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Youth as Actors of Change? The Cases of Morocco and Tunisia
Abstract
In the last decades, ‘youth’ has increasingly become a fashionable category in academic and development literature and a key development (or security) priority. However, beyond its biological attributes, youth is a socially constructed category and also one that tends to be featured in times of drastic social change. As the history of the category shows in both Morocco and Tunisia, youth can represent the wished-for model of future citizenry and a symbol of renovation, or its ‘not-yet-adult’ status which still requires guidance and protection can be used as a justification for increased social control and repression of broader social mobilisation. Furthermore, when used as a homogeneous and undifferentiated category, the reference to youth can divert attention away from other social divides such as class in highly unequal societies.
... The state was also controlling economy in order to foster political control over the population and Ben Ali's popularity (Sadiki, 2002). However, episodes of revolt have taken place during Ben Ali's regime, despite the centralized state having created mechanisms of co-optation of the young generation in order to control them and foster national identity through programs of public administration employment (Paciello and Pioppi, 2018). He started economic restructuring (until the end of 1990s) by introducing neoliberal reforms that include abolishing price control and state subsidies as well as fostering privatization. ...
... The legal opposition had no influence over the regime's agenda. Social policy was used as a means to maintain legitimacy and control even during economic structural adjustments(Paciello and Pioppi 2018). All these elements underline the low level of discretion that political actors enjoyed in Tunisia during Ben Ali's regime. ...
The Arab Uprisings started with the Tunisian revolution. These events brought the country to profound change, especially in its institutional asset. Relying on New Institutionalism theory and in particular on the Gradual Change Theory by Mahoney and Thelen, this paper analyses three fundamental dimensions of institutional change in order to establish which type of institutional change has occurred in post-revolution Tunisia. The paper looks at the characteristics of the institutions, the characteristics of the political context and the type of dominant change agent to determine the type of institutional change. In Tunisia, a low level of discretion in the interpretation of norms and rules, weak veto possibilities for the former regime supporters and an insurrection type of dominant change agent have resulted in a so-called “displacement” type of institutional change, where the removal of old rules is accompanied by the introduction of new ones.
The aim of this volume is to adopt an original analytical approach in explaining various dynamics at work behind the Arab Spring, through giving voice to local dynamics and legacies rather than concentrating on debates about paradigms. It highlights micro-perspectives of change and resistance as well as of contentious politics that are often marginalised and left unexplored in favour of macro-analyses. First, the stories of the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Morocco and Algeria are told through diverse and novel perspectives, looking at factors that have not yet been sufficiently underlined but carry explanatory power for what has occurred. Second, rather than focusing on macro-comparative regional trends – however useful they might be – the contributors to the book focus on the particularities of each country, highlighting distinctive micro-dynamics of change and continuity. The essays collected here are contributions from renowned writers and researchers from the Middle East, along with Western experts, thus allowing the formation of a sophisticated dialogic exchange.
This paper analyses employment policy and institutions in Morocco. It focuses on the question of how employment policy helps (or does not help) to reduce exclusion, improve equality of opportunity and steer the informal economy towards formality. The first part of the study describes the overall labour market situation. The second part of the study analyses the current situation of labour market policies and institutions namely labour legislation, wage policy and active and passive labour market policies. It also tackles equity issues as well as the importance of social dialogue on employment. The fourth part is devoted to employment services and their operations. The final section reviews the situation of employment in the informal economy including the impact of the economic and financial crisis.
This article looks critically at the new global youth, peace and security agenda, that has been marked by the passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2250 in December 2015. It argues that this agenda needs to be situated within the broader context of the securitisation of development, and that the increasing interest in youth as a security subject and actor is shaped by three overlapping sets of global security concerns: the concept of the youth bulge is a euphemism for the problem of growing surplus populations worldwide; the ideal of youth as peacebuilders is a model for eliciting youth support for the current global social and economic order; and the spectre of globally networked youth being radicalised by extremist groups has legitimated joint state and private sector projects that are taking an increasingly active role intervening in the online lives of young people around the world. The article draws on an analysis of a collection of core documents that form the heart of the global youth and security agenda; and it argues for the need for greater critical reflexivity in considering the growing attention being paid to youth as a social category in global development and policy discourse.
