Contentious Politics under Organizational Constraints The Case of Unemployed Protests in Tunisia Prisca Jöst University of Gothenburg, Sweden *Please do not quote or cite without the author s permission* Abstract The article examines the organizational constraints of contentious actions in the case of unemployed protests in Tunisia in 2016. Previous research on social movements has emphasized, in particular, the role of third parties in mobilizing disadvantaged citizens. Unlike suggested by this scholarship, the author shows that the protests that spread over the Tunisian hinterland in January 2016 were held spontaneously by unemployed citizens who acted as autonomous protesters. By examining the roles of the central trade union, UGTT, and the union of unemployed graduates, UDC, in the wave of unemployed in January 2016, the article shows that unemployed protesters have mobilized mostly without organizational support of third parties. The article follows a mixed method approach while combining qualitative and quantitative research methods. Using qualitative content analysis of French- and English-speaking media reports and Facebook posts of the union of unemployed graduates as well as data from the Armed Conflict & Event Database (ACLED) on the single protest events, the study aims to provide in-depth knowledge about the protest actors, their demands and repertoires of contention. The protest wave in January 2016 represents a crucial case of spontaneous mobilization of disadvantaged social groups in the aftermath of the 2010/11-uprisings in Tunisia. Keywords: Social Movements, Unemployed Protests, Political Transition, Political Representation, Trade Unions, Civil Society Organizations, Tunisia Introduction In January 2016, a massive wave of protests spread over the so-called Tunisian hinterland after Ridha Yahyaoui, a 28-years old unemployed citizen, died in Kasserine, which is located in Tunisia s impoverished Interior. He died in an attempt to climb on a power pole in front of the governmental building in the city center where he wanted to denounce corruptive practices in the public sector. Similar to Mohammed al-bouazizi s selfimmolation in December 2010, Yahyaoui s death again became an injustice symbol (Olesen 2014, 73) for the Tunisian people. The wave of protests that followed his accident was held under the same slogan as the 2010/11-uprisings, Work, Freedom and Dignity 1. Within only ten days, the protest movement spread to most governorates within the impoverished regions in the South and Interior of the country. During that time, higher numbers of protest events were counted than during the time of the major uprisings in January 2011 that lead to the toppling of the Ben Ali-regime (see ACLED). Therefore, 1
the wave of protests that spread to almost all regions of the hinterland becomes a particularly interesting case to study contentious actions in Tunisia in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings. Despite all similarities between the 2010/11 and the 2016 protest events, I observe crucial differences when it comes to the mobilizing role of civil society organizations and trade unions. Based on my empirical findings on the 2016-protest wave, I find that experienced social grievances have the potential to mobilize the masses even without the systematic mobilizing support by trade unions and civil society organizations. Unlike in 2010/11, I argue that the single protest events in January 2016 can be described as spontaneous and loosely organized regarding their patterns of action in which mostly unemployed protesters participated autonomously. I also find that unemployed citizens constituted the most important protest actors. Accordingly, unlike during the 2011 uprisings, when scholars prized the cooperation between different national actors for their contribution to the fall of the regime (cf. Penner-Angrist 2013; Netterstrøm 2016; Omri 2015), I assert that neither the central trade union [Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail, UGTT] as the representative of the working class nor the Tunisian Union of unemployed University graduates [Union des diplômés chômeurs, UDC] which was founded in 2006 by unemployed citizens in Tunisia played a key role in mobilizing the unemployed protesters in the Tunisian hinterland. Both actors UGTT and UDC have been identified as most relevant mobilizing forces of protesters in Tunisia in the past. For example, UGTT and UDC have been part of protest alliances between different civil society organizations and trade unions that have played an important role in the 2010/11 protests (Jöst and Vatthauer forthcoming). Furthermore, four of them known as the National Dialogue Quartet including the UGTT have been awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize for their contribution to the democratization process in Tunisia in 2015 ( The Nobel Peace Prize 2015). Unlike the UGTT, the UDC has not been integrated in the transition process (cf. Weipert-Fenner forthcoming). This may partly explain why the UDC as well did not acted as a central mobilizing actor in January 2016. In turn, I argue that the ongoing struggles of the unemployed are partly the result of unemployed young citizens inability to receive political influence and to effectively communicate their demands. The paper follows a social movement approach to the analysis of contentious actions and the role of social grievances in the case of the Tunisian unemployed protests in January 2016. In particular, it looks at the interactions between different mobilizing actors such as civil society organizations and trade unions and the unemployed living in the Interior and Southern regions of the country. The wave of contentious actions that broke out in January 2016 is particularly interesting for scholarship on social movements in the Middle East and North African region since its analysis can give important insights into the ongoing mobilization of poor and unemployed protesters in the region. Furthermore, it contributes as a single-case study to the increasing literature on the evolution of protests in Tunisia after the 2010/11 uprisings. In the following, I first give an overview over previous literature on UGTT and UDC role in mobilizing protesters in Tunisia. Thereafter, I discuss theoretical arguments 2
