The quest for social justice in Tunisia: socioeconomic protest and political democratization post 2011 (original) (raw)
Related papers
2010
The year 2008 was marked, in Tunisia, by the Revolt of the Gafsa Mining Basin. The social mobilizations which shook this poor area, located close to the Algerian border, represent the most important protest movement seen in Tunisia since the Bread Revolt of January 1984. Within Tunisia's authoritarian context, this Revolt of the Mining Basin has shown that significant segments of the Tunisian population were able to voice their protest; at the same time, however, the protest movement, due to the limited support it enjoyed within Tunisian society, was unable to grow, nor was it able to withstand the coercive policy of Ben Ali's regime.
Mobilization of the Marginalized: Unemployed Activism in Tunisia
Issam Fares Institute Working Paper, 2017
Unemployed protests are the most important form of socioeconomic contention in Tunisia. Calls for employment and condemnations of corrupt recruitment procedures have fueled large-scale protests since the mid 2000s. Despite massive discontent, unemployed mobilization has thus far lacked political leverage. In this working paper, we assess if the dynamics of mobilization in Tunisia can explain unemployed protests’ lack of political leverage. Our study reveals that the majority of unemployed mobilization can be characterized as unorganized and spontaneous. Protest actors raised limited claims, mostly demanding their own employment, and making use of disruptive protests, such as street and railway blockages. The nation-wide scene of unemployed mobilization, on the other hand, is captured by the 2006-formed Union des diplômés chômeurs (Union of Unemployed Graduates, UDC). In this working paper we compare these two forms of activism by the unemployed: those of the UDC and the unorganized unemployed protests, using the Gafsa mining basin as our case study. We have identified two divergent trajectories since 2011. The UDC has expanded its membership, offices, and contentious actions, and increased its levels of organization and professionalism. By contrast, the Gafsa mining basin protesters fragmented, despite an increase in discrete protest events. We try to explain these dynamics by explicating the social meaning of the activists’ grievances. We then compare their mobilization networks before looking at how diverse activists have perceived political opportunities and threats since 2011. Finally, we will try to draw conclusions on the different forms of unemployed activism and their interplay with political change in Tunisia.
State violence and labor resistance: the 2008 Gafsa mining basin uprising and its afterlives
The Center for the Humanities Blog, 2018
With its roots in the era of European imperial expansion and French colonial rule, the Tunisian security state has functioned to secure markets for European goods and access for European capital. It has enabled the conquest and expropriation of land and natural resources and the management and repression of political dissent. Most importantly for this part of my research, the Tunisian security state by design (re)produces the stratified vulnerabilities required for colonial-capitalist exploitation and regulation of labor, as well as various other forms of value extraction. Though by no means its only mechanism, violence has been central to the workings of the security state. Rather than viewing this violence as exceptional or in excess of the normal workings of the state[ii], this research assesses the ‘law preserving’ and ‘law making’ role of state violence, as well as the potential for resistance itself to engage in ‘law making’ [iii]. Analysis of the discursive context and battles over representation are in many ways as fundamental as underpinning material relations to understanding these dialectically connected modes of law-making.
Socioeconomic Protests in MENA and Latin America: Egypt and Tunisia in Interregional Comparison
Weipert-Fenner, Irene, and Jonas Wolff, eds.: Socioeconomic Protests in MENA and Latin America: Egypt and Tunisia in Interregional Comparison, London: Palgrave Macmillan., 2020
This edited volume presents a detailed account of the dynamics of socioeconomic contention in Egypt and Tunisia since 2011. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, it analyses what has happened to the socioeconomic grievances that played a key role in the mass mobilizations of 2010 and 2011. The book is based on an original data set of socioeconomic protests in the two countries and on in-depth case studies that cover the two most important types of socioeconomic contention: labor protests and protests by socioeconomically disadvantaged people outside the formal economy. Drawing on a systematic review of comparative research on Latin America, the authors argue that the dynamics of socioeconomic contention in contemporary Egypt and Tunisia reflect a deep-seated crisis of popular sector incorporation. This work promises to enrich the scholarly and the political debates on Egypt and Tunisia, the MENA region and on contentious politics in times of political change. Chapter 10 of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-19621-9.
This working paper outlines a research agenda that aims at studying the dynamics and consequences of socioeconomic contention during the current processes of political transformation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region from a comparative perspective that includes an interregional comparison with South America. In doing so, the authors review the state of research on socioeconomic protests in the MENA region, sketch an overall analytical framework and critically discuss the contentious politics approach on which this framework draws on. Finally, the paper presents a multilateral research project that has precisely set out to analyze to what extent and how socioeconomic contention shapes the ongoing process of political transformation in postrevolutionary Egypt and Tunisia.
Regarding political change and regime transitions, this paper suggests that a better understanding of these phenomena is achieved by focusing on studying and explaining the variety of results and transformations of an uprising and not only on what leads people to upraise in the first place. Secondly, it argues that the current political instability and conflicts in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) can be better explained from a comparative perspective using an instrumental-historical approach. Namely, observing the characteristics of social groups such as elites, interests groups, political parties, and their interactions between each other and with the regime. Taking the "Arab spring" revolts as the main region of study, this paper aims to answer why did we observe such a different and apparently " successful " result in the case of Tunisia? in order to contribute to answer a bigger question: Why did some social movements become violent and others don't?. Regarding the methodology and the data, this work uses a comparative method and it compares the case of Tunisia with Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria. This paper also reviews the literature about social movements, political change and regime stability with an instrumental point of view (political parties theory, social groups theory and elites theory) and it compares the interaction between 3 elite variables before, during, and after 2011 in these 6 countries: the group of interests, the political parties, and the army. It pays special attention to how their characteristics, composition, and historical influence in each country policy forged the interactions between each other, therefore their impact in the revolt result and current country situation. By doing this research the author main purpose is to contribute to the social movements field of study explaining the variety of results and transformations of an uprising and not only what leads people to upraise in the first place. Also, it provides an instrumental approach to understand the current political instability and conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries.
Workers’ movements contributed substantially to the 2011 popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Bahrain. Comparing the role of workers before, during and after the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt demonstrates that the relatively successful installation of a procedural democracy in Tunisia owes a great deal to the movements of workers and the unemployed in the uprisings and to their organisational structure and political horizon. Tunisian workers could compel the Tunisian General Federation of Labor (UGTT), despite the wishes of its pro-Ben Ali national leadership, to join them and the rest of the Tunisian people in a struggle against autocracy. Egyptian workers, on the other hand, were not able to force the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) to support the uprising and had no national organisations and only weak links to intellectuals.
The Politics of Protest in Tunisia. Instrument in Parties’ Competition vs. Tool for Participation.
SWP Comments 2015/C 13, 2015
The compromise that was reached between the Tunisian Islamists of Ennahda and old regime players in the fall of 2013 made it possible to adopt a new constitution in early 2014, hold elections by the end of that year, and form a national unity government by February 2015. It also ended a period of intense confrontation in the streets, which had threatened to plunge the country into chaos and civil strife. Yet, protests are liable to rebound, as the parties that have formed the government lack a common vision that could reconcile their mutually hostile grassroots. They have also failed to stem demonstrations for social justice and equitable development in the country’s deprived regions. Sustainable stabilization will require that political parties cease to perceive bottom-up mobilization as a tool they can deploy against adversaries, or as a security threat that needs to be contained. Rather, they should recognize its potential to broaden citizens’ participation and be a corrective that can lead to more effective governance.