Marginality and Exclusion in Egypt

What does it mean to be marginalized? Is it a passive condition that the disadvantaged simply have to endure? Or is it a manufactured label, reproduced and by its nature transitory?

In the wake of the new uprising in Egypt, this insightful collection explores issues of power, politics and inequality in Egypt and the Middle East. It argues that the notion of marginality tends to mask the true power relations that perpetuate poverty and exclusion. It is these dynamic processes of political and economic transformation that need explanation.

The book provides a revealing analysis of key areas of Egyptian political economy, such as labour, urbanization and the creation of slums, disability, refugees, street children, and agrarian livelihoods, reaching the impactful conclusion that marginalization does not mean total exclusion. What is marginalized can be called upon to play a dynamic part in the future -- as is the case with the revolution that toppled President Mubarak.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Marginality, poverty and political economy
1. Introduction: Marginality and exclusion in Egypt and the Middle East - Ray Bush and Habib Ayeb
2. Marginality: curse or cure? - Asef Bayat
3. Accumulation by encroachment in the Arab Mashreq - Ali Kadri
Part 2: Creating and reproducing marginality
4. Marginality or abjection? The political economy of poverty production in Egypt - Ray Bush
5. The marginalization of the small peasantry: Egypt and Tunisia - Habib Ayeb
6. Margins and frontiers - Reem Saad
7. Transport thugs: spatial marginalization in a Cairo suburb - Dalia Wahdan
8. Against marginalization: workers, youth and class in the 25 January revolution - Rabab el Mahdi
9. National geographical targeting of poverty in Upper Egypt - Saker el Nour
10. Working with street kids: unsettling accounts from the field - Kamal Fahmi
11. Marginalization and self-marginalization: commercial education and its graduates - Moushira Elgeziri
12. Disability in transition in Egypt: between marginalization and rights - Heba Hagrass

About the Authors:

Ray Bush is Professor of African Studies and Development Politics at the University of Leeds, UK. He is deputy chair of the Review of African Political Economy. His most recent book is Poverty and Neoliberalism: Persistence and Reproduction in the Global South (2007). His work focuses on the political economy of economic reform, resources, social and rural transformation.

Habib Ayeb is a researcher at the Social Research Center at the American University in Cairo. His research focuses on agrarian change, water resources, poverty and marginality. He has worked in the Ministry of Agriculture in Tunisia, the University of Paris 8-St Denis, CEDEJ (Centre d’Etudes et de Documentation Juridiques et Sociales), IRD (Institute of Research for Development) and the SRC.