made by scholars of the so-called resource mobilization approach in which they focused on the role of third parties in mobilizing the masses. I present Piven and Cloward s critique and discuss potential constraints that might stem from these organizational underpinnings. Finally, I introduce the main findings of the empirical analysis on the protest wave by limiting it to the period between January 18 and 28, 2016. The findings provide information on the main actors and their claims as well as on the repertoire of contention and the institutional support for the protests. Based on the empirical findings and the theoretical knowledge, I analyze how experienced social grievances have the potential to mobilized the masses even without the systematic support by trade unions and civil society organizations. Literature Review and Case Context Within the last couple of years, a growing literature emerged that is focusing on the role of civil society organizations in mass protests in North Africa and, in particular, in Tunisia as the country in which the Arab uprisings started. Whereas most of the studies focus on the 2010/11 uprisings, only few studies analyze the role of third parties in the aftermath of the uprisings (for exceptions see e.g. Weipert-Fenner forthcoming; Jöst and Vatthauer forthcoming). Regarding the 2010/11 uprisings, scholars agree on the organizations pivotal role in mobilizing protests, even though some of them argue that UGTT and UDC stepped in lately (cf. Allal 2013; Chomiak 2014). For example, Penner-Angrist (2013) argues that more than social media and the economic challenges the different forms of interactions such as the cooperation between different national actors had been crucial for the fall of the Ben Ali-regime. She stresses UGTT s outstanding role in the mass mobilization in January 2011, when UGTT members succeeded in framing the suicide of Mohammad al-bouazizi, as a form of political assassination (Penner-Angrist 2013, 560). She further argues that unlike in the Gafsa protests in 2008, when UGTT members stood beside the regime, which was then able to suppress the uprisings, the UGTT leadership decided to support the protesters in the 2010/11 uprisings. The UGTT organized mass demonstrations such as the one in Sfax where more than 30,000 people participated. Netterstrøm (2016) makes a similar argument, saying that the UGTT played an important role in the 2011 protests, even though it has been a regime-affiliated civil society organization under Ben Ali. He describes the UGTT as one of the major supporters of the uprisings since the Union members provided necessary organizational support for the spontaneous demonstrations. Accordingly, from the literature presented we would suggest that, not at least through the uprisings, trade unions and civil society organizations received key importance in mobilizing citizens in Tunisia. Yet more recently, for example, Hamdi and Weipert-Fenner (2017) Weipert- Fenner (forthcoming) and Jöst and Vatthauer (forthcoming) showed that protests partly became more spontaneous and unorganized in the aftermath of the uprisings. Looking at the evolution of the UDC since 2011, Weipert-Fenner (forthcoming) argues that the organization s potential to reach political influence and to mobilize young and unemployed Tunisian citizens in the hinterland has decreased in times of increasing fragmentation of unemployed activists. Even though UDC members increasingly held unemployed protests, spontaneous and unorganized protests that were constituted by 3
autonomous unemployed citizens have been much more frequent. Hamdi and Weipert- Fenner (2017, 11) show in a case study of the Gafsa mining protests that mobilization on the local level has further fragmented to the neighborhood and family level. Theory Resource Mobilization Approach On the theoretical level, social movement scholars have worked intensively on the relevance of available resources including mobilizing structures for the emergence of contentious actions (e.g. McAdam/ McCarthy/ Zald 1996; McCarthy/ Zald 1977). Two of the most prominent representatives of the so-called Resource Mobilization Approach [RMA], Zald and McCarthy (1987), argue that social movements depend on some form of organization or mobilizing structures (McAdam et al. 2001, 47 f.) if they are meant to sustain for a longer period of time. Others like Baglioni et al. (2008) assert that unemployed movements lack of those forms of organizational support that are perceived as being an essential part of a successful mobilization. Building on the RMA in Social Movement Theory [SMT], different Western scholars (e.g. Baglioni et al. 2008; Della Porta 2008, Rucht 2004) concentrated on movements support by third parties. Rucht, for instance, stresses the role of organizations in mobilizing and supporting movements in particular. He argues that [m]ost social movements would not come into existence, let alone survive, if there was no cooperation between the groups and organizations that consider themselves to be parts of a broader entity (Rucht 2004, 203). Subsequently, he criticizes the field of SMT for not having paid much attention to the role of third parties. However, at the same time, scholars of social movements such as Kriesi et al. (1995) and Piven and Cloward (1979) show that third party allies can also hinder mobilization which will be discussed further in the next section. Organizational Constraints in Poor People s Movements In their seminal work Poor People s Movements, Piven and Cloward (1979) they analyze which opportunities unemployed and marginalized people possess to achieve political influence in 20 th century s modern, capitalist societies. In particular, the authors stress the arbitrary role of organizations in movement mobilization processes. The authors argue that poor and unemployed people are generally excluded from the institutional life. In this regard, they conclude that poor people cannot defy institutions to which they have no access, and to which they make no contribution (Piven and Cloward 1979, 23). Which means, in turn, that poor people only rebel under very specific circumstances and without any institutional support on the streets. This assumes that poor people tend to accept their marginalized position in the social system because they are made believe by the authorities that the unfair system in which they are embedded is deserved and just. Accordingly, so the argument goes, poor people usually tend to be obedient. Thus, the authors hypothesize that the marginalized only start protesting under very specific circumstances, for example, [w]hen [they] cannot earn enough to support families, they may desert their wives and children, or fail to marry the women with whom they mate (Piven and Cloward 1979, 11). Furthermore, any act of contention must be 4
