Middle East and North African (MENA) nations, including Morocco, are witnessing the largest cohort of young people in their history, which today makes up roughly one-third of their total populations. Influenced by the democracy uprisings in 2011, state, media, and international organization discourses on youth in the Middle East and North Africa have solidified in two directions. One perspective presents the group as a threat to the security and fabric of their nations, potential purveyors of delinquency and extremism, in states of "waithood." The other view, a variant of which is explored here, considers the cohort as a group that constitutes an untapped potential and hope for addressing the ills and flaws of their societies. This accounting depicts Moroccan and MENA youth as passive victims of circumstances while also assuming their abilities to address their life circumstances without considering the complex contexts they confront. While those structural realities are surely real and sometimes paralyzing, youth can and do deploy several tactics, strategies and subversive accommodation to address the conditions they confront. That is, they continuously navigate liminal spaces created as they seek to move from "where they are" to "where they wish to be." This dissertation explores how a sample of young men and women from underprivileged neighborhoods in Morocco exercised their agency in their everyday lives. Addressing their family, education and work, this study draws on the findings from 30 semi- structured interviews focusing on the challenges and agential potentials of young individuals from underprivileged neighborhoods in Casablanca, Morocco, as they described their everyday paths to coming of age in their society. To contextualize their journeys, I present how young people have historically demonstrated individual and collective agency in ways that helped shape Moroccan modern history. I then employ the concepts of bounded agency, liminal space, tactics, strategies and subversive accommodation to demonstrate how young individuals navigated their everyday lives within their families, as well as educational and work trajectories. I argue that young people are not simply passive; they indeed exercise strategies and tactics to navigate and negotiate their daily lives. However, they do so in bounded or limited conditions as they address colonial legacies of social inequality compounded by demographic realities and neoliberal policies that have deepened those conditions. This study challenges mainstream conceptions of youth agency as empowerment, resistance and freedom and instead suggests that the agency of youth as well as their everyday aspirations and struggles need to be contextualized based on the social and material conditions in which they live. Their agency is real, but so too are the structurally difficult and limiting social, political and economic conditions they confront. / Doctor of Philosophy / Middle East and North African (MENA) nations, including Morocco, now have the largest cohort of young people in their histories, approximately one-third of their total populations. State, media, and international organization discourses addressing youth in the Middle East and North Africa have tended to adopt one of two storylines concerning the region's youth; one that views this population as a threat to the security and fabric of the nations, potential delinquents and extremists, and existing in states of "waithood." The other perspective tends to view young people as constituting untapped potential to address long-standing societal challenges. This accounting depicts Moroccan and MENA youth as passive victims of circumstances and assumes their capacity to address their life circumstances without considering the complex situations they confront. While those structural realities surely can act as obstacles or barriers, young people can and do deploy a range of practices to address the conditions they confront. Indeed, they continuously make choices as they seek to move from "where they are" to "where they want to be." This dissertation explores how a sample of 30 young men and women from underprivileged neighborhoods in Casablanca, Morocco exercised their ability to act in their everyday lives. Addressing their family, education, and work spaces, and drawing on the findings of individual semi-structured interviews with those in the sample, it describes their paths to coming of age in their society. To contextualize the life journeys of those interviewed, the analysis also examines how young people have historically demonstrated individual and collective agency in ways that have helped to shape Moroccan modern history. Overall, this study suggests that young Moroccans are not simply passive or in states of waiting; they indeed exercise strategies and tactics to navigate and negotiate the opportunity structures they encounter in their daily lives. However, they do so in limiting conditions that bound the possibilities they may reasonably explore as they address the continuing influence of colonial legacies of social inequality joined by demographic realities and the ongoing, and largely negative, impacts of neoliberal policies.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/111186 |
| Date | 14 January 2021 |
| Creators | Berrada, Nada |
| Contributors | Political Science, Stephenson, Max O. Jr., Ni, Zhange, Zanotti, Laura, Samanta, Suchitra |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Coverage | Casablanca, Morocco |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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