to the Streets: The Transformation of Arab Activism. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kouaouci, A. (2004). “Population Transitions, Youth Unemployment, Postponement of Marriage and Violence in Algeria”, The Journal of North African Studies, 9(2), pp. 28–45. Krueger, A. (2007). What Makes a Terrorist? Economics and the Root of Terrorism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. LaGraffe, D. (2012). “The Youth Bulge in Egypt: An Intersection of Demographics, Security, and the Arab Spring”, Journal of Strategic Security, 5(2), pp. 65–80. LAU (Lebanese American University) (2016). “National Case Study: Lebanon”, SAHWA National Case Studies NCS-LB-1. Available at: www.sahwa.eu/OUT PUTS/Publications/National-Case-Study-Lebanon, (Accessed: 1 March 2017). LeVine, M. (2008). “Heavy Metal Muslims: The Rise of a Post-Islamist Public Sphere”, Contemporary Islam, 2(3), pp. 229–249. MacLeod, A.E. (1991). Accommodating Protest: Working Women, the New Veiling, and Change in Cairo. New York: Columbia University Press. Martin Munoz, G. (2000). Arab Youth Today: The Generation Gap, Identity Crisis and Democratic Deficit, in Meijer, R. (ed.) Alienation or Integration of Arab Youth: Between Family, State and Street. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, pp. 17–27. Moaddel, M. and Karabenick, S. (2008). “Religious Fundamentalism among Young Muslims in Egypt and Saudi Arabia”, Social Forces, 86(4), pp. 1675–1710. Mulderig. C. (2013). “An Uncertain future: Youth Frustration and the Arab Spring”, The Pardee Papers, 16, pp. 1–32.

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Murphy, E. (2012). “Problematizing Arab Youth: Generational Narratives of Systemic Failure”, Mediterranean Politics, 17(1), pp. 5–22. SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017). Data File Edition 3.0. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). Salehi-Isfahani, D. (2008). “Growing up in Iran: Tough Times for the Revolution’s Children”, Brown Journal of World Affairs, 15(1), pp. 63–74. Salwa, I. (2013). Political Life in Cairo’s New Quarters: Encountering the Everyday State. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Sánchez Garcia, J. (2015). “Young-adults or Adult Waithood?” SAHWA Blog, 26 November. Available at: www.sahwa.eu/BLOG/Young-adults-or-Adult-waithood, (Accessed: 1 March 2017). Sánchez-Montijano, E., Martínez, I., Bourekba, M. and Dal Zotto, E. (2017). SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 Descriptive Report. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). Sciolla, L. (1998). Valori, Enciclopedia delle Scienze Sociali Treccani. Roma. Sherman, J. and Beck, E. T. (eds.) (1979). The Prism of Sex: Essays in the Sociology of Knowledge. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Sika, N. (2012). “Youth Political Engagement in Egypt: From Abstention to Uprising”, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 39(2), pp. 181–199. Silver, H. (2007). Social Exclusion: Comparative Analysis of Europe and Middle East Youth. Working Paper 1, Middle East Youth Initiative. Silvestri, S. (2014). Religion and Social Cohesion at the Heart of the Intercultural Debate, Anna Lindt Report. Alexandria: Anna Lindt Foundation, pp. 35–41. Singerman, D. (1995). Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics and Networks in the Urban Quarters of Cairo. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Singerman, D. (2007). The Economic Imperatives of Marriage and “Wait” Adulthood: Emerging Practices, Identities, and Collective Life among Youth in the Middle East. Dubai: The Wolfensohn Center for Development/The Dubai School of Government Forum, February, pp. 23–24. Singerman, D. (2013). “Youth, Gender, and Dignity in the Egyptian Uprising”, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 9(3), pp. 1–27. Suad, J., Slyomovics, S. and Hafez, S. (2013). Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa: Into the New Millennium. London: Sage. Tozy, M. (2014). In Search of the Mediterranean Core Values. Anna Lindt Report. Alexandria: Anna Lindt Foundation, pp. 27–34.

11 The Euro-Med Youth Programme and young people in the Arab Mediterranean countries1 A reality check Asuman Göksel MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

Özgehan S¸enyuva MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

1 Introduction Following the Arab uprisings, there has been a need for further research on young people in the Arab Mediterranean countries (AMCs), with a focus on their perception of their own reality. The SAHWA research project was developed to fill such a gap in the literature as an attempt to build a complex description and analysis of the current situation of young people in the AMCs. This chapter focuses on the transnational level and analyses a particular European policy instrument, namely the Euro-Med Youth Programme (EMYP), as a youth policy instrument of the European Union’s (EU) Mediterranean policy. It is difficult to argue that the EU has a particular youth policy designed for the Arab Mediterranean region. Still, since the mid-1990s, a number of European youth cooperation schemes have been implemented in the AMCs, with a focus on international youth mobility, civil society and youth work development in the partner countries.2 The most prominent of these is the EU’s Euro-Mediterranean Youth Programme. Although other EU schemes targeting issues such as education, culture and employment in the Arab Mediterranean region have emerged especially since mid-2000s,3 the EMYP has been “one of the few, if not the only, EU-funded programme that is explicitly targeting youth in E[uropean] N[eighbourhood] P[olicy]” (Evaluation of Euro-Med Youth IV, 2013). The EMYP directly and exclusively targets young people; it is implemented equally in all five SAHWA countries, namely Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia; and it is fully funded by the EU. To date, there is no analytical research analysing the direct relevance of the priorities and objectives, implementation and outcomes of the EMYP with regard to the needs and expectations of the young people resulting from the everyday realities of the AMCs. This chapter analyses the relevance of the

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programme to the problems of young people in the five AMCs in light of their perceptions and expectations. The theoretical framework of the analysis is policy evaluation. The heuristic map for policy evaluation adopted from Hanberger (2001) helps structure the chapter, depending on the issue of relevance in four components: problem situation, policy, implementation and results/consequences. The analysis at the micro level is instrumental in reaching macro-level conclusions, referring to the societal context of the policy where the basic question becomes the relevance of the policy means to the actual problem situation, in other words to the needs and expectations of the young people in the five AMCs. For this aim, data provided by the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) are used as the major source, complemented by the data collected through interviews with the representatives of the EMYP and the programme’s official documents. Accordingly, the chapter argues that the Euro-Med Youth Programme has demonstrated a limited capacity in corresponding to the actual needs and expectations of young people in the AMCs and to the structural characteristics of these countries and the region as a whole, as it lacks a comprehensive needs analysis at the policy instrument’s design stage. In line with the principle of evidence-based policymaking at the European level, data such as the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017), as a comprehensive snapshot of the situation and expectations of youth in the AMCs, should be carefully examined and utilised for the design and implementation of further policy instruments to ensure their societal relevance.

2 Theoretical framework: policy evaluation A policy might be defined as “a relatively stable, purposive course of action followed by an actor or set of actors in dealing with a problem” (Anderson, 2003, p. 4). From such a definition, three characteristics of policy come to the fore: policy focuses on a problem; it is a process and can unfold over time; and it is done by a set of actors. Where public policy is concerned “the ways in which the societal problems and issues are defined and constructed, and how they are integrated into the political and policy agenda” (Parsons, 1995, p. 15) by a set of actors, “the purposive character public policies” and “the way in which they are expected to be related to (societal) problems” (Hill and Hupe, 2002, p. 4) become important concerns of policy analysis. The increasingly complex and multi-layered nature of the policy and policy process in the modern world is another concern. The classical understanding of public policy, in which government is the major actor and the nation-state is the major terrain, has been challenged since the 1990s and has been further defined with the transition from “government” to “governance” as a major paradigm for policy analysis. It is argued that such a transition changes the nature of the policy process by highlighting “the ever-increasing variety of terrains and actors involved in the making of public policy” to be considered “beyond the ‘core executive’ involved in the policy-making process” (Richards and

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Smith, 2002, p. 2). Thus, national public policies have become increasingly affected, dependent and integrated in socioeconomic terms. This is characterised by joint development and implementation of coordinated public policy programmes, especially with the involvement of the international/supranational actors. Considered as such, this chapter is mainly concerned with the analysis of the EU’s policy towards young people in the five AMCs through the implementation of the Euro-Med Youth Programme as the main policy instrument. The theoretical framework of policy evaluation helps identify the relevance of a policy initiative to societal needs through systematic and empirical (or evidence-based) monitoring and examination, as Dye (1987, p. 351, quoted in Parsons, 1995, p. 545) puts it: Policy evaluation research is the objective, systematic, empirical examination of the effects ongoing policies and public programmes have on their targets in terms of the goals they are meant to achieve. Such a systematic and empirical analysis is structured through the adoption of a heuristic map (Table 11.1) based on the policy evaluation framework developed by Hanberger (2001) around four components—namely, problem situation, policy, implementation and results/consequences, which are considered to be instrumental in “understanding and explaining a policy in its societal context” (Hanberger, 2001, p. 48). Problem situation, as the first component, refers to “the context in which the policy operates”, namely “the socio-historical and political context in which it [policy] has been developed”, as well as the actors and stakeholders which have been influential in defining the policy problem (Hanberger, 2001, p. 48). Accordingly, the analysis in this chapter identifies the socio-historical and political context in which Euro-Mediterranean relations have developed, their major policy actors, and the definition of the substance of Euro-Mediterranean cooperation. The second component is the policy, where the aim and direction of a particular policy in relation to the “perceived” problems, challenges and problem situation are scrutinised (Hanberger, 2001). Here, the policy goals, the policy or programme logic and the policy means are identified and analysed. In this chapter, this component refers to analysis of the Euro-Med Table 11.1 Adopted framework for policy evaluation Problem situation

Policy

Implementation

Results/ consequences

Context

Policy means Goals

Organisation, competence Resources

Attained goals

Actors-stakeholders Problem definitions

Source: Adapted from Hanberger, 2001, p. 48.

Effects

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Youth Programme as the major policy means, its goals, priorities and logic. Implementation process is the third component, as a way to focus on “organisation, competences, resources and unexpected problems” (Hanberger, 2001, p. 49). Thus, the focus will be on the actual practice and implementation of the Euro-Med Youth Programme as the policy means in a way that identifies and analyses the working principles, the competences defined for the implementing actors, the use of resources allocated for the implementation and, if any, the unexpected problems occurring as a result of the implementation. The final component of the analysis is the results and consequences, which focuses on the “outcomes and implications of the policy” (Hanberger, 2001, p. 49). Here, a comparison between the policy goals and the attained goals, outcomes and effects is intended in a way to also cover the unexpected results of the policy implementation. The analysis at the micro level pointing out the discrepancies identified in each component of policy evaluation is instrumental in reaching macro-level conclusions, especially when the “societal context” of the policy is taken into consideration (Hanberger, 2001, p. 50). This will actually carry the micro-level analysis of the EMYP (through the components of problem situation, policy, implementation and results/consequences) to a macro level, namely to the societal level, where the most basic question appears to be the relevance of the policy and policy means to the actual problem situation, to be identified by the needs, demands and expectations of the young people in the five AMCs. Thus, relevance, which can be considered as “the extent to which the objectives of a development intervention are consistent with beneficiaries’ requirements, country needs, global priorities and partners’ and donors’ policies”, as defined by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Glossary of Key Terms of Evaluation and Research Based Management (2010, p. 32), becomes central to the analysis in, and forms the major concern of, this chapter.