regarded as an exceptional case since it describes the transformation of consciousness and behavior as far as [l]arge numbers of men and women who ordinarily accept the authority of their rulers and the legitimacy of institutional arrangements come to believe [ ] that these rulers and these arrangements are unjust and wrong (Piven and Cloward 1979, 3-4). At the same time, the authors argue that protesting as a form of contentious action represents the only political mean that the poor can actually make use of. Other political means such as their ability to vote in political elections are influenced by the poor s marginalized position in the class-based system. Moreover, the chosen forms of political protest depend on the institutional context in which people are embedded. This means, first, that people orient their claims towards the setting and institutional patterns which they experience. For instance, industrial workers who experience an unfair treatment in the factory would demand better working conditions. They address the foreman who is responsible for them and with whom they engage every day, but they do not blame the capitalist system in the industrial age, which causes their pain. The same holds true for the unemployed who do not experience the foremen in the factories or the political elites in the capital city, but only the elected representatives of their governorate. Second, political protest depends on the institutional context in which people are embedded. According to Piven and Cloward, this context determines if people are able to build a crowd based on a specific group identity. In the case of the industrial workers this means that they are able to build a group consciousness based on their shared identity as industrial workers in a factory. They share the same claims, threats and aims regarding the improvement of their working conditions. Third, the institutional context also defines how people protest. Whereas industrial workers resist the authorities by striking in front of the factory, unemployed usually protest on the street because they have no connection to any factory or other institution. Thus, the authors conclude that people do not rebel against institutions to which they are not connected: It is our second general point, then, that the opportunities for defiance are structured by features of institutional life. Simply put, people cannot defy institutions to which they have no access, and to which they make no contribution. (Piven and Cloward 1979, 23, the emphasis is taken from the original) Accordingly, poor people s movements arise usually very spontaneous and without relevant organizational support. Piven and Cloward criticize that social movements which are not formalized and without any institutional backing tend to claim only what the authorities want them to claim such as the establishment of new committees to engage with the poor s problems. Therefore, mass protests should not be confused with intentionally formalized organizations that can express their demands, while mass movements mostly fail to voice their claims in a coherent way. As a tactical reaction, the government adopts concessions that aim to reintegrate the protesters into the normal political sphere all work to create a powerful image of a benevolent and responsive government (Piven and Cloward 1979, 34). However, when the political climate changes due to concessions for the poor that are perceived in the public opinion of being adequate, poor people s movements lose their support by the middle class and protest ebbs down. Then, most concessions will be revoked. In the introduction to a later version their work, Piven and Cloward (1986) describe the concept of organizations as being the representatives of the lower classes 5
even as an illusion. Whereas some governments call for the organizations estimation in times of violent protests, they do not actually recognize the organizations but react symbolically. By calling for the organizations, political elites want them to believe that the poor, indeed, have an influence on the political agenda. Yet this proves to be false as soon as the protests start to decrease. In some cases, the elites even support the formation of new organizations since they try to cultivate the lower classes in times of massive protests, knowing that they will not have any real influence on the political agenda. Methodology The following case study of unemployed protests in Tunisia in January 2016 is based on media reports and articles as well as on data from the ACLED-database 2 [Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project]. I used a mixed method approach to provide an in-depth analysis of the case. By starting with a quantitative evaluation of the ACLED-data, I was able to portray the specific characteristics of the single events and to draw first conclusions on the role of different organizational actors during the protest wave. ACLED codes information on cases of political violence and protest events in more than 60 countries within Africa and Asia. The data on Tunisia was revised after intense follow-up research that was conducted on all protest events in order to receive more detailed information on the characteristics of the single events in January 2016 that was not provided by ACLED. I conducted a systematic document analysis of the media coverage of the French- and English-speaking Tunisian daily press including newspapers, radio stations and news blogs and coded all relevant information provided by the news articles. Furthermore, to draw a detailed picture of the support of the protest events by the most relevant organizations, the