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ABSTRACT
Recent Maghreb conflicts and social transformation have shown the existence of disputes and complex negotiations over the moral economies that, in the national public consciousness, mobilise common adherence to norms and values. In this paper, I will consider the urban context of Tunis. Through an ethnography conducted among young Tunisians of middle and working classes (most of them having interrupted their advanced studies) I propose to find the features, even if ambiguous, of a moral economy that exists outside the hegemonic moral economy. By examining everyday practices and discourses, related to both the sacred and the profane poles of the social experience, I will try to provide a glimpse of the incubation of alternative political and social models among young Tunisians who are not engaged in politics or social movements. Does it represent a challenge to the dominant neoliberal political and cultural order or not?
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 I employ the term ‘working class’ based on the speeches and representations of the interviewees and the participants in the research with which they expressed themselves on territories, neighbourhoods and their inhabitants.
2 For an in-depth study of the professional education system in Tunisia, characterised by an exponential growth of private investment and funding from lines of credit and gifts from supranational institutions. See OIT-ONEQ Citation2013; Ettalmoudi Citation2012; Mazzella Citation2006. The openness to private investment would have had to face the structural deficits of the state education system. The legitimacy of private individuals in education (professional or higher) is due to the neoliberal rearrangement of the state through the combination and interdependence of the public and private sectors.
3 In this regard, I warmly thank Mr. Arbi Ben Abdallah.
5 The Individual Freedoms and Equality Committee (COLIBE) is a commission created by the president of Tunisia Beji Caid Essebsi on 13 August 2017. The committee is in charge of preparing a report on legislative reforms concerning individual freedoms and equality in accordance with the Constitution of 2014 and international human rights standards (cf. https://colibe.org).
6 See the reports on the social movements in Tunisia elaborated by the Tunisian Forum for economic and social rights, https://ftdes.net/publicationsftdes
7 Harqa is the irregular migration in the Maghrebin Arabic.
8 Source: National Statistical Institute.
9 On the expectation as a governmental device, see Meddeb (Citation2015).
10 I use the concept of ‘moral economy’ in its broadest sense, and not exclusively linked to the judgments of justice and social injustice, to mean the ‘economy of moral values and norms of a given group at a precise historical moment (Fassin Citation2005).
11 In this text, I refer to the Italian edition of 1975, edited by Valentino Gerratana.
12 Sami Ben Hassine, 23, a student in a vocational training centre in air conditioning. Here and elsewhere, the names of the people interviewed or meeting have been changed, to respect their confidentiality.
13 A number of Tunisian civil society organisations denounce the imprisonment of young people – especially working class people and people from the villages – who are suspected of planning illegal migration.
14 Source: International Organisation for Migration (OIM). Mixed Migration Flows in the Mediterranean. Compilation of Available Data and Information, November 2018, International Organization for Migration (IOM), available via the following link: https://www.iom.int/sites/default/files/dtm/mediterranean_dtm_201811.pdf
15 Young people wishing to undertake research and study stay in Europe must demonstrate to the responsible authorities that they have sufficient money for the period spent abroad, as well as the income of their parents. According to the teachers of the Italian cultural institution ‘Società Dante Alighieri’ it is increasingly difficult to activate the mobility and exchange paths that young Tunisians can benefit from.
16 James Holston calls ‘insurgent citizenship’ those ‘insurgent forms of the social that […] empower, parody, derail or subvert state agendas’, as well as ‘the struggles over what it means to be a member of the modern state – which is why I refer to them with the term citizenship’ (Citation1999, 167).