3 The European Union and young people in the Arab Mediterranean countries 3.1 Problem situation: the European Union and the Mediterranean The problem situation refers to the policy context, the actors’ perceptions and how the problem is defined. The EU decision-makers’ conceptions of the problem situation become a major determinant of the EU’s Mediterranean policy and the component of youth attached to it. The political and economic will to create a multilateral, trans-sectoral EU policy for the Mediterranean passed through different stages and reached its apex in the 1980s and 1990s, culminating in the creation of a regional cooperation framework, namely the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP), with the cornerstone of the Barcelona Conference.4 In line with the overall spirit of the EMP, societal contacts and policies were also envisaged to contribute both

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to the development of southern Mediterranean countries, and to the cooperation between both sides of the Mediterranean Sea. This led to the emergence of the Euro-Med Youth Programme, particularly targeting encounters between young people from the two shores of the Mediterranean. Following the Arab uprisings, studies experienced a boom, reinstating the importance of the region and proposing ways and means to deal with the recent changes (Balfour, 2011; Tocci and Cassarino, 2011). One issue that has dominated the policy context has been democracy—democracy promotion and the role of the EU in promoting liberal democracy in its neighbourhood. It is argued that the Arab uprisings created a possibility and opportunity for the EU to redefine its policy context and revise its problematisation and come up with (more) appropriate policies and instruments (Balfour, 2011; Tocci and Cassarino, 2011). With regard to the level of “achievement” by the EU in its regional policy towards the Mediterranean, several studies take a critical and pessimistic tone. By questioning the paradoxical quest for security and stability for Europe while trying to simultaneously promote democracy, rule of law and respect for human rights in the Mediterranean region, Pace (2009, p. 42) highlights a contradiction that “the democracy in itself is not envisioned as an ultimate goal in EU eyes, but as one of the means to another objective— stability and prosperity”. Such a situation is considered to undermine the EU’s conditionality and to force it to tolerate, and even cooperate with, regimes and leaders that are far from respecting democratic principles and values (Pace, 2009). In the same vein, Bicchi (2010) argues that while the EU prioritises democracy assistance as the main problem solution in the Mediterranean region, it also suffers from implementation shortcomings. Moreover, as Cardwell (2011) argues, although the governance system provides a degree of flexibility and efficiency for the EU to export its internal values and priorities, it also undermines coherence in multilateral institutions and agreements. A clear preference for securing interests through bilateral agreements by different actors in Europe creates challenges to the notion of partnership between the EU and the countries in the region as well as negatively affecting horizontal regional cooperation. In this sense, Torun (2012, p. 83) discusses how the EU has been suffering from a gap between theory and practice in its policies towards the Mediterranean: “the EU policies and their implementation have worked towards preserving the status quo in the Mediterranean despite the goal of transforming the region in line with the EU values, such as democracy, human rights and rule of law.” This leads to the conclusion that the EU prioritises its security concerns of terrorism, migration, economy and energy, and “did not directly address or equally prioritise the needs of southern Mediterranean societies in its policies” that would contribute to building a Euro-Mediterranean community (Torun, 2012, p. 94). Following such arguments, it is possible to state that the problem situation with regard to the EU’s approach to the Mediterranean, and hence to the young people in the region, is contextualised through interest prioritisation,

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which focuses on security concerns, especially on the economy, migration, terrorism and energy. The EU is criticised for not taking the needs and expectations of the southern states into consideration, while democracy and democratisation is defined as the main problem in the region by the EU. However, in the implementation phase, the diagnosed problem, democracy and democratisation, appears to be undermined for security concerns.5 As Pace (2009, p. 41) argues, “the EU draws a wide range of instruments to promote democratisation objectives in its external relations”. Different types of programmes are considered to be part of these tools and have been used extensively in Euro-Mediterranean relations. The schemes aimed at young people also constitute part of these instruments targeting a specific—and crucial—segment of the societies in the region. 3.2 The policy instrument: the Euro-Med Youth Programme EU policies relating to its external relations are usually implemented through certain policy instruments such as cooperation and assistance programmes. In this context, the policy stage of the policy evaluation as proposed by Hanberger (2001) focuses on the aim and direction of a particular policy in relation to the “perceived” problems, challenges and problem situations. Thus, this section identifies the Euro-Med Youth Programme as the major policy means and elaborates on its goals, priorities and programme logic in order to compare and contrast it with the actual situation and needs of the young people in the five AMCs. The Euro-Med Youth Programme, “explicitly targeting youth in ENP South countries” (Evaluation of Euro-Med Youth IV, 2013) is a regional youth mobility programme adopted in 1998 within the framework of the Barcelona Declaration of 1995. In the third chapter of the declaration, entitled “Partnership in social, cultural and human affairs”, young people were targeted with a particular learning mobility scheme, in which youth exchanges were considered as “the means to prepare future generations for closer cooperation between the Euro-Mediterranean partners”.6 In this context, rather than creating a new policy instrument for the Mediterranean youth, the European Commission preferred to integrate the region into its already existing youth programme (Youth for Europe) by defining a privilege for the organisations from the Mediterranean partner countries. “Young people” aged 13–30 were defined as the final beneficiaries of the EMYP, with a particular focus on those with “few, if any, chances to benefit from national or international mobility activities, in particular young women, regardless of their socio-economic profile, or their educational, cultural, religious, physical or geographic backgrounds” (Euro-Mediterranean Youth Programme, 2004). Then come the youth non-governmental organisations (NGOs) at local and national levels, and their partners as the beneficiaries of the grants; and youth leaders, youth workers, volunteers as the actors and stakeholders in the youth field. Here, youth work as a specific segment of civil

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society is perceived to be the agent that directly targets the problems of young people and accordingly has the potential to solve young people’s problems. Thus, the programme logic depended on the promotion of the mobility of young people and youth workers through the implementation of three particular actions: youth exchanges; voluntary service; and training/networking activities.7 The functioning of the programme was based on the establishment of partnerships through projects between youth organisations from the Mediterranean partner countries and the EU member states (South-South activities are not allowed). As the EMYP is a replication of an existing and running EU youth programme it carries certain inherit shortcomings, especially vis-à-vis its objectives. Based on the priorities of the former, the objectives of the programme were based on the “perceived” needs of the Mediterranean youth within the context of the EU’s problem definition with regard to the “democratisation” objective in the Mediterranean region. Unlike the original programme, the EMYP did not go through a consultation process involving the relevant stakeholders, i.e. youth workers, representatives of NGOs, youth researchers. Furthermore, the EMYP is included under the culture chapter within the Barcelona Declaration, seen as a cultural matter rather than a socioeconomic or political issue. Accordingly, through all four phases of the EMYP the specific objectives (RCBS, 2011) were:8 1

2 3

To stimulate and encourage mutual understanding between young people within the Euro-Mediterranean region and to fight against stereotypes and prejudices; To promote active citizenship among young people and enhance their sense of solidarity; To contribute to the development of youth policies in the partner countries.

In addition, the programme set some regional thematic priority issues, such as fighting against racism and xenophobia; human rights; participation of young people in the development of civil society and democracy; environmental protection; and support for gender equality. Also, in Phase IV the Mediterranean partner countries identified their additional national thematic priorities in line with the “evolving geo-political context in the Euro-Med region” (Evaluation of Euro-Med Youth IV, 2013). Inclusion of the national authorities to set priorities was a reflection of the change in the mode of governance from regional to bilateral cooperation following the Arab uprisings. When all four phases of the EMYP are considered, the focus on youth within the Mediterranean context is reiterated through support to civil society, active citizenship, democracy, intercultural interaction and through the development of youth policy. Similar to the EU Youth programme, nonformal education and intercultural learning have always been horizontal

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characteristics. Thus, the overall emphasis of the EU’s policy towards youth in the Mediterranean region was primarily shaped with the idea that youth is an agent of democratisation, which is to be promoted through civil society organisations within the context of the youth work. In this picture, the actual needs of the young people appear to be subordinated to the EU’s democracy promotion efforts. When the priorities and objectives of the programme are checked against the actual situation and expectations of the young people in the AMCs, a clear mismatch can be observed. As numerous studies illustrate (Angel-Urdinola et al., 2013; UNDP, 2016), a common problem for young people in the region is unemployment. Unemployment is very high across the countries and has remained high over the years as well (Table 11.2). Morocco has the highest level, at 42% in 2014. Even in Algeria, which has the lowest figure for 2014, one out of five young people aged 15–24 is without employment. Unemployment, however, is just the tip of the iceberg, especially where the daily realities and perceptions of the young people are concerned. Related with the lack of employment opportunities, almost all aspects of the lives of young people are negatively affected as shown by the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017). When the young people in the five AMCs are asked about “the three main problems facing their country in the near future”, the majority of the respondents (62.6%) indicated economics and employment-related items (Table 11.3, marked in bold). The most common problem is people’s standard of living (28.4%), followed by the economic situation (22%) and jobs (12.2%). Economy-related problems are followed by problems related with the public services and policies (Table 11.3, in italics). The education system (10.4%), health system (5%) and housing (3.3%) also appear as the most important problems faced by the young people. An issue that is in line with the priorities set forth by the EMYP is democracy/human rights (Table 11.3, underlined). However, only 4.5% of the Table 11.2 Unemployment, youth total (% of total labour force ages 15–24) (modelled ILO estimate) Country

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

Algeria Morocco Lebanon Tunisia Egypt, Arab Rep. Arab World Middle East and North Africa (all income levels)

23.9 31.4 21.8 16.6 27.5 26.8 26.4

29.4 26.1 22.8 17.2 27.8 25.7 25.1

23.9 25.8 20.4 18.4 28.3 25.0 24.6

21.7 27.0 20.9 18.1 30.5 24.5 24.7

22.2 26.3 20.9 17.7 29.4 25.0 25.9

22.5 33.9 20.8 17.8 42.7 28.1 28.7

26.3 37.9 20.8 18.5 32.8 29.1 29.7

20.4 41.7 20.2 18.4 31.3 29.4 30.0

20.0 42.0 20.7 20.2 31.8 29.7 30.4

Source: World Bank World Development Indicators database (2015).

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Table 11.3 The most important problem in your country (%)—first problem Frequency The economic situation People’s standard of living Democracy/human rights The education system The health system The increasing influence of religion over the government Corruption Morals in society Jobs Housing Criminality and drugs Terrorism Other (specify) Total

%

1,732 2,233 356 821 392 131

22.0 28.4 4.5 10.4 5.0 1.7

368 181 963 259 212 208 5 7,860

4.7 2.3 12.2 3.3 2.7 2.6 0.1 100.0

Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

respondents consider this issue the most important problem. The expectations of the young people are shaped in line with their problem perceptions and they see employment and related economic issues as their major and utmost urgent challenge. Accordingly, the priorities and objectives of the EU policy instrument fall short of meeting these expectations. Priorities such as active citizenship, human rights, gender equality, fight against xenophobia and discrimination, dialogue with other cultures, active participation of civil society, and minority rights, which are in line with the EU’s overall neighbourhood policies towards the Mediterranean, are not high in young people’s perceptions in the AMCs. As the EU’s main programme for the young people in the region, the EMYP has run for almost two decades. Following the Arab uprisings, the EU acknowledged the political and social importance of the youth as a major actor. However, the priorities set forth remained aligned to the EU’s overall youth policy, rather than being adjusted to the realities of the youth in the Arab Mediterranean region (Evaluation of Euro-Med Youth IV, 2013). 3.3 Implementation of the Euro-Med Youth Programme The examination of the implementation of the EMYP, as the third component of the policy evaluation, sheds light on the working principles, the competences defined for the implementing actors, the use of resources allocated

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for the implementation and the unexpected problems (if any exist) occurring as a result of the implementation. The EMYP was implemented in four separate phases, as mentioned previously: Phase I (1999–2001); Phase II (2001–04); Phase III (2005–08); and Phase IV (2010–16). Phases I and II were the centralised phases, where the activities of youth organisations from the Mediterranean partner countries were directly financed by the European Commission (EC). All the projects prepared both by the European and Mediterranean organisations were submitted to Brussels; the operational management was carried out by the Directorate-General (DG) of Education and Culture in close contact and cooperation with DG EuropeAid and with the support of the Technical Assistance Office (TAO). At the national level, the programme was promoted and disseminated by the National Agencies (NAs) in the EU member states and by the National Coordinators (NCs), appointed by their respective political authorities, in the Mediterranean partner countries. For Phases III and IV, the EC replaced the programme management procedure with the method of decentralisation, referring to the delegation of programme management to the respective EU delegations and newly created Euro-Med Youth Units (EMYUs). The EMYUs were appointed by their respective national authorities, allowing “the appropriation of the programme by the Mediterranean partner countries and a closer relation with the beneficiaries through the creation of Euro-Med Youth Units”9 and “to adapt it to the diversity of national systems and situations in the field of youth”.10 The EMYUs have been responsible for the traditional tasks of the NCs (programme dissemination and visibility, providing support to the beneficiaries, etc.), but they were also assigned new managerial tasks for different stages of the programme’s implementation, such as “application, selection, contracting, monitoring and financial management of all the projects presented by youth organisations” (Göksel, 2010, p. 46). In practice, decentralised management of the programme meant that starting from Phase III, the beneficiaries and applicants from the Mediterranean partner countries could have the opportunity to directly apply for the programme grants in their own countries through their national EMYUs, and the decisions to grant the projects were taken at the national level. In this model, the EMYUs worked with three key actors: the European Union Delegations in the respective Mediterranean partner country, the EuropeAid Cooperation Office based in Brussels and the Regional Capacity Building and Support Unit (RCBS). In addition to the main actors of the EMYP, other actors such as the SALTO-Youth Euro-Med Resource Centre, Euro-Med Youth Platform and European Youth Forum supported the programme. The EMYP’s financial resources came from the EU. Phase I was provided with a budget of €9.7 million for 1999 and 2000, of which €6 million was financed by MEDA (the EU’s financial instrument for the implementation of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership), and €3.7 million by the EC’s Youth Programme. For Phase II, with an increase of 40%, the budget was €14