This article examines the liberalization and reform process that has been championed by the Moroccan monarchy since 1999. After the coronation of Mohammed VI, special attention has been given by the state to terms such as “participation”, “good governance” and “gender equa
lity” and several reform programs have since been launched. The aim of this article is to concentrate on the local level in which these reforms and official discourses are put into practice and are (re)adapted. In order to narrow the scope of analysis, this paper concentrates on the process of inclusion of new social actors (female NGO leaders) into the participatory sphere, using the case of the National Initiative for Human Development (INDH) that was launched in 2005. My aim is to show that inclusive participation is being promoted at a micro social level but that, at the same time, it has got many different and seemingly contradictory facets.
Attempts to understand the wider context of the Arab uprisings in Morocco mainly focus on the dynamic created by the 20 February Movement, while the long history of increasing socio-economic struggle tends to be underestimated. This article argues that the political and democratic protests of the last two years and the history of socio-economic protests cannot be viewed as unrelated phenomena but must be understood as part of the same process. The account focuses on different disturbances, such as the riots in the phosphate mining region of Khouribga, to show the particular dynamic between civil democratic and socio-economic struggles.
This study analyses how the migration policy options of the Government of Tunisia have been codified by repeated interactions with the European Union (EU) and its Member States. It argues that these interactions have been shaped by the gradual consolidation of a hierarchy of priorities where the drive for operability and security predominates. A hierarchy of priorities delineates the contours of the perceived top priorities that should be tackled first and foremost, while hiding or dismissing others. Having historicized the origins of this hierarchy, the study sets out to show that the prioritization of security concerns in bilateral and multilateral migration talks allowed the leadership of former President Ben Ali to skilfully readjust or channel transferred rules and policies on migration matters with a view to strengthening its own domination. This had serious implications for human rights observance in Tunisia. Today, after (or despite) the radical transformations that took place in Tunisia in early 2011, the same hierarchy of priorities continues to exist. However, its resilience may raise a host of complicated issues, given the empowered advocacy role of civil society organizations and the manifest alertness of Tunisian population.
This paper addresses unemployment as a source of social discontent and occasional catalyst for collective action, based on the example of the mobilisation of unemployed Moroccan university graduates. High unemployment rates, especially among recent university graduates, were presented as a main reason for the social unrest in North Africa, fuelling popular revolts against government regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. Morocco is the only country in the region where unemployment has been the leitmotiv of an enduring collective action since the 1990s, but organisations of the unemployed kept their distance from the local version of the Arab Spring, known as the February 20th Movement, because any political alliance is perceived as potentially jeopardising their chances of getting hired in the public administration.
This article fills an important gap in the literature by exploring the trends in social welfare in four MENA countries that have undertaken extensive economic liberalization programs under the auspices of the IMF and the World Bank — namely, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco. Studying the experiences of these countries provides an opportunity to enhance the understanding of the link between economic reforms, the level of social welfare provision, and political stability.
This paper argues that the growing contrast between the processes of radicalisation and democratisation in the age of global market reforms and the ‘War on Terror’ are not confined to the domestic Moroccan political scene. Political movements, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), civil society, governments, international institutions and foreign governments are all embedded within a growing number of international networks. The central problem of political and economic reform today lays in the ways it is conceptualised and implemented through a free market ideology that transfers power from the state to new ‘hybrid’ governmental
arrangements where ‘state’ and ‘market’ seem to become a symbiotic pair. Within the site of the still powerful nation-state therefore the disappearing traditional boundaries of inclusion and exclusion – formerly readily apparent in and logically deriving from national affiliations – are changing and altering. The main argument is that, contrary to dominant discourses, that democracy promotion through market reform does not bring forth overall economic growth and prosperity which will lead eventually to political liberalisation. Instead these reforms are inducing uneven geographical developments that do not trigger incentives for democratic accountability.
