Youth Unemployment and Alienation in the Middle East

The chapter highlights the structural reasons behind the persistence of youth unemployment in the Mashreq and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Youth unemployment is a major focus of public policymaking in the region, especially since 2011. In a political demography approach, which uses labor and population statistics, the chapter questions, deconstructs, and re-politicizes the issue of youth unemployment. The demonstration questions the prominence of graduates’ unemployment. It also highlights the scale of inactivity, which compounds unemployment among youth, especially women. Youth unemployment incurs “waithood” and delayed adulthood and underscores youth’s political alienation from the social contract. The chapter concludes that the main obstacle to channeling young Arabs to sustainable employment is political by essence. It is structurally incompatible with the current clientelist, authoritarian systems ruling in the region. Policies currently enacted to alleviate youth unemployment address its political consequences (youth discontent), not its root causes.