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million (€10 million from MEDA and €4 million from the EC Youth Programme).11 In Phase III, a €5 million budget was allocated to the programme for the projects submitted by the Mediterranean beneficiaries.12 For Phase IV, the initial budget was €5 million;13 however, in 2012 it was granted an extra €6 million top-up to remain operational until December 2014 as a response to the new environment emerging from the Arab uprisings.14 In relation to the implementation of the programme, two concerns emerge: the issue of trust and low levels of engagement with civil society. Firstly, the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) shows that the young people in the five AMCs display very low levels of trust in their governments and the EU, which are the two major actors in the implementation of the EMYP. The programme, by its design, is implemented through national EMYUs, which operate under the national authorities in cooperation with the EU delegations in the respective countries. While such decentralisation aimed to make the programme more accessible to the agents of youth, it also brings about concerns with regard to the need to deal and work with the national authorities for the youth organisations and young people. However, the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) demonstrates that the level of trust in national authorities is very low among the young people in the five AMCs. The young people’s trust in administration in general has a mean score of 2.87 out of 10, while the confidence in government has an average score of 4.22 out of 10, both pointing to the problematic trust relation between young people and the government, administration and politics (Table 11.4). On the issue of trust, the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) findings also reveal a worrisome situation with regard to the perceptions of the young people towards the EU, which is not seen as a trustworthy institution: the average level of confidence score is only 1.71 out of 10. The amount of young people giving a score of 5 or more is only 22% (Sánchez-Montijano et al., 2017, p. 30). Thus, low levels of trust create major concern for the implementation of the EMYP. As the programme is mainly financed by the EU and administrated in cooperation with the local and national authorities, the young people’s approach is at the risk of being negatively affected. As trust is crucial in a successful interaction in any kind of relationship, the lack of it in general may undermine all the efforts made by the national authorities and the European institutions to promote and disseminate these schemes and their efforts to mobilise more young people. The extremely low levels of trust in the EU among young people in the AMCs suggest that despite two decades of investment in the youth programmes, including the EMYP, the EU appears to have failed to gain the support and trust of the youth. Of course, the issue of political trust is a complex and multivariate phenomenon affected by a diverse range of factors, yet one would expect that through the opportunities offered to young people and through mobilisation of youth workers and young people, the European

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Table 11.4 Level of confidence in institutions (average scores out of 10: 0 = no confidence at all; 10 = absolute confidence) Mean score

Std. deviation

The parliament Political parties Politicians Local officials Local administration Administration in general Associations and unions The government Elections National media Foreign media Religious associations Police* People in general The legal system

2.90 2.28 2.16 2.52 2.77 2.87 2.66 4.22 3.66 3.80 2.91 3.91 5.05 4.93 4.05

2.87 2.59 2.52 2.65 2.70 2.75 2.77 3.10 3.09 2.83 2.82 3.16 3.30 2.81 3.02

Employers

2.04

2.58

The education system

3.62

2.88

Religious leaders

4.47

3.25

The European Union

1.71

2.59

The Arab League

1.97

2.70

United Nations

1.50

2.46

The United States

1.15

2.27

Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017. Note: Morocco is not included due to difference in question wording. * Not asked in Egypt.

schemes would at least contribute to some degree of positive evaluation and perception among the young people. A second issue of concern, according to the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017), is the low level of civil society engagement among the young people in the AMCs. In terms of programme logic, the EMYP by its design works mainly with organised youth, through youth organisations. According to the EMYP guidelines, in order to be eligible to apply for funding one must be a legal person registered in the respective countries and non-profit-making. NGOs (with additional criteria for each country) and people directly responsible for the preparation and management of the action with their partners can apply as long as they are not acting as an intermediary.15 However, the

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SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) reveals that there is also another major obstacle: young people in the region do not trust associations and unions in general (Table 11.4). The level of trust out of 10 is as low as 2.66. This lack of trust is also reflected in the levels of membership of organisations. Findings indicate that the level of associative life is almost non-existent among young people in the region. More than 80% of young people do not belong to any group. Only nine out of 100 young people indicate that they are a member of a youth club, sport club or Scouts, only four out of 100 belong as a sympathiser and only two out of 100 young people work as a volunteer. Some 84% of young people have no relation whatsoever to a youth club, sport club or Scouts (Sánchez-Montijano et al., 2017, p. 29). At the implementation level it is apparent that the overall goals of democracy promotion and civil society development are being pushed through by working with registered civil society organisations with extensive involvement of the local and national authorities. This implementation design is clearly contradictory with the reality of these societies: organised youth engagement is minimal (as part of the very weak organised civil society), and the young people’s levels of trust in both civil society organisations and local and national authorities are very low. These two factors negatively affect the dissemination and multiplication of the policy instrument. They also hinder the engagement of young people with the programme by requiring them to be both organised and registered and to engage with the national authorities that they do not trust. 3.4 Results and consequences of the Euro-Med Youth Programme Spanning almost two decades from 1999 to 2016, it is possible to observe outcomes of the programme, as well as the policy implications in terms of its eventual or at least some perceived benefits for the young people in the AMCs. The outcomes of the programme can be quantitatively identified in terms of the number of projects financed throughout the programme, as well as the number of participants (young people, youth leaders, youth workers) who took part in programme activities, especially through the projects realised by the youth organisations. Until the end of 2013, almost 1,000 projects were funded by the EC, including a number of around 22,000 young people and youth workers as participants from the Euro-Mediterranean region (Table 11.5). When it is considered that the participants are both from the EU countries and Mediterranean partner countries, depending on the geographical balance condition, it can be estimated that around half of them are from the Mediterranean partner countries, which included, but were not limited to, Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia. In addition to the projects funded directly by the programme, there were also training and support events organised by the support institutions such as SALTO-Youth Euro-Med Resource Centre. In the period 2000–15, SALTO-

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Table 11.5 Number of projects and participants in the Euro-Med Youth Programme Phase I1 (1999– 2001) Youth exchange European voluntary service Support/training/network Total number of projects Total number of participants

66 29 39 134 3,157

Phase II2 (2001– 04) 218 111 122 451 ~10,000

Phase III3 (2005– 08)

Phase IV4 (2010– 16)*

115 123 69 307 7,154

84 ~1,400

Note: * The data are available only for the period 2011–13. Sources: 1 Data from Mid-term Evaluation (Euro-Mediterranean Youth Programme, 2001). 2 Data from Mid-term Evaluation (Euro-Mediterranean Youth Programme, 2004). 3 Data from RCBS and SALTO-Youth Euro-Med Resource Centre, “2007–2008 Euro-Med Youth Projects: 2 years of Euro-Mediterranean Youth Cooperation”. 4 Data gathered from: www.euromedyouth.net/ FIRST-PHASE-OF-EUROMED-YOUTH-IV-ENGAGED-AND-BENEFITED-MORE-THAN-1400-YOUNG-PEOPLE.html.

Youth Euro-Med organised 185 activities in a total of 34 programme countries.16 Considering the fact that these activities host an average of 25 participants, it is possible to estimate that 5,000 youth workers and youth leaders took part in those activities. When these numbers are compared to the size of the youth population in the AMCs, it is possible to argue that there are some challenges to the programme’s societal impact. In fact, the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) shows that the level of awareness about those programmes is very low among the young people. The findings of the survey are striking in this sense: only 1.5% of the surveyed young people answered Yes to the question “Are you aware of the European Union programmes put in place in your country?” A second explanatory factor derived from the survey reveals a widespread belief that the European cooperation schemes are mainly used/abused by Table 11.6 Who benefits from cooperation with the EU (%) Frequency The people in general The rich and powerful The current government Politicians External actors The security services Young people Civil society Other (specify) Total Source: SAHWA Youth Survey 2016, 2017.

873 1,461 2,273 1,238 835 497 131 188 116 7,612

% 11.5 19.2 29.9 16.3 11.0 6.5 1.7 2.5 1.5 100.0

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those in power, not by young people and society. When young people were asked the question “In your opinion, who benefits most from the cooperation with the EU?”, only 1.7% of the respondents stated that it was the young people, and only 2.5% believed that civil society benefits from the cooperation with the EU (Table 11.6). In young people’s perception, cooperation with the EU is beneficial for the rich and powerful (19.2%), for the government (29.9%) and the politicians (16.3%). So, a total of 65.4% of the young people believe that EU cooperation is not beneficial for them or society, but mainly for the rich and powerful and those in government. Where the implications of the EU’s policy towards young people in the region through the implementation of the EMYP are concerned, it is possible to observe some benefits at the individual level, rather than at the societal. For instance, the results of the SALTO-Youth Euro-Med training impact study (SALTO-Youth Euro-Med, 2015) show that SALTO-Youth Euro-Med training activities result in a positive individual impact on the development of participants’ professional skill and competences, as well as the development of networks between youth workers. However, the same study also acknowledges limited outcomes in terms of the multiplication of youth projects “as a tool towards fulfilling Euro-Med objectives” (SALTO-Youth Euro-Med, 2015, p. 49). Thus, although the programme activities seem to be empowering for the small minority of young people who had the chance to participate in the programme, the spill-over of the personal benefits cannot be well observed at the societal, youth work or civil society levels.

4 Conclusion The analysis through the policy evaluation framework at the micro level makes it possible to argue at the macro level that the EU’s policy towards young people in the AMCs through youth cooperation schemes will have a limited capacity to empower young people unless it includes certain features. The actual needs and expectations of young people, as well the structural characteristics of the countries and the region as a whole should be considered. This requires a comprehensive needs analysis at the design stage. The EU’s policy for youth in the Mediterranean region was shaped in line with the EU’s priorities for, and its own perceptions about, the Mediterranean, and it is dominated by the concerns about democratisation in the region. Accordingly, the policy instrument to achieve this priority was a mere adjustment of an already existing instrument at the EU level to the Mediterranean context. The analysis demonstrates that a clear mismatch occurred between EU priorities set forth for the EMYP and the needs of the young people in the five AMCs. The priorities of the EMYP are a combination of the existing youth strategy of the EU and the EU’s policies towards the AMCs, either considering them as a region, as was the case through the EMP, or dealing with them in a bilateral way, as is the case in the European Neighbourhood Policy. Such a youth programme as a part of the Barcelona Process depended on a regional

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cooperation model. However, the EU’s policies and priorities towards the region have been changing over time as a reflection of the EU’s inner dynamics and tensions (“big bang” enlargement, eurozone crisis, “Brexit”), and the EU’s reaction towards the developments in the region (refugee crisis, Arab uprisings, Libya case and the ongoing war in Iraq and Syria). A possible indicator of such changes can also be observed in the labelling of the region: from Mediterranean partner countries to MEDA countries; from MEDA to Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries and eventually the countries under ENP South. All these changes at the political level have eventually affected the programmes implemented by the EC in the region, tarnishing its image. As one of the interviews with the representatives of the programme shows, there is a problem with the image given by Europe, which is criticised for being unclear towards the Mediterranean partner countries, and for lacking a vision of how to have an impact (Göksel and S¸enyuva, 2016). Within such a changing vision, youth as a target group has also been continuously redefined, eventually as “key stakeholders to promote stability in the region” in the ENP (Sánchez Margalef, 2017). However, the EMYP has not been flexible enough or well targeted in terms of adapting itself either to the changing vision of the EU towards the region and place of youth in it, or to the actual needs of the youth in light of the changing realities in the region. The programme design also has some shortcomings, as an outcome of the mismatch between the programme priorities and youth realities. The EMYP prioritises the development of democracy through the participation of young people in civil society. With regard to the emphasis on civil society, two issues emerge: the programme’s dependence on national authorities; and its eligibility criteria. Recently, the programme has been implemented through bilateral cooperation and individual agreements with the relevant state authorities, which opens a path up for inter-governmental bargaining and interference by the national authorities. However, a programme starting with the premise that civil society has the potential to address and tackle the problems of young people has to be designed in a way that also includes civil society and the agents of change as being as pivotal as young people. Moreover, the national and regional characteristics of the state-civil society relations, which are rather restrictive and exclusive, and the problems civil society faces in the region (such as financial unsustainability, political interventions, instability, etc.) should also be addressed through different mechanisms to be incorporated into the programme’s implementation. The procedures of the implementation in the field or, in other words, eligibility criteria, are another issue that limits the potential of the programme to address the needs of the young people. The EMYP requires young people to benefit from the programme through registered NGOs, the projects of which are to be evaluated and approved by the national authorities. As presented in the previous section, young people in the region are neither mobilised in terms of organisational membership and involvement nor have any functioning level of trust in the authorities. Low levels of trust are a negative factor that