Youth, and youth employment especially, have jumped to the forefront of the international development agenda, driven by new funding and reporting priorities of the World Bank and allied international and national aid organisations. Despite the seductive rhetoric of youth empowerment, however, we argue that the new turn to youth serves primarily to serve the goal of insulating the increasingly contested neoliberal project from further political and ideological challenge. Through a reading of the World Bank's World Development Report 2007, we show how the Bank deploys an old strategy of using youth as a marketing tool to promote the interests of business and political elites. Youth and business interests are framed in this and other such reports as being one and the same, setting the stage for global youth to become the Bank's latest standard bearers for its brave new market society.
This article discusses the transformation of the Moroccan state under contemporary neoliberal globalization, and considers what this transition means for the ways in which scholars view state–society interplay in Morocco and the Arab world more generally. Specifically, it examines the protest of unemployed graduates in Morocco, suggesting that public demonstrations are not only a means to communicate and mobilize demands, but also a technology to reclaim and reproduce a particular ‘truth’ in public. This truth does not necessarily equate with the reality of the neoliberal state as a dispersed material force. As such, by looking at the case of Morocco, we hope to instigate further debate on the nature of the state and its specific relation to phenomena as globalization, society and social protest.
Morocco makes a good case for studying the significance of divide et impera. Morocco has belonged to the category of liberalized autocracies since independence, where the ruler has been consistently able to divide the opposition and pit some movements against others in order to retail full control over the political system by formally subscribing to some form of political pluralism. Morocco has experienced a huge surge in the number of civil society actors and an impressive growth of civil activism since Mohammed VI came to power. Studying Morocco shows how authoritarianism can persist while the divide and rule policy or trend played a decisive role over the last decade when the costs of repression for authoritarian leaders have increased substantially due in particular to external constraints. A for the case of Mohammed VI, he showed some skill in manipulating the opposition and in strengthening his own rule. Having increased the degree of pluralism in the country while retaining his place as the ultimate decision-maker, he remains authoritarian in nature. Nevertheless, Mohammed VI has introduced some reforms which might be a the first step towards a change in behavior.
It is not only since January 2011 and the so-called ‘youth revolutions’ that youth has become a key concept through which Europeans and Americans are viewing the Arab world. Since the 2000s, youth has increasingly entered European Union (EU) foreign policies in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the revised neighbourhood policy has in fact devoted an entire section to youth unemployment. But are EU policies contributing to the inclusion of youth? Based on discourse analysis and a comparative approach with US policies, this article argues that the EU and the United States have framed youth exclusively in relation to their ideal vision of a liberal order in the region as an asset, challenge or threat. This has in turn justified foreign policies which are pushing for a further liberalization of the labour market in these countries and which reproduce gendered images of young Muslim men as terror threats and threats to women, young Muslim women as victims and non-productive. While the Arab uprisings have resisted this discourse and practice of Western actors, they have not succeeded to change them; Western policies remain resilient.
The uprising in Tunisia in late 2010 and early 2011 has come to be seen as the first true revolution of the 21st Century, one that kick-started the series of upheavals across the region now known as the Arab Spring. Alcinda Honwana goes beyond superficial accounts of what occurred to explore the defining role of the country's youth, and in particular the cyberactivist. Drawing on fresh, first-person testimony from those who shaped events, the book describes in detail the experiences of young activists through the 29 days of the revolution and the challenges they encountered after the fall of the regime and the dismantling of the ruling party. Now, as old and newly established political forces are moving into the political void created by Ben Ali's departure, tensions between the older and younger generations are sharpening. An essential account of an event that has inspired the world, and its potential repercussions for the Middle East, Africa and beyond.
