Precarious Collective Action: Unemployed Graduates Associations in the Middle East and North Africa

Abstract

Why did unemployed university graduates form collective associations in some countries in the Middle East and North Africa but not in others? Despite similar levels of grievances around educated unemployment, reversals in guaranteed employment schemes, and similarly restrictive conditions for mobilization, unemployed graduates’ associations formed in Morocco and Tunisia but not in Egypt. Conventional explanations—focused on grievances, political opportunities, or pre-existing organizational structures—cannot account for this variation. Instead, I point to the power of ideologically conducive frames for mobilization around the time that grievances become salient. A strong Leftist oriented tradition of student unionism in Morocco and Tunisia was necessary for the emergence of a rights-based discourse around the “right to work.” This was not the case in Egypt, where Islamists, not Communists, dominated student politics at the time that grievances around educated unemployment became salient. This article offers one of the first comparative studies of the mobilization of the unemployed in a non-Western, non-democratic context.

Organised by transitions: the self-organisation of next-generation welfare professionals in Slovenia

“…It also shows that building these communities within education-to-work transitions is much more challenging for those who have already left universities, thus supporting the view that unions should start engaging with youth when they are still in education (Behrend and Hipp, 2017) and that student activism experiences can be important for subsequent organising (Bishara, 2021). While social work students were still embedded in a supportive educational community in the Faculty of Social Work, which encouraged them to critically asses precarious education-to-work transition and offered a physical space for organising, unemployed and precarious graduates in education were completely atomised, yet found their organising space online.…”

“…More important is for unions to be present in the transitional zones between education and work in which people in 'waithood' cycle in and out of waged work. Because government shapes their everyday struggles with unemployment benefits, activation schemes and job search, unemployed and precariously employed workers target their demands at the state, in Slovenia, but also in North Africa (Bishara, 2021), Britain (Coderre-Lapalme et al 2021, and elsewhere in Europe (Giugni, 2016).…”

“…She finds that these people in transitions are not passively waiting for their situation to change, but employing various survival strategies within a given context and structural constrains. Bishara (2021) shows that in Morocco and Tunisia, jobless university graduates, steeped in leftist student activism, have organised for a right to work in the context of high graduate unemployment.…”

Introduction to a Special Issue on Labor in the Middle East and North Africa: Precarity, Inequality, and Migration

“…A growing research agenda examines the strategic interactions between workers, the unemployed, unions, and the state in the MENA. In countries with a long history of state control over unions, such as Egypt, scholars examined wildcat strikes (Beinin 2016) and attempts to organize beyond existing unions (Duboc 2014;Bishara 2018). In Jordan, a resurgence of labor activism featured organizing efforts by day-wage laborers and teachers, despite a recent crackdown on the latter (Adely 2012;Lacouture 2022).…”

“…For example, work on Morocco and Tunisia illustrates the pragmatism and strategic choices of unemployed activists, some of whom deliberately eschew ties to groups they perceive as “politicized” to maximize their ability to gain concessions and avoid repression (Badimon 2013; Weipert-Fenner 2020). This work contributes to comparative scholarship (Chabanet and Faniel 2012a; Garay 2016) by extending the scope of analysis to authoritarian rule and examining the conditions under which unemployed activists go beyond protest by forming collective associations (Bishara 2021).…”