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affects the possible positive impact of this programme on society. Furthermore, the fact that a vast majority of young people are not included in organised life clashes with the procedural design of the programme should be addressed. The programme is instrumental in providing funding for youth organisations, which generally have low budgets and scarce domestic and international financial support (Euro-Mediterranean Youth Programme, 2001). Yet, the potential for the translation of the outcomes of the activities realised under the EMYP into youth-related policies at the national level, where “youth policies and structures are characterised by a top-down approach” (Euro-Mediterranean Youth Programme, 2001), remains unattended to in the absence of mechanisms defined at the programme level. Different national civil society realities in the AMCs, as well as their institutional, political, social and cultural differences should be taken into consideration if the programme aims to contribute to the development of youth policies. The analysis of this study and its conclusion that the EMYP has limitations in being socioeconomically relevant to the needs and expectations of the young people in the investigated AMCs should not be interpreted as a criticism of the potential of non-formal education or learning mobility schemes. The aim is the contrary: to strengthen the learning mobility programmes in the region and make them more accessible for young people, particularly for those with fewer opportunities. Similar youth programmes and mobility schemes have been successfully implemented in Europe for decades now and the evidence of their positive impact on society is well documented. The relevance dimension analysed here should be taken as a part of the evaluation of the programme at large and should be addressed in the upcoming stages of the programme. The divergence from the expectations and needs of the young people should be acknowledged and taken into consideration in the design, implementation and evaluation stages. It is argued that such a mismatch can be a major explanatory factor for the low levels of recognition, participation and multiplication of the activities organised by these programmes. Young people in the AMCs are not living in a bubble and are being deeply affected by the global problem of youth unemployment, which affects all aspects of their lives. The EMYP is not, by its very design, directly targeting the economic aspects and the issues of employment. While through the learning mobility and non-formal education the participants may (often individually) develop competences that would contribute to their personal chances of employment, the programme is not an employment scheme, which makes it less relevant to the primary problems of the young people in the AMCs. The mismatch between the mainly economic expectations of young people and the programme’s priorities by no means indicates that the aforementioned priorities should be discarded or these cooperation schemes should be transformed into market-oriented employability tools and entrepreneurship initiatives. Different studies have proven the value and importance of learning mobility and the importance of youth work in contributing to the development of society at large (Souto-Otero et al., 2012; Council of Europe, 2008;

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Fennes, 2013). This also does not mean subscribing to a Maslowian perspective where the urgency of economic needs trumps social and cultural issues. What is suggested here is that data such as the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017), which provide a comprehensive snapshot of the situation and expectations of youth, should be utilised for the design and implementation of European youth programmes in the region. Only this way can the societal relevance of the youth cooperation schemes be ensured.

Notes 1 The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007–13 under grant agreement no. 613174 for the SAHWA Project (www.sahwa.eu). This publication reflects only the authors’ views. The EU is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein. Additional interviews were conducted in Strasbourg, Paris and Brussels with the funding from the scientific research project No: BAP08-11-2015-012 of the Middle East Technical University. 2 For a detailed elaboration of the design and functioning of three European youth cooperation schemes, mainly the Euro-Mediterranean Youth Programme, the Youth Partnership between the EU and the Council of Europe, and the Anna Lindh Foundation activities for youth, see Göksel and S¸enyuva (2016). 3 Some examples are MedCulture, Governance for Employability in the Mediterranean (GEMM), Neighbourhood Civil Society Facility (CSF), Euro-Med Invest’s young entrepreneurs component, Union for the Mediterranean initiatives and more recently Net-Med with UNESCO. 4 For a detailed analysis of the European policies towards the Mediterranean and the evolution of them through different periods see Morillas and Soler (2017), Calleya (2005), Holden (2009). 5 For a detailed discussion and critique of the EU’s problem definition in the region and policy implementation, see Bicchi (2010), Pace (2009), Torun (2012), Cardwell (2011). 6 Barcelona declaration adopted at the Euro-Mediterranean Conference—27–28/11/ 95, p.12. www.eeas.europa.eu/euromed/docs/bd_en.pdf. 7 Youth exchanges bring together groups of young people from the Euro-Mediterranean region “to discuss and share on one theme of mutual interest; discover and become aware of social realities and cultural backgrounds; learn from each other’s countries and cultures”. Voluntary service is “to carry out a long or short term volunteering activity in one Mediterranean country” in a way “to express their solidarity, to acquire a valuable intercultural experience and to develop new skills” for the benefit of local communities. Training/networking activities support those “active in youth work and youth organisations in the Euro-Mediterranean region” and they can take the form of study visits, partnership-building activities, seminars and training courses (Euro-Med Youth IV Leaflet: RCBS, 2011). 8 These four phases of EMYP will be analysed in the following implementation section. 9 http://euromedyouth.net/Description-and-legal-bases.html. 10 www.euromedyouth.net/About-EuroMed-Youth-Program,51.html. 11 www.salto-youth.net/rc/euromed/saltoeuromed/euromedyouthprogramme/abouteur omedyouth/. 12 www.enpi-info.eu/mainmed.php?id=53&id_type=10. 13 http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/jordan/grants_tenders/files/20110419_01_en.htm. 14 Evaluation of Euro-Med Youth IV, 2013. 15 www.euromedyouth.net/How-to-apply,5.html.

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16 SALTO Euro-Med Resource Centre Facebook page: www.facebook.com/Saltoeur oMed/photos/a.359119594118389.86099.154294707934213/1083514581678883/?typ e=1&theater.

References Anderson, J. (2003). Public Policymaking: An Introduction. Boston, MA: Houghton. Angel-Urdinola, D. F., Kuddo, A. and Semlali, A. (2013). Building effective employment programs for unemployed youth in the Middle East and North Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank. Balfour, R. (2011). The Arab Spring, the Changing Mediterranean, and the EU: Tools as a Substitute for Strategy? Policy Brief, EPC. Bicchi, F. (2010). “Dilemmas of implementation: EU democracy assistance in the Mediterranean”, Democratization, 17(5), pp. 976–996. Calleya, S. (2005). Evaluating Euro-Mediterranean Relations. New York: Routledge. Cardwell, P.J. (2011). “EuroMed, European Neighbourhood Policy and the Union for the Mediterranean: Overlapping Policy Frames in the EU’s Governance of the Mediterranean”, Journal of Common Market Studies, 49(2), pp. 219–241. Council of Europe (2008). The Future of Council of Europe Youth Policy: Agenda 2020. Declaration of the 8th Council of Europe Conference of Ministers Responsible for Youth, MJN-8(2008)4. Euro-Mediterranean Youth Programme (2001). Mid-term Evaluation: A final report to the European Commission. Directorate General AIDCO, ECOTEC Research and Consulting Limited, 24 August (MEI/B7-4100/1B/0418). Euro-Mediterranean Youth Programme (2004). Mid-term Evaluation: The EuroMediterranean Youth Programme 2001–2003, Final Report. European Consulting Organisation (ECO) and Roldan & Sorensen Consulting, December (MEI/B7-4100/ IB/98/0418). Evaluation of Euro-Med Youth IV (2013) Identification of a regional programme under ENPI South 2013–2016 for youth and evaluation of on-going programme Euro-Med Youth IV. Final Report of the Evaluation of Euro-Med Youth IV, HTSPE Limited, Project No. 2012/298 514—Version 1. Fennes, H. (2013) What are the effects of international youth mobility projects? Research-based analysis of Youth in Action, in Friesenhahn, G. J. et al. (Eds.) Learning Mobility and Non-formal Learning in European Contexts: Policies, Approaches and Examples. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing, pp. 63–70. Göksel, A. (2010) The political and institutional context, in Mosaic: The training kit for Euro-Mediterranean youth work. Partnership between the European Commission and the Council of Europe in the field of Youth. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing. Göksel, A. and S¸enyuva, Ö. (2016) European Youth Cooperation Schemes in the Southern Mediterranean Context: One for all, all for one? SAHWA Policy Report1. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), ISSN 2564-9159. DOI: doi.org/10.24241/swpr.2016.1. Hanberger, A. (2001) “What is the Policy Problem? Methodological Challenges in Policy Evaluation”, Evaluation, 7(1), pp. 45–62. Hill, M. and Hupe, P. (2002) Implementing Public Policy: Governance in Theory and in Practice. London: Sage Publications; New Delhi: Thousand Oaks.

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Holden, P. (2009) “The European Union’s Mediterranean Policy in Theory and Practice”, Mediterranean Politics, 14(1), pp. 125–134. Morillas, P. and Soler i Lecha, E. (2017) The EU’s Framing of the Mediterranean (1990–2002): Building a Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. MedReset Working Paper, April. OECD-DAC (2010) Glossary of Key Terms of Evaluation and Research Based Management. Available at: www.oecd.org/dac/evaluation/2754804.pdf. Pace, M. (2009) “Paradoxes and contradictions in EU democracy promotion in the Mediterranean: The limits of EU normative power”, Democratization, 16(1), pp. 39–58. Parsons, W. (1995) Public Policy: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Policy Analysis. Cheltenham and Northampton: Edward Elgar. RCBS (Regional Capacity Building and Support Unit) (2011) Euro-Med Youth Programme IV Leaflet. Institut National de la Jeunesse et de l’Education Populaire. Available at: www.euromedyouth.net/IMG/pdf/leaflet_how_does_the_euromed_you th_iv_programme_work-gb-print-2.pdf. Richards, D. and Smith, M. J. (2002) Governance and Public Policy in the UK. Oxford: Oxford University Press. SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017). Data File Edition 3.0. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). SALTO-YOUTH Euro-Med (2015) Survey about personal and professional impact on participants of EuroMed trainings: 2008/2013. SALTO-YOUTH Euro-Med Resource Centre. Sánchez Margalef, H. (2017) ENP and the Southern Mediterranean: Youth as the Key Element for Stability in North Africa. Heinrich Böll Stiftung, published 17 May 2016. Available at: https://eu.boell.org/en/2016/05/17/enp-and-southern-mediterra nean-youth-key-element-stability-north-africa. Sánchez-Montijano, E., Martínez, I., Bourekba, M. and Dal Zotto, E. (2017). SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 Descriptive Report. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). Souto-Otero, M., Ulicna, D., Schaepkens, L. and Bognar, V. (2012) Study on the Impact of Non-formal Education in Youth Organisations on Young People’s Employability. European Youth Forum in cooperation with the University of Bath and GHK Consulting. Tocci, N. and Cassarino, J-P. (2011) “Rethinking Euro-Med Policies in the Light of the Arab Spring”, Open Democracy, March. [Accessed: 08-10-2017]. Torun, Z. (2012) “The European Union and Change in the Middle East and North Africa: Is the EU Closing its Theory-Practice Gap?” Ortadog˘ u Etütleri, 4(1), July, pp. 79–97. UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) (2016) Arab Human Development Report 2016: Youth and the Prospects for Human Development in a Changing Reality. New York: United Nations Development Programme, Regional Bureau for Arab States.

12 Youth demarginalisation strategies in the Arab Mediterranean countries1 Elena Sánchez-Montijano CIDOB (BARCELONA CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS)

José Sánchez García UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA

People are living in a country that basically does not offer any jobs at all, so people decide to take the risk, they have arrived at a point where they have nothing to lose anymore, so [t]he[y] might as well take the risk and have the chance to live a proper life. (Egypt, Life Story, 2) Marginalised, I feel marginalised … but we cannot insult our government … We need a job, to encourage youth projects. I’m not saying large projects, something to employ us. (Algeria, Life Story Video, 1)

1 Introduction The multiple and generalised exclusion of the youth population in Arab countries has become a highly prolific field of analysis. It is understood both as one of the explanatory factors behind the 2011 uprisings, and at the same time is seen as a result of those revolts. Though it is true that young people’s economic situation goes a long way towards explaining the excluded position a large portion of this age group find themselves in, it is not the only factor to take into account. The young find themselves in a context of multiple marginalisation, which means they are displaced to the margins of the economic, political and cultural life that makes up their social spheres. Taking as a basis the exclusion indicators developed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 2011, Backeberg and Tholen (2017) propose that the proportion of young people affected by social exclusion is 46.7% in Tunisia, 43.4% in Algeria, 42.1% in Egypt and 33.2% in Lebanon. Hence the frustration and lack of life prospects that derive not only from the limited employment opportunities but also from exclusion from the political and civic processes that dominate the lives of young people in the Arab Mediterranean countries (Silver, 2007). Transition to adult life in this region has become such an uncertain process that a growing number of young people must improvise their livelihoods and

