While the role of youth in the Arab Spring is acknowledged, their living conditions remain critical. Johannes Frische offers a fresh perspective on Tunisias post-revolutionary transition by examining employment and income strategies in disadvantaged urban areas. He reveals a grim reality: young people face structural unemployment, informality, and precariousness. Focusing on the low-income suburb of Ettadhamen in Greater Tunis, he highlights the impact of sociospatial segregation, economic stagnation, and social marginalization. This close-up on youth's everyday life challenges the notion of youth as a simple transitional phase, instead exposing their ongoing struggle with precarity and exclusion.
Acknowledgements
List of Illustration
Abbreviations
Notes on Transcription and Terminology
Introduction: Entering a Contested Terrain
1Locating Global Contexts and Concepts
1Core Issues of Urban Inequality across the North-South Divide
2The Right to the City: A Global Discourse and Its Local Implications
3Urban Spaces: Everyday Life and the Role of the State
4Urban Youth: Scopes of Action and Forms of Exclusion
5From the Informal Sector to Global Informalization
6Precarity and Precaritization
7Analytical Perspectives for the North African Context
2Re-tracing Development in Tunisia: Root Causes of Economic and Spatial
Inequities
1Spatial Inequities, Social and Economic Cleavages
2Historical Roots of Urbanization
3Polarization in the Periphery of the Greater Tunis Region
4Spatial and Economic Inequality
4.1Small-Scale Economy and the Informal Sector
4.2Internal and External Migration
4.3Cross-border Trade in the Periphery
4.4Urban Spaces: Markets and Street Trading in Tunis
5Asymmetric Integration into Globalization Processes
3Approaching the Field: Ettadhamen as a Suburban Area in Greater Tunis
1On the Emergence of Ettadhamen: Informal Settlements and Restructuring
2Economic Dynamics and Spaces of Everyday Practice
3From Social Marginalization to Mobilization and Migration
4Methodology and Fieldwork Concerns
4.1Access to the Field
4.2Analytical Approach: Reconstruction of Life Situations and Everyday
Conditions
5Researching Everyday Life in Structurally Disadvantaged Areas
4Individual Life Situations (20122013): Informal and Precarious Work or
Being Jobless
1Contextualizing Politico-Institutional and Economic Conditions
1.1Background to the Flexibilization and Precaritization of Employment in
Tunisia
1.2Self-Employment and Microcredit Financing
2The Situation of the Interviewees: Employed, Self-employed, Unemployed?
3Selected Case Studies (201213)
3.1Being Jobless: Causes of Economic Disintegration
3.2Day Laborers and Street Vendors: Living from Hand to Mouth
3.3Laboring in the Family Business: A Contained Workforce
3.4Wage Labor: Gaining Ones Livelihood in a Situation of Dependence
3.5Self-employed Work: Autonomy Instead of Dependence?
4Analytical Perspectives
4.1Everyday Coping in the Here and Now - Transitions into an Uncertain
Future
4.2Interdependencies between Informal and Precarious Work
4.3Self-employment and Informal Trade as an Alternative to Wage Labor?
4.4Gaining Mobility despite Sociospatial Segregation?
5Solidarity and Individual Subsistence Strategies
5Youth in Tunisia (2016): Precarious Living Conditions and Uncertain
Prospects for the Future
1Conceptualizing Transitional Phases: Waithood and Contained Youth
2The Economic Situation of Tunisian Youth
3Future Prospects in the Face of Precarity and Uncertainty
4An Excluded Generation?
5Conclusion: Youth as Agents of Change?
Conclusions: Joining the Dots and Looking toward the Future
1Structural and Sociospatial Causes of Exclusion in the Urban Context of
Tunisia
2Post-Revolutionary Tunisia: Youth as a Precarious Living Situation
3Global Outlook: Political Economy Perspectives on Youth
Bibliography
Index
After studying Middle East Studies, History, and Religious Studies at the University of Leipzig, Johannes Frische earned his doctorate in Globalization Research in 2021. His scientific interests, focusing on North Africa and the Middle East, include Youth Studies, Urban Studies, Sociology, and Migration. He has undertaken several study and research visits to Tunisia, Morocco, and Syria.
Lisainfo e-raamatute kohta