Political Temporalities of Youth

2015

META: Middle East - Topics & Arguments, international, interdisciplinary, peer reviewed open access journal, 2017

Review of Middle East Studies, 2013

Like a storm wind that will ring the freedom bell…"

Why are the Arab Revolution dubbed as Youth Revolutions? Who is pushing for this label? And why? Prior to these revolutions and specifically after 9/11 Arab youth were dubbed as terrorists, and their state of Arab youth has become one of global concern. How over night can terrorist youth turn into revolutionary youth? Why has youth become a focus of concern now? What is at stake here and for whom? How does this shape how we think about social, economic, political, historical issues in the Arab world, and what issues does it obscure? The paper focuses on the historical emergence and transformation of "Arab youth" in the new millennium marked by the war on terror and opening up of the market in the Middle East in the hope that this historical account might shed light on the current label of Arab Revolutions as Youth ones.

2015

Based on participant observation and personal conversations conducted during the World Social Forum (WSF) 2013 in Tunisia, the article analyzes the role of new, young and independent civil society movements emerging within the field of Tunisian migration and asylum politics. It shows how the revolts in 2011 have not only opened up a temporary opportunity for young Tunisians to leave their country but also to stay and politicize the issue of migration within Tunisian society in the longer run. As a result, it argues, that Tunisian migration politics have not only been re-shaped 'from above' through the interplay of the powerful international interests and new actors within Tunisian state politics, but are also increasingly influenced 'from below' by new actors of an emerging independent Tunisian civil society. While exploring the goals, agendas and forms of organization of three young movements present at the WSF 2013, particular attention will be paid to whom their c...

The Pardee Papers, 2013

Many scholars have focused on the political factors (in particular, the desire for regime change and democratization) as central motivations for the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011. However, the Arab world is currently experiencing massive demographic crises, and policy makers must acknowledge the cultural pressures that have left this young generation trapped in a pre-adulthood phase of social status that prevents them from becoming fully engaged with Arab society. The inability of youth to access the opportunities promised in the social contract of adulthood—including quality education, viable employment, and marriage and family formation—has led to massive resentment motivating youth to actively seek change within their country and region. Countries which do not begin to address the cultural sources of youth frustration will find themselves vulnerable to continued unrest long after the Arab Spring dissipates, while the current youth generation runs the risk of becoming socially displaced in a region experiencing rapid economic and cultural development.

Mediterranean Politics, 2012

Arab youth have proved to be an engine for long-awaited political change in the region, but who are they and how should we understand them as a phenomenon rather than simply a social category? This paper suggests that the various paradigms which exist for identifying and explaining Arab youth are individually in themselves insufficient. By combining their contributions, however, Arab youth becomes visible as a lived and shared generational narrative of the exclusion and marginalisation which have resulted from post-independence state failures in the political, economic and social realms. Their subsequent informal and alternative formats for protest and action reveal the links between the local and the global of youth narratives.

POMEPSStudies 36: Youth Politics in the Middle East and North Africa, 2019

2012

Abstract One of the hallmarks of the Tunisian uprising that ousted President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011 was its broad base of support. To the surprise of many Middle East experts who had previously regarded co-opted and quiescent middle classes as the bedrock of stability for authoritarian regimes in the region, the Tunisian revolution rode on the back of a broad coalition of social forces that united an alienated intellectual elite with the rural poor and urban middle classes in opposition to the regime.