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the way they express their opinions and manage their personal relations; and all of this outside the domains of institutional structures (Salehi-Isfahani and Navtej, 2008). From their own perspective, in both the lower and upper classes, the youth find themselves trapped in a world in which they are urged to become adults as soon as possible through marriage. Nevertheless, whatever their class, gender, ethnic origin or religious orientation, many young people cannot afford to start a family and maintain a home and thereby become fully independent or participate in the privileges and/or responsibilities of the adult social age. This is a clear difference from their peers in Western countries for whom, in general, the condition of youth is one to be prolonged beyond the stipulated age (Furlong, 2009). While one group yearns for the hegemonic responsibilities of adult life, the other attempts to live in a state of prolonged youth. In Arab countries, it is precisely at the moment of marriage that young people leave their liminal condition behind and achieve the status of “adult”, according to the social construction of the life cycle (Sánchez García and Feixa, 2017). Nevertheless, the delay in accessing adult status through marriage suffered by the young places them in a social space in which they are neither children nor independent adults (Singerman, 1995, 2007; Ghannam, 2013): they are at the “margins” of society. Thus, the condition of socially constructed non-adults facilitates people of “youth” age being seen or perceived by much of society as “incomplete” individuals. At the same time, this position on the margins of the dominant social, economic and political fields, for whatever reason it may be, complicates their access to marriage and, as a result, their chance of forming a family. It is from this transitional perspective that it seems appropriate to apply the concept of “waithood” (the condition of waiting) to describe the situation of young Arabs. This concept perfectly encapsulates the prolonged period of suspension of rights—above all political and social—young Arabs suffer until they access adult status. A little archaeology into the concept will allow us to understand the opportunities it provides for empirical research on the youth of the Arab countries of the Mediterranean. The concept of waithood was first used by Diane Singerman (2007) in her work on youth social relations in the workingclass neighbourhoods of Cairo, where what stood out was the delay in the formation of families and the growth in youth unemployment. The idea of waithood seems to adequately describe the youth perception of feeling trapped in a state of latency until marriage. In this context the following questions arise: Are young Arabs expecting to escape the marginalisation processes without facing them? What demarginalisation strategies are they putting in place for leaving this state of waiting? What explains the fact that these demarginalisation processes take different forms with different young people? That is to say, under what conditions do different demarginalisation processes occur among young people? Attempting to answer these questions, this chapter provides a synthesis of the main findings of the European SAHWA research project,2 and starts with the presupposition that marginalisation in the region means distance from

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hegemonic discourses, as demonstrated in recent work by Bush and Ayeb (2012), among others. Starting with the analysis of the original empirical data from the project, the text examines the different strategies developed by young people in the Arab-majority societies of the Mediterranean3 to “escape” their economic, educational, political and cultural marginalisation from the adultcentric, hegemonic system in place in these societies.4 Similarly, it seeks to analyse the extent to which these strategies are common among the region’s young people and what might explain the possible differences. Faithful to the maxim of placing the youth, their practices, aspirations and discourses at the centre of analysis, we understand that—placed in this marginal position—the young are developing innovative and creative ways of acting, alternative social adjustments, new economic forms, lifestyles and governability that they manage from their situation of exclusion. Therefore, this chapter proposes, first of all, a route starting with a conceptual and theoretical approach to the demarginalisation processes; secondly, it describes the methodology used to obtain the data and its subsequent analysis. Starting from these premises, in the following sections, the main processes of demarginalisation are presented in four different domains: economic, educational, political and cultural. Finally, some partial conclusions are offered that may be the starting points for new analysis.

2 The demarginalisation process among young Arabs Following the contributions of Bush and Ayeb (2012), marginalisation is understood as a process by which certain attitudes, ideologies, values, practices, discourses and beliefs are “excluded” from the public sphere. That is to say, it is a process that extends to symbolic and material elements. In this way, marginalisation becomes an analytical and descriptive category that identifies the ways individuals and certain social groups have been placed on the periphery of the hegemonic economic, political and cultural benefits. For Wacquant (2007), these processes of advanced marginalisation are an unavoidable part of the capitalist system that has, since the end of the 20th century, condemned different social groups to structural marginalisation. In the case of Arab societies, this is a multiple exclusion, as a result of the positions of privilege, wealth and power that the capitalist system in the region entails, to which age, gender and residential conditions are added. Hence, the processes of marginalisation must be understood as “a direct and important dimension of capitalist development, the improved incorporation of the poor and those on the outskirts of the market economy will not reduce marginality or exploitation, it will merely sustain the reproduction of it” (Bush and Ayeb, 2012, p. 8). It is a process that deprives and subordinates the youth of the lower classes that nevertheless also extends for a variety of reasons to the region’s middle- and upper-class youth. The diversity of the factors that condition and affect this process of marginalisation and its many facets among young Arabs makes the inclusion of an intersectional analysis necessary and relevant (Crenshaw, 1989). Using this

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analytical resource the various gender, educational, political, economic and ethnic factors that coerce the lives of young Arabs in interaction with their local contexts in various ways can be considered. These are the conditions that place the subjects in unequal power relations, and permit the continued reproduction of the domination structures. Therefore, the situations of demarginalisation must be analysed with a significant variety of factors taken into account, as the Arab youth—just like in any other social setting—find themselves defined in various ways according to their identity attributes, whether allocated by choice or by obligation. It is these intersectional mechanisms that (re)produce inequalities and facilitate the creation of unfavourable or privileged circumstances when deciding on their life course (Furlong, 2009). What is more, these mechanisms overlap with the social identities of individuals, causing significant differences to life courses and transitory turning points, such as marriage (Crenshaw, 1991; Yuval-Davies, 2012). Ultimately, sex, the social construction of gender, social class and family as cultural and symbolic capital (as a source of respectability, honesty, honour, etc.) determine the decisions of Arab Mediterranean youth, their situations of marginalisation and their strategies for escaping them. In the case that concerns us, the young people in the Arab Mediterranean countries’ position at the social margins for political, economic or lifestyle reasons is determined by different variables, among which age stands out as a unifying element in the process. To the age condition others are added such as gender, ethnicity, the way of understanding religious practice, political perspective, social class and sexual orientation (Abaza, 2009; Assad and RoudiFahimi, 2007; Bayat, 2012; Bennani-Chraïbi and Farag, 2007). Nevertheless, to confront this situation, the young deploy an agency5 that works from the everyday to wade through, bypass or avoid the institutional structures of societies distinguished by their adult-centrism, which leave them on the margins and are led by the so-called “judges of normality”: parents, teachers, employers, religious, political and military leaders, and so on. Farha Ghannam (2013, pp. 10–11) describes the “judges of normality” in Cairo in the following way: The “judges of normality” are present in different areas, venues and spaces. Encounters at homes, workshops, streets, schools, markets, and police stations have important implications … Although the city offers different spaces for young men to escape the disciplinary power of their families, they remain subjected to others’ gazes and come under the power of others, especially the state, who seek to regulate their movements, practices, and identities. This agency is rooted in the new technologies that connect young people with global cultures without losing their local colour—although they remain constrained by the different forms of exclusion enacted by the “judges of normality” both in terms of opportunities and in aspirations in their everyday

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lives. The young person who finds themselves in waithood, to follow Singerman (2007), is therefore located in the field of improvisation, taking advantage of the circumstances that surround them to confront their marginalised condition. It is from this point of view that the youth’s marginalised positions can be seen as a source of opportunities to escape this state of exclusion. The position on the margins of the social sphere provides them with a space for alternative norms and ways of life, a space of contrast, from resilience to the hegemony of the adult world, where, as will be seen, diverse youth strategies will be developed to escape the processes of marginalisation and make them positive (Bayat, 2013). In this way, young people’s actions are recognised as a creative process based on meaningful symbolic and material practices (Hall, 1997; Willis, 2000) that may in many cases be classified in more than one way, but which in all cases may be understood as demarginalisation strategies.

3 The mixed method for analysing the youth of the Arab Mediterranean countries To answer the research questions formulated at the start of this chapter, the data obtained in the framework of the European SAHWA Project have been used. SAHWA made an exhaustive study of the youth of five Arab Mediterranean countries: Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia. With the aim of encompassing these five countries within a single term, throughout this text reference is made to them as Muslim-majority Mediterranean societies. And though we only analyse these five countries, when reviewing the youth demarginalisation strategies it is our understanding that a generalisation may be made for the countries in the region as a whole for various reasons: first, these five countries represent 80% of the region’s total population and, second, the five, just like the other countries in the area, have significant similarities in social, economic, political, demographic and cultural terms. Nevertheless, they also contain internal differences, especially those between the countries of the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) and those of the Mashriq (Lebanon and Egypt). Using a mixed method both in the study design and in the collection and analysis of data, the results presented come from two main sources: the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) and the SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork 2015. The first is a representative survey of the five countries analysed carried out between October 2015 and March 2016 on a representative sample of 2,000 citizens per country. The final data encompass 9,860 individual observations and 842 variables (Sánchez-Montijano et al., 2017). For its part, the SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork carried out from April to November 2015 includes 25 focus groups, 24 life stories and 12 focused ethnographies (with a total of 230 young people from the region participating).6 To guarantee the diversity and representativeness of the sample, parity of participation between men and women was established for all the research techniques used. What is more, to select the sample, characteristics were taken

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into account that respect the region’s diversity, such as residence (urban and rural, considering that nearly 60% of the young people live in rural areas), and social class, which was established based on the young people’s social patterns and areas of residence. The age cohort for both data collections was established as 15 to 29 years old. The reason for selecting this specific cohort relates to the concept of youth as a social category. In this sense, the starting point was that marriage is considered in the region to be the transitional turning point towards adult age (Singerman, 2007; Sánchez García and Feixa, 2017). In this framework, the World Marriage Data 2015 (UN, 2015) confirm that the average marriage age in the Arab Mediterranean countries is 29.1 for the two sexes. In the case of women, the figure is 26.9 and for men 31.3. As a consequence, the SAHWA Project and subsequently this chapter determine that a youth is a person who is no older than 29 and/or is not married. Bear in mind that for both the quantitative and qualitative analysis only unmarried young people were considered, as the starting point was that they find themselves at the margins of society. Finally, the analysis was carried out following the analytical categories that were established in the research project itself and which correspond to the following: economic, educational, political and social values. In this sense, it is understood that these are the four main dimensions that affect young people (although they are not the only ones), and that based on them the demarginalisation processes may be assessed (see Sánchez García et al., 2014). The evaluation of the qualitative data was performed through a critical discourse analysis, while the quantitative is presented by following a univariate and multivariate descriptive analysis.

4 Demarginalisation strategies All the dimensions of the situation of multiple exclusion in which young Arabs are placed are responded to. The young seek alternative or parallel (and yet simultaneous) paths to the system that keeps them in this situation of marginalisation. These escape strategies, understood as youth practices, appear in the relationship they establish with the labour market and employment, in education, in political and social participation, and/or in their cultural expressions. 4.1 Escaping labour exclusion Much of the current labour situation in Arab countries can be explained by a late and forced accommodation to the global market system, as well as neoliberal policies and reforms that were begun based on the adjustment plans international organisations imposed on Arab governments at the end of the 1980s (Guazzone and Pioppi, 2009). As Henry and Springborg (2010) note, this is a laissez-faire capitalist system coupled with states that are inefficient when it comes to providing social and labour policies to populations in

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constant growth. The consequences of this system have not only been high levels of unemployment, especially among the young, but have also brought about precarious working conditions. The percentage of young people who are unemployed in this region is among the highest in the world: 30% in 2014, compared to a global average of 13%, according to the International Labour Organization. Faced with this situation, the young have found themselves needing to explore new ways to satisfy their economic needs. In this framework, it is the informal labour market that is providing the best answers to their needs. Informality has therefore become the only way for millions of young people to work. The data from the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 show that approximately 70% of young people working do so without a contract. The consequence is a market defined, in general terms, by great precariousness, accompanied by a high degree of seasonality and low salaries. In fact, more than two-thirds of the people who are employed are not registered with social services. Despite this situation, the young have sought ways to escape labour marginality and to survive it, and no small number find alternative employment, albeit within this informality. One of the main solutions is multiple employment, with two main characteristics: on the one hand, working at the same time with various employers while, on the other, doing jobs that are diverse in nature. In this way, we find young people who, in a single week, sell cooking utensils in a market, work as waiters in a restaurant and repair bathroom pipes as a plumber. This is the case of a youth in a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Casablanca: his situation on the economic margins, without educational qualifications, allows him to perform these subsistence activities that young people with studies would reject. As he points out: “Work is not shameful. I must do something else. And, also, what do I do if I don’t work? Steal? I have to work to show that I am responsible and that I am capable of taking on responsibilities. I hope Allah can help me” (MAR_LS_2). In this case, his strategy for escaping this economic marginalisation, fundamentally shaped by his gender and social class, is to accept any kind of work that allows him to demonstrate that he is prepared to be an adult and speed up his transition towards this status. Though this reality may be associated with young people with scant professional and/or educational qualifications, what is certain is it also occurs among the highly qualified, as shown by the difficulties this group has accessing the labour market. In fact, the data obtained show that the levels of unemployment for the highly qualified are higher than those among the youth with low qualifications. This group’s demarginalisation strategies are varied, but among them their possibilities for self-employment through entrepreneurship stand out: faced with a labour market they are unable to access, the know-how acquired in the formal educational setting and through self-learning (through new technologies, especially the internet) on the one hand and, on the other, social relations with their family and peers, end up creating a favourable environment for entrepreneurship—mainly through micro-enterprises—as a way

