“Tunisia and Egypt after 2011: investigating social mobilizations” was held on Thursday 27, January 2022, as a part of our centre’s webinar series on social contention in the MENA region after 2011.

The discussion was moderated by Dr. Rossana Tufaro (CeSSRA), with speakers: Dr. Brecht De Smet (Ghent University), and Dr. Laryssa Chomiak (Centre d'Étude Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT).

Dr. Laryssa Chomiak presented her work on Tunisia. Her intervention was guided by three ideas. The first was the critique of the “idea of Tunisia as a democratic exception for the region’s authoritarianism and as an instance of a successful transition amidst the failures of uprisings elsewhere”. The second idea was concerning the political impact of opinion questionnaires about public sentiments. And the third idea looked into “the implication of conflation between democratization as a source of hope and frustration on the real life events that we seek to understand today”.

In his intervention, Dr. Brecht De Smet reflected on the spatial dimension of the Arab uprisings, with a focus on Egypt:” We were all surprised by the scale of the protests and their revolutionary impact, but on the other hand I don’t think we were surprised that there was something happening”. He talked about the protests that happened in provincial towns and rural areas “formulating [...] not only political demands for democracy but also social demands for social justice and for dignity against corruption. Then he gave a brief history of how the mobilistions changed and evolved since the late 90’s till date.

The webinar is available to watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w7WtJim1ik&t=2777s