Just like people around the world have done for generations, Arab people from the Middle East and North African (MENA) region have immigrated to various nations around the world. A number of ‘push’ factors account for why groups have left their homeland and ‘pulled’ to another nation to settle. The history and patterns of Arab migration out of the MENA illustrates the wide array of reasons for these patterns, primarily illustrating that mass emigration and settlement are highly linked to a number of factors, including social, political, economic, familial climates of each nation-state and its policies. If it is one takeaway that this edited volume brings to light, it is that the Arab MENA does not only include a diverse population within each nation-state it also illustrates the ways in which their settlement in new nations have contributed to their own identity development patterns, their communities, and that of their new nation-state. This book celebrates the achievements and acknowledges the challenges of the new communities that Arabs have built around the world. It shows examples of societies that have embraced the Arab diaspora as well as examples of sidelining these communities. These examples come from a number of subject areas, from music to international affairs. The examples are both contemporary and historical, authored by individuals with a diverse set of disciplinary lenses and professional training. This book is meant to fill a gap in the literature as it expands on the understanding of Arab communities to inform and inspire a more nuanced, inclusive approach to the study of the Arab diaspora. It does so by revealing untold stories that challenge stereotypes to push for more inclusive media representation of Arab identity and its development in various regions of the world.

Research for Development in the Middle East and North Africa

"This new textbook explores the societies of the Middle East and North Africa. Presenting original chapters written by the world's leading Middle East scholars, it explores the social life of the region's varied populations to uncover its organizing structures, human vulnerabilities, and dynamic forces. In so doing, it explores major events and notable developments in nearly two dozen countries, including the Arab world, Israel, Turkey, and Iran, since the early twentieth century. Linking past to present to future, it also ascertains the potential futures of these societies, including their overall stability and prosperity. The chapters are clearly structured, and contain insightful case studies, illustrative photographs, and visualized data. They also end with discussion questions and annotated bibliographies to help spark further research. Among the rich topics covered are: - Rural life - Civil society and personal identities - Economic challenges, oil legacies, environmental harm - Religious movements, women and gender, and youth politics. The Societies of the Middle East and North Africa is written in an accessible way, prioritizing social, cultural and economic dimensions. As such this textbook provides a comprehensive introduction to the field and will be invaluable to students of Middle Eastern politics and society, as well as sociology and anthropology"--

Before the 2011 uprisings, the Middle East and North Africa were frequently seen as a uniquely undemocratic region with little civic activism. The first edition of this volume, published at the start of the Arab Spring, challenged these views by revealing a region rich with social and political mobilizations. This fully revised second edition extends the earlier explorations of Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, and adds new case studies on the uprisings in Tunisia, Syria, and Yemen. The case studies are inspired by social movement theory, but they also critique and expand the horizons of the theory's classical concepts of political opportunity structures, collective action frames, mobilization structures, and repertoires of contention based on intensive fieldwork. This strong empirical base allows for a nuanced understanding of contexts, culturally conditioned rationality, the strengths and weaknesses of local networks, and innovation in contentious action to give the reader a substantive understanding of events in the Arab world before and since 2011.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is an economically diverse region. Despite undertaking economic reforms in many countries, and having considerable success in avoiding crises and achieving macroeconomic stability, the region’s economic performance in the past 30 years has been below potential. This paper takes stock of the region’s relatively weak performance, explores the reasons for this out come, and proposes an agenda for urgent reforms.

About the separate trajectories of the Levant, the Gulf, Egypt and the Maghreb after the Arab Spring uprisings

This volume combines ethnographic accounts of fieldwork with overviews of recent anthropological literature about the region on topics such as Islam, gender, youth, and new media. It addresses contemporary debates about modernity, nation building, and the link between the ideology of power and the production of knowledge. Contributors include established and emerging scholars known for the depth and quality of their ethnographic writing and for their interventions in current theory.