UDC s Facebook-posts have been analyzed from 18 to 28 January, 2016. The UDC s regional offices and the national office are known for using Facebook to communicate with each other and to spread information to the public (cf. Weipert-Fenner forthcoming). Therefore, all Facebook entries that have been posted on the regional facebook pages and the national UDC page have been translated from Arabic into English. Furthermore, I processed media articles and journalistic reports that captured statements from politicians and representatives of different Tunisian organizations as well as from different protesters that participated in contentious politics in January 2016 using qualitative content analysis (Mayring 2000). Mayring s approach is based on the idea of putting the text material into formulated categories. I choose to build categories inductively after assessing the material, which is referred to as inductive category development. The categories have been checked and if necessary revised and reduced to main categories during the process of data analysis. By processing the media reports and features that included statements of the protesters collected from journalists during face-to-face interviews, I collected further information on the perceptions of the protesters that could not be coded numerically within the format of the ACLED-database. By interpreting the qualitative text material, I was finally able to go beyond the primary content of the text material and to analyze the latent content (Mayring 2000) to draw 6
conclusions on the specific role that organizations play and on the protesters perceptions of these organizations. Analysis of Unemployed Protests in Tunisia Protest Numbers Between December 2010 and March 2016, numbers of protests were ranging from 5 to 178 protests per month. The number of contentious actions has constantly been very high in the aftermath of the revolution. However, as measured by the number of events per month, protest rates increased to a considerable degree only in January 2016. Within only one month, 178 protests (total number) were counted. By contrast, in January 2011 when massive protests spread all over the country and finally led to the overthrow of the Ben Ali-regime on January 14, 2011, only 121 protest events took place (cf. ACLEDdatabase). Following this, we know that the numbers of protests in January 2016 was even higher than the protest rates during the time of the revolution (see figure 1). January 2016 presents a peak within the current history of protest in Tunisia. Already in February 2016, the number of protests decreased to 71 protest actions in total. Figure 1: Number of Protest Events per Month (from Dec 2010 to Feb 2016) 200 180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 December 2010 March 2011 June 2011 September 2011 December 2011 March 2012 June 2012 September 2012 December 2012 March 2013 June 2013 September 2013 December 2013 March 2014 June 2014 September 2014 December 2014 March 2015 June 2015 September 2015 December 2015 When looking at the number of protest events that took place in January 2016 in more detail, it becomes evident that the number of protests was enormously high only between January 18, 2016 and January 28, 2016 (see figure 2). On the following days, protests only very sporadically arose and did not exceed 10 protests per day anymore. Almost all protest actions in between January 18 and January 28 were related to the death of the young Tunisian Yahyaoui. This means protesters formulated claimed similar demands as the protesters in Kasserine or referred to Yahyaoui during the demonstration. Therefore, I continued working with those protests that have been 7
identified as being part of the protest wave in order to receive more detailed information on the actors, their claims and repertoires of action. Only one day after the tragedy, marches of solidarity were organized in the capital city, Tunis. On the following day, protests spread to other disadvantaged regions of the country, including Sidi Bouzid and Gafsa. Yet most of the protest events that took place on the same day were organized in different municipalities within the governorate of Kasserine where the accident had happened. Figure 2: Number of Protest Events in the impoverished and wealthier Regions 35 Impoverished Regions Wealthier Regions On January 20 and January 21, protest events further spread to the Interior and 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 16/01/2016 17/01/2016 18/01/2016 19/01/2016 20/01/2016 21/01/2016 22/01/2016 23/01/2016 24/01/2016 25/01/2016 26/01/2016 27/01/2016 28/01/2016 Southern regions and high numbers of protest actions were counted in almost all other governorates of the country. During that time, protest primarily took place in the impoverished regions but also in some of the wealthier coastal governorates like Sousse and Nabeul. Until January 28, massive protests continued in different governorates most of them in Tunisia s marginalized regions in the Interior. In Figure 2, I distinguish between protest events that took place in the impoverished regions of the country and protest events that were held in the wealthier regions along the coastal line. I classify the 24 Tunisian governorates into wealthier versus impoverished regions by referring to the rates of unemployment that have been published by the national institute for statistics [Institut National de la Statistique, INS] for the year 2014 [as the last year for which figures are available]. 3 The threshold was set at the 15 percent level for being described as impoverished. This means that all governorates that show an average unemployment level of more than 15 percent are listed as impoverished regions whereas all other regions are characterized as wealthier regions. Unemployment rates have been found to be an adequate measure of higher versus lower development in Tunisia when comparing with other indicators like, for example, the regional marginalization index conducted by the Tunisian Institute of Quantitative Studies (Institut Tunisien de la Compétitivité et des Études Quantitatives, ITCEQ 2012). The governorates that are located in the Interior and the Southern parts of the country suffer 8