Over the last ten years, the government of Morocco has faced a dilemma. On the one hand, the structural problems of the economy, growing pressure from the IMF and the World Bank and the influence of other powerful interests both foreign and domestic, have led the government to adopt a series of measures which add up to a familiar package involving devaluation, cuts in public expenditure, a reduction of state intervention in the economy and the encouragement of private enterprise and market forces. On the other hand, the government has found it difficult until recently to implement its ‘stabilisation’ and ‘structural adjustment’ policies with the rigour that the two international agencies, aid donors and would-be investors would have liked to see. Reasons for this difficulty include: a continuing commitment to the war in the Sahara, strong pressure from certain sections of the middle class and organised working class to maintain a certain level of state involvement in the economy, and the danger that popular protest over measures threatening the welfare of the mass of the Moroccan people will turn into serious political agitation. Since 1987, however, the government appears to have committed itself more wholeheartedly to a programme of structural reform and privatisation.
Les violations des droits de l’homme et l’absence d’opposition politique dans les dictatures font régulièrement l’objet de critiques. Ce que l’on connaît moins, c’est le fonctionnement intime de ces régimes, les mécanismes par lesquels des populations entières se trouvent durablement assujetties. C’est ce travail de dévoilement qu’a entrepris Béatrice Hibou. À la croisée de deux traditions intellectuelles, l’économie politique wébérienne et l’analyse foucaldienne, elle analyse, à partir du cas de la Tunisie, les modes de gouvernement et les dispositifs de l’exercice concret du pouvoir. Elle montre comment ces dispositifs façonnent les modalités de l’obéissance, voire de l’adhésion. L’auteur fait émerger les rationalités des mécanismes d’assujettissement à partir de l’analyse du fonctionnement de l’économie tunisienne. Elle explique ainsi comment l’économie d’endettement, la fiscalité, la gestion des privatisations, l’organisation de la solidarité et de l’aide sociales créent des processus de dépendance mutuelle entre dirigeants et dirigés. La répression et le contrôle policier apparaissent alors moins centraux que les arrangements, les accommodements, les petites ruses calculées, les compromissions au jour le jour, les instrumentalisations réciproques garantissant la légitimation quotidienne du régime. Bien au-delà du seul cas tunisien, cet essai dérangeant fait comprendre comment se perpétuent les régimes autoritaires. Il permet aussi d’éclairer les mécanismes de domination à l’œuvre dans les États que l’on considère comme démocratiques.
Among the most remarkable things about the Tunisian revolution of 2011 was the role of the national trade union (UGTT). Joel Beinin has shown the critical importance this institutional power gave Tunisian workers in comparison to Egypt. I argue that its pre independence history is inadequate to understand this phenomenon given the weakness of Tunisian labour in the 1950s and 1960s. Instead, it can be traced to elite political crises of the 1970s, relatively continuous base militancy from 1970 to 2011 and the collapse of state military relations in the early 1990s. I use State Department archives combined with data from the International Labor Organization and the Tunisian Ministry of Social Affairs to make this case. These results support the idea that co-optation of Tunisian unions was far less extensive than pre 2011 studies suggested, but that labour unrest was less widespread and less disruptive to strategic industries in comparison to 2011 and after.
By the lights of the international financial institutions, Tunisia and Egypt were the celebrated success stories of the “Washington Consensus,” or neoliberal reform, in the Arab Mediterranean and participated fully in the worldwide economic boom of the 2000–2008 period. Neoliberalism promised to shrink government and promote private enterprise as the engine of growth and new job creation. While fewer resources were provided to public investment and services like health and education, private investment did not fully compensate, even as most benefits of growth, liberalization, and privatization were concentrated in the hands of a class of crony capitalists led by the ruling families. Throughout the 2000s, the underside of neoliberal growth became more glaring, including capital flight, the limited contributions of foreign direct investment (FDI) and open trade to domestic development, growing regional disparities, multidi-mensional poverty, multidimensional inequality, and malfunctions of the labor market.