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out (Minialai et al., forthcoming). This is the case for the protagonist of one of the Moroccan life stories (24 years old, university education and middle class), whose marginalisation in relation to the economic dimension results from her condition as a woman. As her parents do not allow her to work among men, she decides to start her own business—taking advantage of her socioeconomic position—and make herself a young entrepreneur. This microenterprise model has been complemented throughout the region by policies, both national and international, which attempt to create viable channels of employment and to integrate informal economic strategies into mechanisms of governability, generally through taxes and duties on these services. Nevertheless, it seems demonstrated that this kind of action has not had the success anticipated, as trying to introduce it to a system characterised by the lack of access to bank credit and where nepotism is the only way to secure the viability of any project is no simple task (Göksel et al., 2016). Despite this, youth micro-enterprise experiences recur throughout the region as an option for dealing with exclusion, without the mechanisms of intersectionality playing a relevant role, at least not at the time they are put in place. In this sense, as the ethnographic data show, in rural areas the young farmers who sell their products from village to village are multiplying, along with those who, using their university training, open small law or architecture firms in shared collective spaces. In any case, it is mainly micro-entrepreneurs who voluntarily opt to operate in an informal way to escape state regulations, given the rigidity of the regulatory market (Mejjati Alami, 2017). This kind of escape, though filled with hopes and dreams, ends up becoming a difficult and long process due to a bureaucratic and rigid system directed by the “judges of normality”. 4.2 Formal education loses its social value For some time education has ceased for many young people to be the “social elevator” that, as well as allowing them to access the labour market, gave them an opportunity to find a good-quality job. The data extracted from the survey show that only 37% of young people who have studied think that it prepared them for the current labour market. Many voices state that formal education, as well as not being a tool that allows them to access a job, is of poor quality “given that the curriculum is too theoretical and lacks practical application” (MAR_NI_3). In a context in which formal education has lost some of its social value, the youth embark on new training paths. Many actors, both governmental and non-governmental, as well as national and international, see these imbalances between the labour market and education and opt to set up a parallel training system that provides a response to the needs of the current labour market (Martiningui, 2016). These programmes are important for all the groups that find themselves most excluded—especially women (CAWTAR, 2017)—as they help them both to acquire skills and to grow as people by developing

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aptitudes such as confidence and assertiveness. The relevance of this kind of programme is to a large extent due to the diversity of actors who participate in them; not only are the administrations involved at various levels, but so are unions and civil society actors, as well as the young people themselves. Despite these new training paths, the data show that the type of training orchestrated by national and international actors is only accessed by a small number of the region’s young people. Intersectional mechanisms, especially those relating to class, play a major role in the exclusion of a large number of young people. Middle-class urban young people—mainly men—are those most able to take advantage of this training. Beyond the fact that the end goal of this education—whether formal or informal—that is established within the system is for the “judges of normality” to provide access to the labour market, education and the access to it ends up creating other mechanisms that divert the young from the established norms. The data obtained during the ethnographic work have revealed how many young women say attending university gives them ways to escape the rigid control of parental relations as well as those between genders. Thus, for young people living in rural areas (such as the protagonists of some of the life stories—LB_LS_2; TUN_LS_2), access to education allows parental control to be escaped by taking them away from their places of origin to study in urban areas, and favours changes in gender relations and in the models of choosing marriage partners. To the above, on the other hand, so-called self-training must be added. First, the internet has become an innovative self-learning tool that not only allows young people to improve their capacities in traditional jobs, but also gives them the chance to open up new employment niches. This is especially true for low-qualified young people and, therefore, for the worst-off social class, as, for example, in the case of a young 21-year-old Moroccan who has learned to repair mobile phones in Rabat market in a completely autodidactic way through the use of virtual social networks (MAR_LS_4). Secondly, and similarly, social and skills learning acquired in the relations established in the public space is important, both within the peer group and in their relationship with adults. These are the kinds of knowledge Foucault (2003 [1975]) called “subjugated” by comparison with formal knowledge, and which are spread through the traditional channels established in neighbourhood social networks. A good example is the way the young man from Casablanca mentioned above has learned to repair small appliances (MAR_LS_2). At night he can afford to attend an informal workshop where a neighbour conveys their know-how about repairing these objects and obtain in this way another resource for escaping his economic marginalisation. At any rate, these young people’s training is not limited to seeking to increase their chances of finding a job in an established market, but also to widen their knowledge and capacities in other areas connected to leisure or free time. An example of this is young people’s ever-growing involvement in various art forms, which will be addressed below.

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Though formal education does not seem to be the most direct path to entering the labour market, there can be no doubt that it provides the young with a series of tools and competences that allow them to develop their social abilities and, with them, to escape some of the multiple marginalisation they suffer. In this sense, the data show that despite the high rate of unemployment and the mismatch between education and employment, informal training and training for employment cannot replace formal education. In fact, this formal education is what continues to provide millions of young people with a range of capacities and abilities to develop their lives, as well as expanding their networks of contacts, which is so necessary in Arab countries where nepotism is an established part of the system (Sidani and Thornberry, 2013). 4.3 Direct political action in social and local networks Political exclusion must be added to the economic and educational. The data show that as well as not identifying with their institutions, which, they say, only represent the elite, young people demonstrate a lack of interest in politics and trust in their institutions. Over 40% of young people of voting age did not vote in the last elections, with the main reason being lack of interest (44.58%), according to data from the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016. Similarly, political affiliation is below 5%. Added to this is the lack of trust in political institutions: 77% of young people say they have little confidence in national institutions and this percentage reaches 88% when it comes to international institutions. Nevertheless, while young people tend to reject formal politics and forms of political engagement, they show interest in other means, such as art, direct action in the community, and social media, through which they can express their concerns and participate in public life. In this sense, the young seek to avoid the established rules and the controls imposed by some of the system and seek to develop innovative strategies and informal networks to reclaim their interests and have influence on society. This is how one of the young people interviewed explained it: “for me, before February 20th, there were only two forms of political participation: political parties and unions; there was no possible third way. But on February 20th I was on the street. The young people who wanted to participate, say something or change something, were in the street, at the February 20th Commission, or at the demonstrations” (MAR_FG_3). Farthing (2010) would speak of the participation of young Arabs in two parallel dimensions: while on the one hand they get involved in informal politics, on the other they cease to participate in them and take an informal, parallel route in which they create a new agenda. In this framework it becomes important to underline that, just as in other parts of the world, the young are losing interest in participation of a collective nature and moving towards a more individual participation (Vinken and Diepstraten, 2010; Stolle and Micheletti, 2013). Some of these means of expression are reflected through the use of social networks, especially among

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the urban and middle-class youth, given their greater capacity to access these tools. Although on occasions they have been overstated by some literature, especially during the 2011 uprisings, certainly social networks play a fundamental role in many young people’s participation. In Twitter and particularly Facebook young people find their main channel for participation, transmitting their main preoccupations and influencing reality. Similarly, many use their own blogs as a form of expression and assertion. Added to this new informal means of participation, which extends across the globe, are actions that move between the political and the artistic. Theatre, music and graphic expressions such as comics have become spaces of political assertion, especially among middle-class men living in urban areas. Graffiti, for example, is instrumental at these times for making political demands despite its prohibition in countries such as Egypt, where the government has linked this street art to a tool of protest. Increasingly the graffiti of hundreds of young people in the Arab world ends up being one of the few means of representing and expressing their interests and opinions, as many of those interviewed confirmed. As we have pointed out, young people’s cultural productions in Arab-majority Mediterranean countries acquire a fundamental role in establishing their own political agenda and allow for their own discourses on reality through which they can position themselves politically. What is more, these youth cultural productions allow the individuals involved in them to make themselves visible as political subjects and to root themselves in identity terms among their peers. The participation of young people in political life is above all channelled through community action in the local space. This level of direct involvement for change is seen by some as the only possible way of participating in the system and influencing it directly as a group. Close to 20% of the young people interviewed are linked in one way or another to actions of a community nature, and this occurs equally among all young people without intersectional mechanisms playing a significant role. The local world and action in this political arena ends up becoming the space in which the young can show themselves as a group with common interests and needs (Arendt, 1958) in the face of a system that excludes and isolates them. 4.4 Social values: marriage A 25-year-old Algerian engineer, who worked as a teacher in a rural area, comments that “marriage means getting rid of her parents’ authority … and more freedom… creating a family to complete life” (DZ_LS_2). Another speaker, a 29-year-old Egyptian student, assures that she still lives with her parents because she cannot be socially independent and living alone is not an option, as it goes against the culture and norms (EGY_FG_2). The desire to acquire autonomy and emancipation without escaping or transgressing social norms is a key reason behind young people’s preference for marriage as the normatively established route to escape the marginalisation imposed from

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family authorities, above all. The position of young people in terms of cultural, economic and social capital (Bourdieu, 2000) influences their decision on marriage and their own chances of marrying. Nevertheless, marriage, in and of itself, has ceased to be a criterion for individual success. For the youth, success means reaching a good level of education that provides the chance of getting a good job and showing, socially, that they spend their money on maintaining their family and on being “respectable”. The combination of these variables (educational level, good job and respectability) identifies the “marriageable” individuals among the young. The combination of these elements reveals the intention to change the masculine models that are desirable for marriage in line with the “new” values proposed by young women. In this way, facing the obligation to marry, an autonomous and independent choice is crucial when it comes to marriage for the region’s young people, and many young women attempt to choose their partner for themselves. Young men and women seek partners in line with their generational values. As a young Algerian engineer points out, it is necessary to “meet a man who respects me and helps me, so that I will be able to do everything I couldn’t do when I was living with my parents” (DZ_LS_2). This independent choice is reflected in the survey data. To the question of how they would choose their partner for marriage, 23.02% said they would choose from among their friends and/or acquaintances. Nevertheless, the analysis of this question, taking into account issues of social class and residence, confirms the importance of intersectionality. While 24.3% of upper-class urban youths say they would choose their partner according to personal taste, this figure falls to 7.5% when it comes to young men from the rural lower classes. In conclusion, the youth in rural areas find themselves in the main under the social control of their families in terms of the decisive step of finding a partner, while in urban areas the chances of escaping this parental control seem better. At the same time, the growing importance of the friendship group as the social setting in which to find a wife or husband heralds a change of trend in youth agency in this vital aspect of their path towards adulthood: they are strategic changes of behaviour, above all for men in need of young women. As Cantini (2012, p. 11) explains about Jordanian youth: “Values of family and marriage are major ones as they constitute fundamental ground in preserving patriarchy and gender roles. It is in this context that it is crucial to look at how romantic love is lived by young people in a country like Jordan, usually considered as being rather conservative in public morality.” Therefore, choosing a partner and the sociocultural practices associated with the search for one—such as frequenting meeting places on university campuses and busy public places such as shopping centres—have become a social demarginalisation strategy in the region. This is perceived in a particularly marked way among young women who seek another masculine model other than the traditional. In this sense, young men have no option but to adapt their values to those proposed by young women in order to be included in their list of the marriageable, a common practice in the middle classes.

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4.5 Interconnected demarginalisation mechanisms Youth strategies for escaping the marginalisation described throughout this section have been approached separately in order to highlight and increase their understanding, but all form part, in most cases, of an integrated strategy whose objective is to escape a situation of multiple marginalisation. In fact, some of the responses the young shuffle when faced with advanced marginalisation processes (Wacquant, 2007), such as immigration and even radicalisation, are today perceived by the West as the main problems to deal with. In this sense, both the quantitative and qualitative data collected confirm that the situation of marginalisation—especially that linked to the economy and the labour market—is among the main reasons the region’s young people opt to take desperate courses of action, such as irregular immigration (SánchezMontijano and Girona-Raventós, 2017). A Tunisian citizen summarises this idea in the following way: “Youth who choose al harqa, [irregular immigration] are right! They are disgusted! What would you like them to do? There is no more work! That’s why they try al harqa, you see madam! The Tunisian problem is jobs, I tried everything to work! No results!” (TN_FG_2). Similarly, this young Tunisian rapper comments: “Currently, it is a money earner! When I sing at a concert, I claim money because the producer makes a lot of money! I am not naïve; I need money to register my songs, to live! Because, if there was a market to sell CDs, clips, advertisements, things would be better, you can get nowhere without money” (TUN_FE_2). Like rap music in Tunisia and other music genres such as electric raï in Algeria, mahragan in Cairo provides opportunities that allow young people, especially those from the lower classes, to imagine a life horizon with a degree of hope and escape from the peripheries of the social sphere and from multiple marginalisation (Sánchez García, 2017). Firstly, the young escape cultural marginalisation by becoming music consumers and producers, creating social spaces for establishing and self-managing their musical compositions; secondly, information and communication technologies, as well as social networks, allow the “prosumers” of mahragan to spread their discourses against the hegemonic classes (adults) and, therefore, to develop new routes for political action. Thirdly, mahragan allows them to escape economic marginalisation, as it has led to the distribution of millions of copies for the main figures in the genre, who sell above all in Cairo’s informal markets. Neither must the capacity of these musical creations to spread youth discourses be forgotten: they deal with the issues that concern them and form a political ideology and agenda that differs from that of the state. Finally, it should be mentioned that the production of mahragan tracks means grappling with tastes (musical, technical, production and commercial) that are difficult to acquire in formal education; in reality, mahragan proposes the putting into practice of “subjugated” knowledges, that is to say, those that lack the necessary levels of erudition or science according to the canon established by the adult-centric society. At any rate, mahragan can be understood as a cultural product that allows, if not escape, then a way to overcome

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or wade through the different dimensions of young men’s marginalisation, especially for those from the lower social classes.

