The materiality of lived citizenship: mobilising against infrastructural neglect in Egypt’s Nile Delta

ABSTRACT

In September 2012, the village of al-Tahseen in the Nile Delta governorate of al-Daqahliyyah launched a civil disobedience movement, announcing ‘administrative independence’ from the local municipal government. The leaders of the village movement cited decades of state neglect in providing basic infrastructural services, primarily a three-kilometre road from the village to the closest regional road. Community members held the government accountable for the harmful consequences of the absence of a viable road, including numerous accidents and deaths. This demand for infrastructure is at the heart of this article. Through a lived citizenship framework, this article argues that people’s everyday interactions and engagements with the state, as well as their understanding of their place as citizens in return, emerge from their engagements, constructions, and demands for infrastructure provision. The article equally sheds light on a case study of rural mobilisation, when most scholarly productions of Egypt’s 25 January 2011 Revolution and its reverberations have focused on urban-based mobilisation experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizenship
• infrastructure
• mobilisation
• rural
• Egypt

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the feedback of the participants of the ‘Lived Citizenship and Uprisings in the Middle East: Everyday Politics, Contestation and Transnational Belonging’ author’s workshop of the Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities (AGYA). In particular, I would like to express my gratitude to the editors of this special issue, Hania Sobhy and Nadeen Abdalla. I am also indebted to Heba Khalil, Aya Nassar, Omnia Khalil, and Nareman Amin, who provided invaluable feedback on several drafts of this article. Additionally, I would like to extend my thanks to two anonymous reviewers who provided critical and constructive comments on an earlier draft of this essay. Becky L. Schulthies also provided invaluable support in the development of my project.

Transliteration Style

All Arabic transliterated words follow the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) transliteration style.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Egypt’s administrative system is organised into four main sections. Firstly, there are the governorates, such as this article’s focus on al-Daqahliyyah. Secondly, there are the districts, often referred to as Marākiz, which are subdivisions within the governorates. Below the districts, there are the villages, and further down the hierarchy, there are satellite areas of the villages. When leaders of the al-Tahseen movement expressed their intention to secede from al-Daqahliyyah municipal authority, it was their first direct encounter with official authority. This desire for secession likely stems from grievances or aspirations related to the administration of their specific region within al-Daqahliyyah.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant number 1627463; the Wenner-Gren Foundation under Grant number 9277; and Rutgers University research grants.