A DEMOGRAPHIC APPROACH TO CRISES IN THE ARAB WORLD

Philippe Fargues, Sociologist and Demographer, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence

Moderation: Gudrun Harrer, Senior Editor, Der Standard; Lecturer on Modern History and Politics of the Middle East, University of Vienna and Diplomatic Academy of Vienna

Demography and its interplay with the social structure contribute to the current crises in the Arab world. Indeed, delayed marriage, declining fertility and the rise of school education that underlie both have fostered the birth of the individual and weakened the old patriarchal order of societies. But the aspirations that school has created among young people bump into barriers once they become adults. This includes unemployment and its hardships. At the same time states are powerless to address the expectations of their youth. The political framework created by nation states is weak and non-inclusive. On one hand, the persistently high prevalence of consanguineous marriages is a sign that kinship, instead of the nation, continues to be the real frame within which the population reproduces. On the other hand, the nation does not include newcomers because immigrants have no access to citizenship, and a continuously larger segment of a country’s population is made of non-citizens.