5 Final considerations This chapter’s main contribution is providing empirical evidence of the youth strategies for escaping marginalisation, through what we call demarginalisation processes. Nevertheless, to understand the many facets to these demarginalisation processes enacted by young Arabs, it is necessary to understand that their identities are affected by intersectional mechanisms. That is to say, not all young people respond in the same way: gender, place of residence, social class, economic capital and family culture, among others, are decisive factors. In this sense, the differences between young people exacerbate the fragmentation and inequalities between them, and innovative (mainly informal) paths seem to be one of the few ways out. Thus, it is observed that while young men from the lower classes take informal routes to achieve economic independence, young middle- and upper-class women are trying to escape gender marginalisation by managing their own economic projects. Although the situation is certainly complex, given the high levels of unemployment in the region, it is also true that, in general terms, young men and women are better educated, better connected and have higher levels of freedom, as the data show. This means that they also have a much greater capacity to design their own paths to allow them to escape the state of marginalisation in which they find themselves. The real problem is that the escape routes developed from this situation are not being recognised or supported by the system or institutions, which are excessively adult-centric. The hegemonic discourse on youth remains a long way from the reality that is constructed day after day on the margins of the established system, and in which the issue of young people continues to be perceived as a specific problem, instead of as a solution or opportunity. The identities imposed on the young are a social construction based on the general oppositions of the traditional frames of reference: the married versus the single, men versus women, and young people versus adults. Hence the two most common perceptions of young people persist: on the one hand are the “good kids”—those who form part of the system, who do not protest and who participate in the channels established by the adults, such as certain entrepreneurs, for example; while on the other there are the “bad kids” who are outside this system, such as the Algerian hittistes, 7 who see themselves as obliged to navigate (Enaviqi), roaming the streets to cover their necessities: “when I navigate by selling something, such as a bird or a mobile phone you can afford to go home and assert your presence, but when there is no Tchipa [money earned through the completion of any service] and although you’re out, taking coffee and you know this site my brother Zaki, you’re here and it’s always the same routine” (DZ_FE_1).

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Despite their differences, both groups are adopting and developing shortcuts to escape the diverse marginalisations they face: although this does not mean they are completely outside the system. Nevertheless, they are denied the opportunity to form part of the public sphere through channels of participation or the recognition of their specificities, meaning, in many cases, that their only way out is through the strategies described. As we have seen, although these escape routes keep young people in a situation of formal/ institutional exclusion, they do make new forms of expression and even inclusion possible to them within a new parallel system; a system in which, on the one hand, the young feel recognised and, on the other, included, despite remaining at the margins of the established institutions. At best, they are gradually incorporated into the formal adult system due to the interest some of these strategies arouse in the public institutions—as is the case of the self-employment strategies and those to develop micro-entrepreneurship. At the same time, nevertheless, marginalisation seems also to encourage the feelings of a lack of trust in the institutions, which is expressed by the youths distancing themselves from governmental initiatives, to instead favour more radical escape routes. Ultimately, young Arabs promote their own initiatives to escape marginalisation. In this way they establish agencies that use the marginalisation processes to which they are subject for their own benefit, by being able to activate discourses and practices that often transgress the hegemonic social forms, precisely because of being placed at the margins of social life. As a result, the passiveness suggested by the concept of waithood (Singerman, 2007) does not correspond to the results of the analysis of the data obtained in the course of our research, as the young are not only waiting as Honwana (2012) suggests. On the contrary, these young people seem to be proactively involved in serious efforts to create new ways of being and interacting with society. It is in their daily business that young Arab men and women take advantage of their marginalisation and activate their capacities to claim their right to “be young”. This is the meaning of débrouillage, a term used by young Tunisians that may be translated as “making do”. So if the idea of waithood suggests an autonomy that is constrained and suppressed by social structural mechanisms, the strategies described from the data obtained suggest that youth agency in the Mediterranean can be understood as a performative agency. As Bayat (2013, p. 115) points out, young Arabs are “operating in uniquely simultaneous conditions of both repression and opportunity” and are therefore demanding their condition of youth (their youthfulness). Escaping the political, economic, educational and cultural marginalisation processes places them in a struggle in which the social institutions are their target. Analysing the impact of these performative agencies on the established system could be the next step for future research.

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Notes 1 The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007–13 under grant agreement no. 613174 for the SAHWA Project (www.sahwa.eu). This publication reflects only the authors’ views. The European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein. 2 For more information on this project, see: www.sahwa.eu. 3 Following Deeb and Winegar (2012, p. 538): “given the thorny issues of defining a ‘field’ we decided to focus on Arab- majority societies (…) because it avoids associations of insularity and homogeneity. Nonetheless, this focus acknowledges the importance of ‘Arab’ as a meaningful social and political construction in such societies (note the salience of the category ‘Arab’ in the ongoing revolutions), one that affects social life for Arabs as well as for ethnic, [religious] or linguistic minorities.” For a longer defence of this perspective see the methodology section and, specifically, where the case studies analysed are presented. 4 The concept of adult-centrism refers to the relationships of domination between the age groups—and what is assigned to each as a social expectation—that have been produced throughout history, with roots, mutations and updates that are economic, cultural and political, which have settled in the social imaginary, and which affect their material and symbolic reproduction (Duarte, 2012). 5 By agency we understand the capacity subjects have to act in the social space in which they are involved. In this way, the young are agents seeking to negotiate their lives with the reality that surrounds them, producing a transformation in the former while at the same time transforming their own reality. Thus, the individual will adhere to what is expected from them in each situation but intentionally follow their individual strategic interests, allowing them to intervene in the structure and modify it (Giddens, 1997). 6 In the references to the qualitative data a code is used to indicate the country (DZ = Algeria, MAR = Morocco, TUN = Tunisian, EGY = Egypt, LB = Lebanon), the technique (FG = focus groups, LS = life stories, LSV = life stories videos, FE = focused ethnographies and NI = narrative interviews), the number and in some cases also the page number. For example, the code for page 3 of the report for focus group 1 in Lebanon would be LB_FG_1: 3. 7 Hitiste or hittiste describes a young man or woman who is unemployed, unoccupied, who spends their day idly; it comes from the word “hit” meaning “wall”.

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Index

Note: Page numbers in italics and bold denote references to Figures and Tables, respectively. 6 April Youth Movement 70–71 abstention rate 43–44 agricultural sector 190 Ahmed, T. 174 Al-Ali, Nadje 186 Alaoui, Hicham 167, 177 Algeria: fertility rates 31; living conditions 31–33; socioeconomic indicators 31–32; unemployment rates 31; urban crime and violence 32–33; use of politically correct words 132; youth quotas in governance 129 Algerian youth: autocracy and 119, 119; in community life 35–36; democracy and 118, 119; disinterest in politics 34, 45; dissatisfaction with politics 134; on election corruption 168–169; on elections 42–43; illegal political activities 176; job situation by education level 155; job situation by father’s education level 157; job situation by gender 152; job situation by residence stratum 153; lack of trust in politicians 44; mosque/church attendances 117; participating in political/civic association activities 38–40, 39; participating in political development 129–130; participation in decision-making mechanisms 35; perception of international institutions 40–41; perception of national institutions 40; political activities participation 165; political activities participation by gender 166; political

engagement by activity 115; on politics 44; private religiosity 116; public religiosity 117; public vs. private sector rates of 150; on religion and politics 171–172, 171; social exclusion of 222; technocracy and 119; unemployment rates 150, 209, 209; voting and 43 Ali, Zahra 186 al-Sisi, Abdel Fatah 130 alter-activists 173 Amnâ, E. 127 Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) 84 Arab Spring: in Algeria 30; in Egypt 67–70; in Tunisia 107; in Western media 109 Arouri, M. 148 autocracy 118, 119 autonomy: navigating public spaces in 186; through marriage 232–233; trend towards 185 Badr, Mahmoud 73 Bakhtin, Mikhail 163–164 Bardak, U. 148 Barsoum, G. 147–148 Bayat, Asef 4, 114, 185, 236 Bicchi, F. 206 Binzel, Ch 148 Cardwell, P.J. 206 Carvalho, J.-P. 148 Castle chronotope type 164, 166–168 chronotopes: definition of 163–164; types of 164

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citizen engagement: digital web and 58; initiation rite 57; trigger factors for 54; Tunisian youth and 55–60 civic engagement 36, 192, 213–214 civic participation 35–36, 38–40, 163 clientelism 86–87 community activism 36–37 community politics 113 cultural innovation process 181, 197 cultural marginalisation 234 delinquency and rioting 33 demarginalisation strategies: choosing a partner 232–233; direct political action 231–232; escaping labour exclusion 227–229; graffiti 232; integrated process 234–235; intersectional mechanisms 235; judges of normality 225–226; marriage 232–233; multiple employment 228; self-employment through entrepreneurship 228–229, 236; self-training 230; training paths vs. education 229–231; of young Arabs 224–226 democracy 118, 119 democratisation processes 177, 216 diasporic political displacement 5 Dibeh, G. 87 digital web see Internet disdain: experience of 51–54; gender as source of 52; geographic origin as source of 52–53; marginalisation 51 disengagement 37, 40, 135, 139 double exportation 97 dual labour markets 146 economic marginalisation 234 economic mobility, definition of 5 economics, definition of 4 economy-related problems 209 Edmunds, J. 175 education: and decent employment 148; definition of 3–4; as diminisher/ reinforcer of entrepreneurial orientation 25; employability and 84; female literacy rates 187; gender-biased career guidance 188; gender equality in 187–191; group activism and 37; inequalities in 138; job situation by education level 154–156; losing social value 229; political participation and 138; self-training 230; social inclusion in 188; state schools vs. private schools

84–85, 87–88, 88; street as area of 173; women’s access to 187–188; of young Algerians 31; see also higher education, informal education Egyptian women in the workforce 186 Egyptian youth: accepting a job 77; alienation from politicians 65; autocracy and 119, 119; current job 77; in decision-making process 74–75; democracy and 119; election participation 168; employability of 75, 76, 149; illegal political activities 177; job situation by education level 155; job situation by father’s education level 157; job situation by gender 152; job situation by residence stratum 153; mosque/church attendances 117; non-interest in politics 132; participating in political development 130, 130; political activities participation 165; political activities participation by gender 166; political Castles 168; political engagement 115, 122; political participation 63; private religiosity 116; public religiosity 117; public vs. private sector rates of 150; on religion and politics 169, 171; social exclusion of 222; Tahrir protests 68–70; technocracy and 119; trust in government 66; trust in politics/ politicians 65, 66; unemployment rates 150, 209; use of politically correct words 132; voting behaviour 67 Ekman, J. 127 elections: abstention rate 43; Algerian youth on 42–43; in Castle chronotope 168–169; non-participation as symptom of self-exclusion 45; see also voting El Sheikh, Sharm 78 employment: formal vs. informal 150–151; by gender 152; gender disparity 147–148; gendered differences 152–153; gender inequality in 188–189; in public sector 146–147; public vs. private sector rates of 150, 150; residence differences in 153–154, 153; social origin shaping opportunities 149; status of 151; structures in Arab Mediterranean countries 14–57; see also youth labour market, youth unemployment engagement, definition of 4 English youth disengagement 40