from particularly high rates of unemployment and are therefore categorized as impoverished regions (Figure 2). Between January 19, 2016 and January 21, 2016, the number of protests in the region of the Tunisian hinterland increased to more than 30 protests per day, compared to 8 protests that were counted in the wealthier regions such as Tunis and Bizerte. Protest Actors, Repertoires and Claims The database shows that in 44 cases, actors were described as unemployed, unemployed university graduates or young unemployed. Since in 72 protest events the protesters were not named, information on the actors have been available in 69 cases only. However, 64 percent of the events, on which data on the actors has been available, were held by the unemployed. Furthermore, in 17 cases, the actors were named young people. If we take the high numbers of Youth unemployment in the country into account and the fact that describing protesters as young follows external characteristics while describing them as unemployed demands some sort of knowledge about the protesters and is, thus, much more difficult for observers to conclude, we can consider that a huge part of those young people potentially fall into the category of young unemployed. This, in turn, may further increase the number of protests that were held by unemployed citizens. Moreover, a small number of protesters were described as participants of political groups, citizens, cooperated alliances or construction workers involved in the educational program mécanisme 16 4. Figure 3: Central Claims of the Protest Wave in January 2016 (in percent) 1% 9% 2% 14% 38% 36% End to regional marginalization Employment National Dignity Economic Development Work-related Other (e.g. Solidarity with Kasserine) During January 2016, the unemployed protesters claimed, first and foremost, the right to employment, economic reform and development as well as an end to regional marginalization. 38 percent of the events were held, claiming the right to employment, in 36 percent protesters demanded economic development and in 14 percent of the cases actors claimed explicitly an end to the marginalization of certain regions in the Tunisian 9
hinterland (see Figure 3). The observation that employment, economic development, and an end to regional marginalization represented the central claims of the wave of protests is in line with the finding that the protest actions were initiated by the Tunisian unemployed who suffered from high rates of unemployment and lacking future perspectives. Indeed, only very few protests concerned other issues such as better working conditions in the factories which would have been typical for protest actors from the working class. Figure 4: Repertoires of Contention (in percent) 2% 9% 1% 6% 17% 5% 36% 24% Protest March Blockage Demonstration Protest Riot Self-Immolation Sit-in Strike As presented in Figure 4, most of the protest events were categorized as riots [36 percent], meaning violent protests, or as protests [24 percent] 5. The category refers to the rather spontaneous and non-systematic character of the protest actions in contrast to demonstrations which have been counted among the more organized forms of protests. Given that most of the protest events were riots, the intensity meaning the violent escalation of the events was also considerably high during these days. In more than 58 percent of the protest events violence was reported including violence against non-human beings [29.2 percent] and violence against humans [12.5 percent] or both [16.7 percent]. Only 9.7 percent were described as peaceful protest actions. In line with those findings, 9 percent of the cases were categorized as sit-ins, which represents a rather peaceful form of protest that aims to generate special attention to the claims of the protest actors. However, on another 32 percent [31.9] of the events no information on the intensity have been available. Since acts of violence are often reported in more detail, whereas peaceful actions are not mentioned as such in the short media articles, it can be assumed that a considerable part of those events on which information was not available, would have been also categorized as peaceful events. Further, the results show that only very few strikes were organized during January 2016. This, once again, underlines the 10
fact that the protest events have not been initiated by the working middle class but by mostly unemployed and socioeconomically disadvantaged citizens. Organizational Support The results presented in the database on the protest events in January 2016 show that third parties including political parties and civil society organizations supported only eleven protest events in between January 18 and January 28. The UDC actively supported six of those protest events such as a protest march in Tunis and five single protest events that were held in Kasserine, Gabès and Béja. In two cases, different political parties of the political left and different civil society organizations including the UDC and others provided support for the protesters. Thus, the UDC was the most frequently named organization that supported the protest actions in January 2016, even though the general level of support by third parties was considerably low. However, the low numbers might stem from limited reporting about organizational support in the media articles on which ACLED is based. Therefore, I discern a striking decrease in tendency third party support of unemployed protests in the aftermath of the uprisings. Yet, a review of all Facebook posts of the regional offices and of the national office of the UDC showed a similar picture: 62 posts (in total) were directly related to the wave of protests in January. Eleven out of 62 posts represented a call for participation in nine different protest events. These protest events were held in the following regions of which four out of six are located in the Tunisian hinterland: Sidi Bouzid, Sousse, Siliana, Bizerte, Kébili and Kairouan. 