This chapter reevaluates the concept of gendered citizenship in the Moroccan context of precarious employment, at a time marked by neoliberal policies implementing the ideology of globalization as a sine qua non condition for development (Heron 2008). In line with the World Bank and the IMF structural adjustment programs, Morocco has been pushing for initiatives targeting the massive recruitment of women in export-processing zones while reducing the size of its government. Ironically, some argue that far from reaping the benefits of open trade, women producing for exchange value are trapped in the exclusionary frameworks of a capitalist system that exacerbates social inequalities and blurs the meanings of digniry, hope, and human agency for the majority of the poor. Considering the first wave of popular uprisings that swept the Arab-Muslim world over the recent years, it is important to reiterate that low wages, insufficient social protection, insecure contracts, and few prospects for advancement have become common grievances for a complex web of popular classes living in the growing cities of Morocco. Indeed, fast urbanization driven by capitalist economic development—a phenomenon observed throughout the MENA region—has increased the dependence of citizens on the labor market for a livelihood.
Au Maghreb, sous l'empire de la renégociation de la dette publique et des injonctions des organismes financiers internationaux, « l'État développeur » des lendemains de l'indépendance, tout à la fois moderniste, patrimonial et autoritaire, avait dû se faire « modeste » et en appeler au développement du secteur privé ainsi qu'à une implication renforcée de la « société civile ». Le succès n'a pas été au rendez-vous de ce tournant pris dans les années quatre-vingt : bien plus, des inégalités sociales renforcées, des taux de chômage plus élevés, un système éducatif dévalorisé, une offre publique de soins dégradée ainsi que de nouvelles formes de pauvreté se sont conjugués pour mettre à mal un lien social déjà fragile ; parmi bien d'autres, des mouvements sociaux comme ceux des diplômés chômeurs ou les protestations récurrentes contre l'envolée des prix alimentaires, témoignent d'une angoisse individuelle et collective telle qu'elle s'est muée, par delà des calendriers spécifiques, en une priorité commune aux agendas politiques des trois pays du Maghreb : « sécuriser » la société en endiguant les « débordements » du social. C'est à déchiffrer ce moment particulier des mutations de l'action publique que s'attache ce livre. Ciblé sur trois activités principales – la formation, l'accès à l'emploi et la protection sociale -, il montre que la réforme de ces politiques se définit dans des configurations spécifiques, à la fois nationales et locales. Résolument comparatiste, la démarche s'intéresse d'abord aux trajectoires des « États sociaux maghrébins », mises à l'épreuve des réformes actuelles et de mouvements protestataires qui façonnent des arrangements particuliers. Puis la réflexion se concentre sur les réajustements des politiques de formation et d'emploi. S'affichent les profonds déphasages entre les ambitions avancées aux débuts des années 2000 et les conditions sociales qui président, localement ou sectoriellement, à la construction des compétences professionnelles. Enfin s'échafaude une interrogation sur les devenirs des politiques sociales au Maghreb.
Neoliberal reforms, clientelism and protest in a political authoritarian context. Social movements in Gafsa mining area in Tunisia (2008)
In 2008, a large six-month protest movement occurred in the Gafsa region (Southwestern Tunisia). This collective action, which took place in a context of high unemployment and political repression, was triggered off by the socio-economical downturn of the state-owned mining industry. This article analyses the causes and the decline of the protest : the weakening impact of the mining industry on the local economy, the erosion of clientelistic practices in the sector, the importance of a collective representation of Gafsa seen as a “rebellious region”. Eventually, the organization of the protest movement should be understood in its interactions with the state security apparatus, as well as with several political organisations at local and national levels.