Index entrepreneurship: business types for 19; characteristics of 16; as demarginalisation strategy 228–229; educational background 19; education as diminisher/reinforcer of 25; environmental conditions for 16–17; family effect on 18; farming entrepreneur 22–24; micro-enterprises 229, 236; paths 13–14; profiles of young Moroccan entrepreneurs 20–25; salad project 22–23; school-toentrepreneurship process 21; socioeconomic background 18–19, 19; as solution to youth unemployment 98–99; university degrees and 18; of women 229; of young Moroccans 17–20 Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) 205–206 Euro-Mediterranean Youth Programme: adapting to changing vision of EU 217; beneficiaries of 207–208; benefits of 216; concern issues 211–212; decentralised management of 211; democracy/human rights priorities 209–210; financial resources for 211–212; implementation of 204, 210–214; key actors in 211; level of confidence in institutions 213; number of projects and participants 215; objectives of 208; outcomes 214–216; as policy instrument 207–210; priorities of 216–217; programme logic 208; results and consequences of 214–216; shortcomings of 208, 217; socioeconomic limitations of 218; youth’s view of problems in country 210 Euro-Med Youth Units (EMYUs) 211 European Commission (EC) 211 European Union (EU) 41, 215 European Union Mediterranean policy: components of 203; policy evaluation 202, 204; problem situation 205–207; see also Euro-Mediterranean Youth Programme everyday politics 112–113 exclusion, forms of 34–35, 53 family: gender roles within 194; influencing youth’s interest in political 128; parental education 138, 156–157; women’s legal equality in 195 family businesses 147

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family socialisation 61 farming entrepreneur 22–24 Fattah, Israa Abdel 70 female entrepreneurship 16, 20, 26 female literacy rates 187 females see young women Gebel, M. 146–147 gender: distribution by frequency of participation in elections 42; distribution in international institutions by 41; patriarchy and 93–94; political participation and 138, 139; as source of disdain 52 gender dynamics 94 gender equality 187 gender identity 53–54 generational identity 54 geographic origin, as source of disdain 52–53 Ghannam, Farha 225 Gillis, J. 4 Global Employment Trends for Youth 83 global generation, definition of 175 graffiti 232 group activism 37 group multiplicity 65, 69–70, 73, 78–79 Günther, I. 147 Hanafi, Sari 185 Handberger, A. 204, 207 Hariri, Rafiq 86 Hashemi, Manata 184, 185 Haut Commissariat au Plan (HCP) 20, 27n10 Herrera, Linda 98–99, 185 Heyne, St. 146–147 higher education: correlating with better job opportunities 149; desire for 93; deteriorating quality of 88–89; in Lebanon 85; negative effects of 18; rising number of graduates in 110; see also education Honneth, Axel 50 human capital model 146, 158 informal education 4 see also education informality, poverty and 87 innovation, creating capacity for 197 institutional politics: chain of generations in 167; religion 170; religion and 171 inter-generational educational mobility 149 international institutions 40–41, 41

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International Labour Organization 145 Internet: as innovative self-learning tool 230; as new space for expression 58; for political activism 192; transforming communication media 108; as virtual street 174–176; see also social media intimate relationships 185 job riots 33 judges of normality 225–226, 230 Karami, Omar 86 Kefaya (”Enough”) 70 Kullina Khaled Sa’eed 71–72 Laine, S. 134 Launov, A. 147 Lebanese youth: autocracy and 119; democracy and 119; desire for higher education 93; gender differences in political activities 166; job-seeking approaches 92–93, 92; job situation by education level 155; job situation by father’s education level 157; job situation by gender 152; job situation by residence stratum 153; labour market for 90–93; mosque/church attendances 117; obstacles to unemployment 90, 90, 94; participating in political development 130; political activities participation 165, 166; political activities participation by gender 166; political Castles 168; political elite’s lack of respect for 134; political engagement 97, 115; private religiosity 116; public religiosity 117; public vs. private sector rates of 150; on religion and politics 169, 171; sectarianism and 170; social exclusion of 222; technocracy and 119; unemployment characteristics 89–94; unemployment rates 150, 209; voting 122 Lebanon: clientelism 86–87; contractor bourgeoisie 86; cyclical economic crises 87; gross domestic product (GDP) 84; informal sector in 87, 91; post-civil war political economy 86; social capital 91–92; Social Security system 91; state schools vs. private schools 84–85, 87–88, 88; unemployment trends 84; youth emigration 95–97

leisure, as form of resistance 127 liberal activist 60 Loayza, N.V. 147 MacLeod, Arlene 185–186 Maher, Ahmed 70 Mahfouz, Asmaa 70 mahragan 234–235 male breadwinner role 194, 198 marginalisation: coping strategies against 185; cultural 234; definition of 224; disdain and 51; economic 234; imposed by family authorities 232–233; processes of 224; youth values and 183–186; see also demarginalisation strategies marginality: definition of 2; entrepreneurial activities reconciling with 14; linked to disadvantage 14 Marler, Isabel 186 marriage 184–185, 189, 194–195, 223 mass mobilisations 107–108 micro-enterprises 236 see also entrepreneurship migration: Arab Spring affect on 131; definition of 5; double exportation 97; negative effect on economic growth 95; social class and 96; to urban spaces 148; see also youth emigration mobilisation: following Arab Spring 107–108; preferred means of 79 Moroccan youth: autocracy and 119; democracy and 118, 119; demographics 18; entrepreneurship and 17–20; illegal political activities 176; job situation by education level 155; job situation by father’s education level 157; job situation by gender 152; job situation by residence stratum 153; mosque/church attendances 117; participating in political development 129, 130; political activities participation 165; political Castles 167; political engagement 115; private religiosity 116; in public policies 17; public religiosity 117; public vs. private sector rates of 150; on religion and politics 171–172, 171; taking streets as political space 173; technocracy and 119; unemployment rates 150, 209, 209; use of politically correct words 132; voting 122, 168 Morsi, Mohamed 73, 130 Mostafa, M. 147–148

Index National Coalition for Change 70 National Council for Social Services and Development 76 national institutions 40 National Youth Academy for Training 76 neoclassical economics 146 nepotism 32, 87, 157, 158–159 new social media 79, 125, 136 see also social media new subjectivities 185 non-movements 114, 125–126 non-participation, as symptom of self-exclusion 45 Osman, Maged 79 parental education 138–139, 156–157, 158 participation see civic participation patriarchy 93–94 Perret, C. 33 physical public space 176, 177 policy: characteristics of 203; definition of 203 policy evaluation: heuristic map of 204; implementation process component 205; policy instrument component 204; problem situation component 204; results and consequences component 205 political activities/activism 166, 192 political alienation 76 political engagement, youth: by activity 115; by country 115, 122; family influence in 128; generational gaps in 176; Lebanese youth 97; levels of 115–116; religion and 116–119 political exclusion 231 political hyperactivists 115 political mobility, definition of 5 political opportunity structure (POS) 67–68 political participation/socialisation: 6 April Youth Movement 70–71; age and 138; assessment of 130; coordinating machinery 78–79; cross-country differences in 135–136, 135; in different activities 165; educational inequalities and 138; forms of 135, 231–232; gender 138; generational divide 68, 69; inequalities in 136–139; informal channels of 134–135; Kullina Khaled Sa’eed 71–72; marital status and 138;

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parental education and 138–139; rates of 136; social inequalities as factors in 137, 138–139; socioeconomic differences impact on 128–136; Tahrir protests 68–70; Tamarod 73–74; Ultras 72–73; voting as common form of 134–135 politics: community politics 113; everyday politics 112–113; low confidence in political institutions 131; participation 111–112; protest politics 114; religion and 110, 118–121, 119; religious persons in political decisionmaking 169; trust levels 40, 44, 65, 111–112; young women in 191–194; youth activism 58–60; youth and 108–109; youth belonging to a political party 112; youth decline in 108; youth discussing, percentage of 113; youth’s views on political systems 119 poverty: exclusion and 34; informal sector and 87 Presidential Leadership Programme 75–76 primary labour market 144–145 private employers 147, 150 private religiosity 116–117 professional sphere 197 protest politics 113–114, 113 public employment sector 146–147, 148, 150 public policies: classical understanding of 203–204; definition of 203; examples of 33; Moroccan youth and 17, 19 public religiosity 117 public spaces 33, 58, 78, 174–176, 186, 230 racism 53 Ramadan, M. 147–148 reciprocal recognition 51 recognition see social recognition recognition deficit 51 recognition denial 55 regionalism 53 religion: Castle of 169–172; commitment to 118; government and 120–121; importance of, in life domains 116–117; political engagement and 116–119; politics and 118–121, 119; as private matter 169; private religiosity 116–117; in public and private spheres 169–170; public religiosity 117;

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religious persons in political decisionmaking 169; tolerance towards violence and 127 representative democracy 118 resistance, leisure as form of 127 resource mobilisation 67 Revolution and Youth Day 129 riots, as social weapon 33 Road chronotope type 164, 172–176, 177 Sa’eed, Khaled 64, 71 Saloon chronotope type 164, 172, 177 Sánchez Garcia, José 164, 185 school-to-entrepreneurship process 21 school-to-work transitions: education level differences 154–156; factors shaping 144–145; family background and 156–157; gender dimensions of 152–153, 188; job situation by education level 155; job situation by father’s education level 157; measuring 145; residence differences in 153–154; see also youth labour market sectarianism 170 self-employment see entrepreneurship Singerman, Diane 184–185, 223 social capital 91–92, 98 social class, emigration and 96 social control for women 52, 53–54, 233 social exclusion 34–35, 222 social housing 33 social injustice 35 social invisibility 51 social media: creating global villages 177; enabling activism 174; helping youth develop political consciousness 127; influencing political debates 125; as informal participation channel 79; mobilising impact of 71–72; women and public sphere 174; see also Internet, new social media social mobility 156–157 social recognition 50–55 social security 87, 91, 146, 152–153 Social Security system 91, 91 spaces of experience 177 spatial mobility, definition of 5 stigmatisation 53 Tahrir protests 68–70 Taif Accords 86 Tamarod 73–74 technocracy 118, 119 Threshold chronotope type 178n2

Torum, Z. 206 Town chronotope type 178n2 trust in politics/politicians 40, 44, 65, 212 Tunisia: intergenerational gap in 133; state of emergency law 164–165 Tunisian youth: autocracy and 119; citizen engagement 55–60; in decisionmaking positions 49; democracy and 119; election participation 168; illegal political activities 176; job situation by education level 155; job situation by father’s education level 157; job situation by gender 152; job situation by residence stratum 153; mosque/ church attendances 117; participating in political development 129, 130; political activities participation 165; political activities participation by gender 166; political Castles 168; political engagement 115, 122; private religiosity 116; public religiosity 117; public vs. private sector rates of 150; on religion and politics 169, 171; social exclusion of 222; struggle for social recognition 50–55; technocracy and 119; unemployment rates 150, 209; use of politically correct words 132 Turner, B. 175 Ultras 72–73 unemployment see youth unemployment United Nations Development Programme 63, 84, 222 United States 41 uprisings, causes of 33, 35 see also Arab Spring virtual street 174–176 volunteer work 24, 37, 55, 135, 207, 214, 219n7 voting: common form of youth engagement 134–135; by country 122; party membership 112; political act of 42, 231; see also elections waithood: class politics and 184; description of 182; dis-empowering middle-class youth 186; effects of 182–183; marriage and 195; passiveness of 236; suspension of rights and 223; trapped in 184 women see young women World Youth Forum 78

Index young people: adult status through marriage 223; on gender equality 186–196; intimate relationships and 185; level of confidence in institutions 213; marriage and 184–185, 189; mixed method to analyse 226–227; as social actors 182; as social change agents 185; stuck in transition 184; see also Algerian youth, Egyptian youth, Lebanese youth, Moroccan youth, Tunisian youth young women: access to education 187–188; in agricultural sector 190; citizen engagement 57; civic engagement of 192; cultural innovation vs. tradition 197–198; discriminatory practices against 52; elections and 43; employment and 94; labour market for 158; personal and social empowerment 188; political activities participation 166, 166; in politics 174, 191–194; public religiosity 117; pursuing entrepreneurial career 16, 20, 26, 229; social control for 52, 53–54, 233; struggle working in outer world 185–186; unemployment rates 84, 147–148; vulnerable injustice and inequality 49; weights in public sphere 196 youth agency 185 youth bulge 144, 148, 163, 176

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youth cultures 1, 4–5, 15 youth emigration 95–97, 96 see also migration youth empowerment 75, 76 Youth Entities Act 78 youth identity construction 173 youth labour market: access to 151–152; dual labour markets 146; formal to informal work transitions 147; gender disparity 147–148; gendered differences 152–153; inclusion of women 188–189; informal 228; informal sector in 147; multiple employment 228; in neoclassical economics 146; nepotism and 157, 158–159; public employment sector 146–147; segmentation 146–149; social connections dominating 157, 158–159; see also school-to-work transitions youth life 3–4, 109, 127 youth unemployment: in Arab region 84, 209; as endemic under capitalism 83; entrepreneurship as solution to 98–99; global youth rate 83; human capital theory on 146; job-seeking approaches 92–93, 92; obstacles to 90, 94; obstacles to unemployment 188; as percentage of total labour force 209; as predictor for low interest in politics 127; rates of 31, 83, 110, 150; see also employment, youth labour market

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