25 posts reported about past protest events, of whom six were violent protests supported by the regional offices of the UDC. In those cases, the UDC published photos of street blockages with burning tires. Again, both numbers are small compared to 140 protest events in total that took place in January 2016. Three posts reported on the death of Yahyaoui. In another three posts, the UDC s regional offices expressed their solidarity with the protesters in Kasserine as the city where protest first broke out after the death of Yahyaoui. Simultaneously, those posts included calls for participation in the protest events. Moreover, eleven posts included a statement on the protest events in which the UDC s regional offices declared their support for the peaceful protests while condemning the violent escalation on the site of the protesters. In those posts, the UDC criticized, in particular, the intervention of the security forces. In another post of the regional office in Sidi Bouzid from January 21, the UDC called for an end to the individual protests (suicide acts), by instead appealing to the protesters to better organize acts of collective protest. Looking at the Facebook posts, it becomes clear that the UDC supported the demands of the protesters as legitimate. In many cases, photos which showed the UDC banners in different protest actions, were published on the Facebook-pages. Those photos confirmed the participation of the UDC members in different protest events such as the ones in Tunis. However, a correlation between the number of protest events per region and the number of Facebook-posts on the events that were published on the pages of the regional offices could not be identified. 11
Discussion Relative Deprivation and Collective Identity From looking at the claims of the protesters, unemployment was identified as a central grievance of the protest actors. In the context of Tunisia, being unemployed means more to the people than a lack of routine in their daily life. First, having no regular income most frequently also implies that people do not have enough money to pay for their living expenses and thus, to support their families. In the Tunisian society, the family is the most important social unity (Joseph 2003, 195). Family members who found a job usually pay for the living expenses of the whole family. Therefore, the family also represents the primary source of economic security (Joseph 2003, 197). In turn, not being able to support the family is perceived as some kind of societal and personal failure or at least as not living according to the rules of tradition. Furthermore, deep patriarchal structures persist. Especially young men in the southern and interior regions of Tunisia, where people tend to be more conservative than their fellow citizens in the northern, coastal regions stand under enormous pressure to play their role as bread-earners. Young men are mostly perceived as being responsible for the financial well-being of their families, whereas women should manage the households and fulfil their roles as mothers. However, the reality is much more complex as Murphy (2003) argues. She asserts that today women are under growing pressure to fulfil both working and household roles even in the traditional Tunisian society (Murphy 2003, 182). This means that both sexes rely on job opportunities in order to support their families. Yet, looking at the gender differences in unemployment in Tunisia, it becomes apparent that there are still huge differences in the labor market participation of men and women since unemployment rates are always higher for women. For example, in Kasserine, where protests first broke out in January 2016, 30.4 percent of the men were unemployed in 2014, whereas more than 41.7 percent of the women were counted as unemployed (NIS Kasserine 2014). Second, since most parts of Tunisia can be described as a conservative, even though moderate Muslim society, people s aspirations to form a family in the traditional sense are very high. Therefore, failing to marry the women which whom they mate (Piven/ Cloward 1977, 11) due to lacking financial resources means not living according to the values of their tradition. 6 In turn, young people who are most concerned by high rates of unemployment suffer from lacking future perspectives in the traditional society. Weipert- Fenner (forthcoming) argues that unemployment goes along with a delayed adulthood because other aspects of adulthood such as founding a family by getting married and moving out of the parents home, are all put on hold. The young unemployed Tunisians find themselves in a vicious cycle since being unemployed implies that they cannot follow their traditions. Thus, in previous research, the participation in unemployed protests has been regarded as a step to break with this passivity (e.g. Honwana 2014; Weipert-Fenner forthcoming). A young unemployed graduate student from Sidi Bouzid describes unemployment as being perceived as a kind of blasphemy (cf. World Bank 2014, 24), meaning that an unemployed person is not perceived as being an active part of society. One of the unemployed protesters in Kasserine notes that the protesters will refuse to leave until the officials are at least willing to listen to the people: 12
We will not give up our rights! Decision makers who trick us with broken promises! It's over! The politicians who do not listen to us! It's over! We must stay here, showing solidarity and decisiveness until they listen to us! (Wahida Zidi, as quoted in Chennaoui 2016, emphasis added by the author, translated into English) Tunisians living in the impoverished regions constructed a sense of collective identity. This is central to the emergence of any form of collective action because it underlines contentious politics as being based on a perception of a shared status (Poletta/ Jasper 2001, 284). In the case of the protest events that broke out in January in Tunisia, people expressed their collective identity by claiming economic development and an end to the marginalization of the Southern and Interior regions in which they are living. Consequently, in the case of the protest wave in January, collective identity resulted in the creation of some kind of a shared identity and thus, the expression of similar political claims. To understand this sense of belonging, I relate to the concept of asabiya (Khalil 2014, 40), which Khalil describes as the main social dynamic underlying the Tunisian society. Asabiya can be translated into English as the solidarity of blood ties, even though today it was