Beyond the narrative which praises “the Moroccan exception”, an extensive contentious movement has developed throughout the country. Far from being the product of a domino effect, the February 20 Movement stems notably from a process of building assumptions of similarity, from the reactivation of more or less abeyant structures. A wide coalition has developed within a field of both alliance and opposition, at the intersection of formal political sphere and contentious politics, regardless of cleavages between leftist networks and Islamists. On a variety of scales involving the local, national, regional and international levels, an array of actions, interactions and events have contributed as much to the coalition taking roots as to the process of its erosion.
There has been a proliferation of interest in youth issues in recent years, and Muslim youth in particular. Young Muslims have been thrust into the global spotlight in relation to questions about security, employment, migration, multiculturalism, conflict, human rights, and citizenship. This book interrogates the cultures and politics of Muslim youth in the global South and North to understand their trajectories, conditions, and choices. It shows that although the majority of young Muslims share many common social, political, and economic misfortunes, they exhibit remarkably diverse responses to their situations. Although groups of them are drawn into radical Islam, others embrace their religion more as an identity marker. Although some take Islam as a normative frame and subvert it to express and reclaim their youthfulness, their counterparts may exert themselves through a music of rage or via collective action using the tools of new media and communications technologies. Far from being "exceptional," young Muslims in reality have as much in common with their non-Muslim global generational counterparts as they share among themselves. They permeate the spaces of culture and politics to navigate between being Muslim, modern, and young.
This contribution focuses on the ‘Arab Spring’ in Morocco and on the interactions between the mainly urban-based activists that made up the 20 February Movement (F20M), and the population in rural areas. Based on six weeks of fieldwork between November 2013 and March 2014, mostly in the areas in and near Marrakech, we find that while the urban F20M events stimulated and inspired protests in rural areas, in practice there were only sporadic contacts based on the activists' personal feelings of belonging rather than their organizational membership. This is mainly due to discursive disconnects between the centre and periphery. As for the outcomes, in particular the new constitution, many respondents believe that nothing has changed so far.
An analysis of “Youth participation” in Morocco from a political economy perspective
This paper aims at exploring different practices and narratives associated with “youth participation” in Morocco. It takes as its starting point the attention on young people as protagonists and promoters of new forms of participation, renewed since the February 20 Movement raised to public attention in 2011. It relies on several empirical studies, conducted by an approach of historical sociology of politics and economics, to reconstruct the different forms of participation intended as an avant-garde, as a protest, and as a hobby, which are respectively associated with the myth of youth, the frustration assigned to it, and the illusion that it is an eternal stage. The analysis of the contiguity between these different forms of participation should allow exploring the nature of the social tensions characteristic of the current political situation.
This article investigates how public employee unions mobilised to take advantage of Morocco's Arab uprising. Leveraging their positions as operators of public institutions, these unionists exploited the unrest to strategically advance their interests. Two points emerge from this account of state—labour relations in Morocco. First, a spike in labour contestation began in early 2010, presaging the unrest that rocked Moroccan cities in 2011. Second, the unions secured their demands through traditional tactics of labour mobilisation—joining street protests, exaggerating material demands, and threatening negotiation walkouts. This strategy, however, became more efficacious during the Arab uprising. Fearing urban riots that had historically grown from labour protests since the 1980s, regime elites conceded to union demands, many of which they had previously rejected in the 2000s.
This article argues that attempts to understand the significance and implication of the Arab uprisings must not lose sight of the fact that the current pressures for change are rooted in the fundamental political transformations that took place during the previous three decades. These transformations were intimately related to neoliberal economic reforms. The article examines the impact of neoliberal reforms in two parts. First, it discusses the politics behind three decades of neoliberalism in the region. Second, it elaborates on the urban setting as a locale where we can theorize some of the agency at work in the complex process of neoliberal globalization. As such, we should understand Arab politics–and resistance–as a complexity that goes beyond the mere interaction between ‘the regime’ and ‘the Arab people’ and relate these politics to shifting power balances in contemporary globalization.
