This article explores issues around the changing nature of social networks and social movements involving youth in Nigeria. Using the youth-driven 2012 fuel subsidy protests, the article raises two fundamental questions. First, do the youth-led protests represent a genuine shift for the youth from being mere subalterns to neo-patrimonial power groups to a more assertive role, which seeks to challenge the power structure in the country, or are they simply frustrated expressions of marginality? Second, in what ways have social media affected social networks and movements and their capacity for mobilization in Nigeria? It appears that the bourgeoning youth population in Nigeria has led to a realization by youth groups of their power to substantially affect the course and conduct of governance in the country. On 1 January 2012, the Nigerian government unilaterally decided to remove the subsidy on petrol leading to a 120 per cent increase in the price of the product. The move provided opportunities for youth resistance through social media. This article uses insights from this protest to explore these questions and show the fluid nature of youth social networks and movements.
This paper will focus in urban youth’s strategies of political identification and participation in Algeria. It will analyze Algerian Youth’s participation in debates on national identity and their use, modification and transformation of political representations in the last decade (after Civil War) as well as the current context of popular pro-democracy movements of Arab Spring. It will be answer to: How do Algerian Youth respond to sociopolitical representations? How do they transform them? To do that we’ll first analyze the tensions of historic and new social and political representations. Afterwards we will examine Algerian youth’s participation in current popular movements for democratic change. What are the messages articulated by Algerian youth in the current demonstrations – since January 2011? Do youth’s vindications coincide with other social movements’ (as Syndicate and political parties) or can be distinguished as ‘youth’s specific’? Can we distinguish between articulated messages by youth students and non-students’ demonstrations (i.e. Jobless youth)? Are there different kind of messages of resistance or diverse political representations in youth movements?
Irregular migration became an alarming issue over the last decade for both developed and developing countries. A prevailing assumption in migration policy is that labor market and institutional characteristics play a crucial role in pushing people to leave their home countries in search for better life prospects. This paper examines this hypothesis using a unique dataset covering young people aged 15 to 29 from five major MENA countries from the year 2016. Using a probit model, the paper finds that labor market drivers (unemployment, job sector, social security, contract type) are of great importance for the decision to migrate irregularly amongst the youth in the MENA region and that the quality of institutions matters. In addition, the lack of wealth and economic opportunities enhance their willingness to engage in irregular migration.
The story of the ‘Arab Spring’ as a revolt of young people against autocratic rule and to bring democracy to their countries is not a good fit to the available data. Younger people were indeed over-represented in comparison to the age distribution of the population as a whole, but some of those ‘identified’ as young were in fact well into middle age, in no country were a majority of the protestors younger than 35, and the introduction of procedural democracy was not the only or even the main aim of the Uprisings. There is little evidence for the ‘rising tide’ in MENA which has been expected to sweep away autocratic rule in favour of democratisation as successive younger generations became individualised, liberalised and secularised. There is partial evidence for secularisation but little for the radical change in liberal values and the growth of rights-based politics. (For the latter we take attitudes to gender equality and gendered norms as our case study.) The neoliberal ‘structural adjustment’ which MENA countries have been urged to adopt has failed to provide a basis for such a normative change, failing either to generate the jobs which would have turned the ‘youth bulge’ into an economic ‘youth dividend’ or to establish an independent middle class within which liberalisation of norms and values leads to the demand for democracy.
We will question the principle of mobilization by the ICT by analyzing the practices and uses of by the young Moroccans strongly mobilized after the Arab spring.
A demographic transition resulting from an increase in the size of the young working age population can be a blessing or a curse for economic performance. We focus on the political stability effects of a larger youth population and hypothesize that corruption matters in this nexus. Using panel data covering the period of 2002-2012 for more than 150 countries, we find a negative interaction effect between the relative size of the youth population (17-25 years old) within the total working age population (15-64 years old) and corruption on political stability. This finding is robust, controlling for country and time fixed effects and a set of control variables that may affect stability. The negative interaction term between corruption and the youth population remains robust when we control for the persistency of political stability and the possible endogeneity of the main variables of interest through dynamic panel data estimations. Our findings shed more light on the political turmoil in the Arab world, with the so-called Arab Spring.