This book examines the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa, and how it impacts young people's civic and political participation today. The edited volume analyses the extent to which young people influence public policies, social, cultural and economic structures, and how on the other hand these young people are influenced by the same structures. It focuses on the politics and agency of youth, and how they impact social change and continuity in the Middle East and North Africa. The book will be of great value to students, scholars and researchers interested in Youth Movements, MENA, Comparative Politics and Political Economy. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Mediterranean Politics.

The 2011 Arab uprisings led to a great proliferation of studies on the situations in the Arab countries of the Mediterranean, with particular attention given to their young people, whose role was particularly central. Eight years on, in-depth exploration is still needed of the conditions in which millions of (mainly young) people demanded change. In this context, this volume examines the state and diversity of the forms of socioeconomic, political and cultural marginalization facing the region's young men and women, as well as the strategies and routes of contestation by which they escape them. Through the interdisciplinary empiricism of this book, based on the results emerging from the SAHWA Project (funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme, grant agreement n° 613174), we aspire to build a complex description and analysis of the current situation of the Arab Mediterranean youth. The aim is to fathom out young people's patterns, agency and living conditions, focusing on the relational character of the juvenile worlds actively constructed by themselves. The authors explore the main trends that are reflected in the social strategies, cultural constructions and changes within the Arab youth population, and whether the creation of new lifestyles and the emergence of youth cultures are an indicator of sociopolitical transitions. To answer all these questions the researchers have conducted a comprehensive study in five Arab Mediterranean countries: Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia. Based on mixed method research the data collection is composed of two primary sources: the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017), in which 10,000 young people were interviewed; and the SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork 2015, involving more than 200 young people.

The 2011 Arab uprisings led to a great proliferation of studies on the situations in the Arab countries of the Mediterranean, with particular attention given to their young people, whose role was particularly central. Eight years on, in-depth exploration is still needed of the conditions in which millions of (mainly young) people demanded change. In this context, this volume examines the state and diversity of the forms of socioeconomic, political and cultural marginalization facing the region's young men and women, as well as the strategies and routes of contestation by which they escape them. Through the interdisciplinary empiricism of this book, based on the results emerging from the SAHWA Project (funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme, grant agreement no 613174), we aspire to build a complex description and analysis of the current situation of the Arab Mediterranean youth. The aim is to fathom out young people’s patterns, agency and living conditions, focusing on the relational character of the juvenile worlds actively constructed by themselves. The authors explore the main trends that are reflected in the social strategies, cultural constructions and changes within the Arab youth population, and whether the creation of new lifestyles and the emergence of youth cultures are an indicator of sociopolitical transitions. To answer all these questions the researchers have conducted a comprehensive study in five Arab Mediterranean countries: Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia. Based on mixed method research the data collection is composed of two primary sources: the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017), in which 10,000 young people were interviewed; and the SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork 2015, involving more than 200 young people.

Established in June 2014, New-Med is a research network of Mediterranean experts and policy analysts with a special interest in the complex social, political, cultural and security-related dynamics that are unfolding in the Mediterranean region. The network is developed by IAI, in cooperation with the OSCE Secretariat in Vienna, the Compagnia di San Paolo of Turin, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, and the German Marshall Fund (GMF) of the United States. At the core of the New-Med activities stands the need to rethink the role of multilateral, regional and sub-regional organizations, to make them better equipped to respond to fast-changing local and global conditions and to address the pressing demands coming from Mediterranean societies all around the basin. Beyond the narrow focus on security concerns dominating debates on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), there is a dire need for local perspectives on the many pressing socio-economic and political challenges impacting the “youth” and broader societies in the region. This volume brings together such perspectives offered by eight outstanding young scholars from the region on a broad range of issues: from political activism, to women’s empowerment, from environmental challenges to unemployment, all paying attention to youth-inclusiveness. Their accounts highlight the need for policies that are human-centric and not merely state-centric, and for going beyond reproducing “politics as usual”, and instead responding to the changing problems and aspirations of societies with their younger and older cohorts.

This book examines the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa, and how it impacts young people’s civic and political participation today. The edited volume analyses the extent to which young people influence public policies, social, cultural and economic structures, and how on the other hand these young people are influenced by the same structures. It focuses on the politics and agency of youth, and how they impact social change and continuity in the Middle East and North Africa. The book will be of great value to students, scholars and researchers interested in Youth Movements, MENA, Comparative Politics and Political Economy. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Mediterranean Politics.

Moving from a historical and cultural perspective, this book examines the geo-political and socio-economic changes involving the enlarged Mediterranean. Organised into two main sections, the first section (The new centrality of the Mediterranean Basin: Trends and Dynamics) is devoted to the analysis of the most relevant drivers and interdisciplinary broader issues, and the second section (Hotspots of Crisis and Regional Interferences in the Mediterranean) assesses the situation in some areas interested by the waves of uprisings since 2011-12. The book aims to uncover this new, critical centrality of the Mediterranean in the global scenario through the analysis of the interactions and intertwining of those trends and dynamics offering a historical holistic broad view. What follows is an Italian perspective that is the result of the research of a group of scholars who have been working for years on the first-hand sources of the countries examined. A peculiar vision connected not only to its unique geographical position at the center of the basin, but also to its deep relations with the southern shore throughout its long history.