Following the popular uprisings that erupted across North Africa in 2010 and 2011, international financial institutions have embarked on a significant re-engagement with governments in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt. New lending arrangements and project initiatives by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, in particular, have emphasised a supposed turn towards pro-poor policies, social inclusion and public engagement with economic decision-making. This article analyses the content and logic of IMF and World Bank lending to these three countries, examining whether this re-engagement represents a substantive shift away from the neoliberal policies that characterised pre-2011 IFI relationships with the region.
Originating in rural areas, the popular uprising that led to the Tunisian revolution of 14 January 2011 has shed light on the growing social and regional disparities that have characterized development dynamics in Tunisia. While fa-vouring the reallocation of resources to coastal areas to the detriment of interior and agricultural regions, liberalization processes since the late 1980s also fostered export-oriented agricultural development strategies, based on the promotion of large-scale agricultural enterprises and irrigated farming. As a result, imports of grains and animal feed have come to represent a growing source of commercial balance deficit and of financial pressure on public budgets, particularly since the food crisis of 2008. On the other hand, decreasing farm subsidies, higher produc-tion costs, growing farmers' indebtedness, have importantly reduced the repro-duction capacity of a large fraction of farms, particularly in the rain-fed agricul-ture sector. As rural outmigration and non-farm employment opportunities have been declining, small farms have become survival spaces for jobless household members, increasing the pressure on family resources and exacerbating social frustrations. While rising food prices were not the only cause of recent uprisings in Tunisia, processes of agricultural restructuring during the past 20 years contrib-uted importantly to fuel the revolutionary dynamics, thus giving a political di-mension to food issues. As demonstrated by the rise of farmers' protest movement (land occupations, contestation of farmers unions, refusal to pay for irrigation water), structural change allowing for an increased control of economic resources by local farm producers is needed, but will fundamentally depend on the effec-tiveness of current process of 'democratic' transition in Tunisia.
Employing a Gramscian framework this analysis argues that economic liberalization in Tunisia under Zine El Abidine Ben Ali allowed for a deeper penetration of state power into society, introducing novel modes of control during a climate of economic uncertainty which, labelled an ‘economic miracle’, was to be defended at all costs. It examines two institutions central to the reform process – the Tunisian Solidarity Bank and the National Solidary Fund – making the argument that, by associating the ‘miracle’ discourse with a variety of pre-existing narratives, the regime ensured compliance, invalidated dissent and prolonged its repressive grip on power.
The demonstrations by thousands of young people since 20 February 2011 have re-launched the debate on the position of the young and their social, economic and political conditions in Moroccan society. This article examines that position and these conditions, revealing a series of social changes that justify our speaking of the emergence of a new sociological generation. It also analyses the 20th February Movement, its nature, its limits and its achievements, as well as the Moroccan regime's responses to it. The conclusions are that the movement's demands represent the vanguard of the reformist agenda and are the tip of the iceberg of the changes experienced by young people. Thus it is possible that we can speak here about a new historical generation.
The Regime of “Change” Champion of “Stability”. Buzzwords and Development in Tunisia
According to analysts, “stability” represents the main feature of Tunisian model of development. International donors point out positively that concern without specifying its outlines. They postulate that stability is a fundamental factor to realize economic development. Consequently, “stability” can justify different economic strategies, even paradoxical ones. However, the use of “stability” by Tunisian authorities refers to a technique of government rather than to a trivial semantic shift from macroeconomic to socio-political « stability ». The Tunisian discourse translates a mode of government which ambition is to adapt its action to a liberalized and globalized economy. It also intends to manage social pressure and redistribution conflicts. As a result, « stability » in the Tunisian context reveals a kind of government practices which aim at coherently articulating the economic, social and political fields in order to make transformations easier to govern.
Since the 1980s, garment manufacturing has burgeoned in Morocco, and labor on the garment shop floor has become the domain of females. This article examines the history and development of the garment industry in Fez, Morocco, and the nature of women's experience as garment factory workers. In particular, the author explores the cultural assumptions that render the employment of young and unmarried females more acceptable than that of mature, married women.