extended throughout the tribal lineages to the regional level (cit. op., 40). By conducting interviews with citizens from Tataouine, Khalil detects that especially the policy of repression towards the last bastions of Tunisian pan-arabism (Khalil 2014, 43) in the south of Tunisia under the regimes of Bourguiba and Ben Ali have strengthened the feelings of a regional and a local belonging within the people of the rural areas. This can be seen in expressions such as Tataouine biladi [ Tataouine is my country ] (Khalil 2014, 46). On the contrary to the regional solidarity, national solidarity only rarely exists between the Tunisian people. The separation between the center and the peripheral regions of the country is still a reality and it became even stronger within the last years under the regime of Ben Ali. Therefore, the outbreak of contentious politics within the impoverished regions expresses the existing social boundaries within the rural areas that are today based on the feeling of deprivation relative to the urban center of the country. Political Non-Representation and Contention According to Piven and Cloward (1977) acts of contentious politics are the only means by which poor people can express their grievances. Of course, one could argue that the Tunisian people possess the right to vote in free and democratic elections that are recognized by the Constitution of 2014. However, even though the Tunisian people have the right to vote in democratic elections, this alone does not necessarily lead to the inclusion of their interests. In the eyes of the protesters, the elected representatives do not represent the unemployed living in the Interior regions in the national congress. For example, one of the protesters in Kasserine complained about the delegates of the impoverished regions who were sent to Tunis to represent the interests of the marginalized people. In his point of view, the elected only stand for their own interests since they have not visited their electoral districts for five years. The eight deputies of Kasserine are still in Tunis, they never come here... We refuse to see them. They only work for their own interests. Since the revolution, 5 years ago, we have 13
not seen anyone of them coming here. (Chokri, as quoted in Drugeon 2016, emphasis by the author) In an interview, Ayman Aloui, the delegate of the left-wing party Front Populaire ( Popular Front ) confirms that the regional representatives do not plan to come to Kasserine and listen to the protesters. He argues that without solutions to current problems such as unemployment, a visit would only result in more contention: If they come here without anything it is going to be bad. (Ayman Aloui as quoted in Drugeon 2016) The government reacted to the protests with repressive measures like the curfews as well as the announcement of two packages of political measures. Thus, it could be argued that the government actually responded to the claims of the protesters. Yet, studying the single aspect of the package more closely, that included promises to create more jobs in the public service sector, this shows that even though very concrete measures have been formulated, the measures do not target the structural problem of the exclusion of the people in the impoverished regions. Solutions to these structural problems would include, for example, a systematic integration of unemployed citizens from the South and Interior into political decision-making processes, e.g. via regular meetings between representatives of these groups such as members of the local UDC offices and local and national government officials. Furthermore, similar promises have already been made earlier. Some of them such as the end of the marginalization of the Interior and Southern regions even have been adopted in the new Constitution from 2014. As describe earlier, this phenomenon of not having access to the political sphere despite the successful implementation of a democratic voting system results from the marginalized people s position in the class-based system (Piven and Cloward 1977). Piven and Cloward (1977) argue that not only the participation in the elections but also the protest actions as such are determined by the social structure which becomes clear when taking the strategies of the protesters into account. The form of political protest that was most frequently chosen by the unemployed, who protested in January 2016, were riots, protests, and blockages. All three forms of action have been held on the streets or in front of the governmental buildings in the capital cities of the regions. The Lack of Organizational Support The lack of access to central institutions (Piven/ Cloward 1979) can partly explain why the wave of protests in January 2016 has not been supported or eve organized by different civic organizations such as UGTT and other minor trade unions. Since the Tunisian unemployed and poor people do not have access to the central trade union who is de facto the representative of the working class, it is not surprising that the UGTT did not act as an organizer of the unemployed movement. For example, Weipert-Fenner (forthcoming) argues that UGTT does not support disruptive unemployed protests since they are seen as negatively affecting workers interests because they interrupt the manufacturing process. In fact, the UGTT appeared on the scene only in the beginning when solidarity marches where held in Tunis. Within those protest marches that have been organized by different political parties of the far left and by some civil society organizations the 14
