Unemployed Working-Class Neighbourhood Youth: survival and resistance strategies in Libya, Tunisia and Morocco

This International Alert study looks at these issues in detail, focusing on the psychological effects of unemployment on unemployed young people and how they combat, confront and adapt to these effects and their consequences on a day-to-day basis. Its three chapters adopt a qualitative-comparative approach based on individual interviews, testimonies and interactive focus group discussions conducted with young people from three working-class neighbourhoods in Morocco, Tunisia and Libya: Salé Medina in Rabat, Abu Salim in Tripoli, and Ettadhamen in Tunis. The interviewers followed the same interview guide in all three regions.

Three focus groups were organised in each neighbourhood. The first consisted of unemployed young men who had not completed their education; the second of young women in the same situation; and the third of young unemployed graduates, both men and women.

The choice of countries reflects International Alert’s desire to expand the scope of its comparative field approach to the study of young people at the margins beyond Tunisia, where it has operated for many years. Youth unemployment is one of the greatest challenges facing our societies in the Maghreb and in the Arab World as a whole, and is an important part of the egregious injustice that faces the region.