members of third parties expressed their solidarity with the marginalized people in Kasserine. Here, people acted from an outside perspective, claiming solidarity for others namely for the people in Kasserine. Accordingly, they did not see themselves as belonging to the group of poor people from the impoverished regions. From the perspective of the marginalized people, who protested in the impoverished regions for employment and economic development, the UGTT is no more perceived as a potential representative. This has been the case already in 2008 when the young protester Ziyad, the coordinator of the UDC in Gafsa which had been illegal during that time proclaimed: Ben Ali? I don t know who he is and I don t care about him. But this guy [the UGTT regional representative] is definitely a crook. He s the one who got us into the situation we re in today. (Ziyad as quoted in Allal 2013, 188-189) Accordingly, the perception of the UGTT as being corrupt and non-credible in the eyes of the poor people can be better understood when going back into history. Leading UGTT members of the regional offices were accused to squeeze profit from the corrupt state system already in January 2008, when massive protests broke out in Gafsa (Chomiak 2014, 28 f.). Thus, the unemployed struggles in one of the most impoverished regions, which became one of the biggest upheavals in Tunisia s modern history, were directed against corrupt hiring practices of the local phosphate company and the UGTT s entanglement in those practices (cf. Allal 2013; Chomiak 2014; Gobe 2010). Subsequently, UGTT s involvement in the corrupt state system, even though it might have been limited to only some members of the leadership, explains poor people s perception of the UGTT as not being credible. By contrast, the organization of the Tunisian unemployed, UDC, represents a somehow different case. The UDC was founded in 2006 to represent the Tunisian unemployed who felt excluded from the trade unions due to their status as unemployed (Chomiak 2014). Since then, the number of members grew despite very limited resources and continued to mobilize protesters (cf. Weipert-Fenner/ Wolff 2016). However, in January 2016, the UDC did not play an outstanding role as mobiliser or organizer of the protest events, even though the regional and local offices supported the claims of the protesters. One reason for that can be seen in the structure of the organization, which is divided into different local and regional offices as Weipert-Fenner (forthcoming) argues. Those offices mobilized protests already in 2010 independently from the national office. The independent structure can make a coherent and common acting almost impossible. Another explanation looks at the perspective of the protesters themselves. For example, Chomiak (2014) praised in her article that a huge amount of civil society organizations appeared on the scene since 2011. She further prompts that these actors now need to actively shape the political transformation process. Here, the author gives the example of the Phosphate mining region Gafsa where UDC leaders held public meetings with representatives of the mining basin, political party members and civil society activists to negotiate on employment opportunities in the region. By contrast, the UDC s attempt to organize meetings on a regular basis failed. Following Piven and Cloward s argumentation, however, it does not surprise that the UDC as one of those civil society actors did not achieve to reach persistent political influence since 2011. The authors argue that being marginalized means being excluded from any real influence on 15
the political agenda. In this respect, it becomes obvious that indeed, the UDC did not gain political influence due to its role as the representative organization of the marginalized. Weipert-Fenner (forthcoming) states that the UDC took part in the transformation process only in its very early stage when UDC became part of the Higher Commission for the Fulfilment of Revolutionary Goals, Political Reform, and Democratic Transition. Therefore, even though the UDC does not belong to the establishment like the UGTT does in the eyes of the common people, it might still suffer from a decreasing level of reputation among the poor and unemployed due to its lacking abilities to achieve political influence. Such as other civil society organizations, the UDC also falls under the umbrella of those organizations that triggered the frustration and disappointment of the marginalized people. In turn, the question comes up why people should call for the support of those organizations who failed to achieve their aims? In other words, why should the marginalized continue to institutionalize after all attempts to reach political influenced via UDC failed repeatedly? But since further research in the field would be necessary to prove those assumptions on people s decision-making processes, I will not be able to answer those questions at this point. Scholars of resource mobilization approach assume that waves of protest require some sort of organizational support to become stabilized and sustained. Yet, I could not account for a systematic pattern of support by UDC or UGTT for the wave of protests in January. Even though some UDC offices articulated their support of the protests on Facebook, the UDC did not play the role of a mobilizing actor of the protests. On the contrary, the regional offices of the union of unemployed graduates called for protest in only very few cases. Additionally, in those governorates where the local offices of UDC posted more information about the protests on Facebook, this did not result in a higher number of protests. Thus, no correlation between the number of protests and the number of Facebook-posts per governorate could be found. The UDC offices of Sousse [16 posts], Sidi Bouzid [13 posts] and Kairouan [9 posts] have been most active in spreading information about the events in January 2016. Whereas in Sidi Bouzid 24 different protest events have been counted in between January 18, 2016 and January 28, 2016, in the governorates Sousse and Kairouan only five protests took place. What further surprises is the fact that the regional office of the UDC in Sousse most actively supported the protest via Facebook. Located at the cost of the Mediterranean Sea, Sousse is counted among the wealthier coastal regions of the country that benefited from the tourism sector. Moreover, also the overall number of calls for protest via Facebook-posts did not decrease over time which could have been a proof for UDC s influence on the ebbing down of the wave of protests. Subsequently, unlike in the 2010/11 protests, which were heavily supported by UDC and UGTT, the civil society organizations and trade unions did not promote the protesters claims in January 2016 to a remarkable extent. The same holds true for the UDC which did not provide regular and sufficient support for the protesters either. 16