tunisia after 14 january and its social and political economy - Refworld

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from 2000 and had opened the bidding to foreign companies so as to compensate forthe weakness of FDIs.This situation undoubtedly reflects a weakening of the offshore sector and, more generally,a blocking of the dual development model. The development in recent years of callcentres (involving as they do remote and outsourced relations between a company andits customers) in Tunisia is definitely to be included in an attempt to reproduce the dualisticeconomic structure by extending offshore activities to the service economy. However, thisredeployment was essentially carried out on ‘low’ segments of the international rangeof specialization, segments which are not strong in technology and knowledge transferand requiring ‘cheap’ graduate labour. This segment led to the creation of 10,000 to15,000 jobs, and embodies the phenomenon of proletarianization of graduates and thereproduction of ‘downmarket’ international specialization. 115Faced with this situation, the position of European institutions seems to be extremelyambiguous. Experts implicitly emphasize the limits of the model, noting the qualificationrequirements, the need for more adequate training and employment, the indispensableimprovement of the education system, the need for improved infrastructure, thetransformation of the incentive scheme to make it less favourable to unskilled work, andso on. The need to go upmarket and increase the added value created is recognized.But, firstly, European economic cooperation depends on the reforms set out by theTunisian authorities that, as we have seen, favour stability and continuity, being moreconcerned with elections and their positioning on the political chessboard than by theneed to respond to the requests of those who brought about the revolution and areexpress their demand for integration. These reforms, technical though they appear, arehighly political and can only be defined by the Tunisians. In this context, Europe canhave only marginal influence on the overall direction of the economic model. Secondly,European businesses and consumers are the primary beneficiaries of this specializationin international subcontracting, in industry or services, based on flexibility and low pay. Itis hard to see the European Union going against this international division of labour, ofwhich it is one of the initiators and one of the beneficiaries, and which is also a directresult of the liberalism it promotes.68115 Hamza Meddeb, ‘Tunisie, pays émergent?’
T U N I S I A A F T E R 1 4 J A N U A R Y A N D I T S S O C I A L A N D P O L I T I C A L E C O N O M YT H E I S S U E S A T S T A K E I N A R E C O N F I G U R A T I O N O F E U R O P E A N P O L I C YII.2.A.c. The agricultural economyA reconsideration of the model of development also means taking greater account ofits agricultural dimension. The share of agricultural trade in total trade has fallen steadily,from 23.4% during the period 1984-1988 to 13.6% for the years 1999-2003, reaching lessthan 13% today. It confirms the status of Tunisia as a net importer of agricultural products. 116This decline is accompanied by a very high inequality in the structure of farming. 117 Thefragmentation of farms, often family businesses, thus forces young men, mainly youngerbrothers, to migrate in order to preserve the homestead by financially assisting theirparents who remain in rural areas to live on their land. Indeed, the yields from the landprove most often insufficient to meet the needs of their kin. This situation largely explainsthe aging farm population: faced with poor harvests and pay deemed to be derisory,young men prefer to try the path of rural exodus to find jobs in other sectors of theeconomy, or else international migration - particularly the more affluent among them.This situation, indeed, has not failed to create a shortage of male labour in rural areas,a shortage felt especially at harvest time. It is often women who work the family farmland or sell their labour at extremely low wages (4 TD per day, equivalent to 2.5 euros in2005/2006). This situation has persisted up to the present. If construction workers receive 8TD, women who work in agriculture receive much less (maximum 6 TD but often less), andthis is one of the explanations for the rural exodus and the feminization of the agriculturallabour force. It is more financially advantageous for men to go and work on constructionsites, on the coast or in Tunis. Agricultural employment is the main source of job creationfor women in Tunisia.While the agricultural workforce increased by 20% between 1993 and 2002, productivityhas not so far followed this increase. Furthermore, over the same period, performance inthe agricultural sector was obtained at the price of costs borne by the rest of society:firstly, subsidies for compensation amounted to 180 million TD, and secondly, pricedistortion contributes to an increase of 4% of the cost of living for consumers and 0.8% ofGDP in growth lost due to price distortion. 118 Rethinking the development model requiresthat the policy of subsidy, redistribution and transfer of income be radically revised, asindeed suggested by the aforementioned World Bank report which emphasized that theexisting transfers and incentives were highly inequitable, benefiting primarily the wealthy.116 Jean-François Richard, ‘Le devenir de l’agriculture tunisienne face à la libéralisation des échanges’,Afrique contemporaine, n° 219, 2006/3, pp. 29-42.117 Ibid: ‘The structures of farming contrast greatly with one another: in 1995, 53% of farmers had less than5 hectares (with an average of 2 hectares) and occupied 9% of agricultural land, and 1% of farmershad over 100 hectares (with an average of 300 hectares) and occupied a quarter of agricultural land.The average surface area of the 50,000 farmsteads is around 10 hectares, and this average figure hasbeen dropping for 40 years, as land continues to be broken up’, p. 35.118 These calculations were made by the World Bank in its abovementioned Report on agriculture, p. 2006.69The reconfiguration of power, the socio-economicchallenges of the revolution, and European policy
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TUNISIA AFTER 14 JANUARY AND ITSSOC
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This document has been produced wit
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T U N I S I A A F T E R 1 4 J A N U
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E x e c u t i v e S u m m a r yMADE
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An alarming socio-economic situatio
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In public debate, the analysis of c
Page 18 and 19: half between conceptualization and
Page 20 and 21: I N T R O D U C T I o nMADE by Euro
Page 22 and 23: More specifically the report is an
Page 24 and 25: I. The rhetoric of ‘stability’
Page 26 and 27: I . 1 . T h e m o d e s o f c o n s
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Page 30 and 31: I.1.E.The concealment of divergent
Page 32 and 33: I.1.F.b. Data that are concealed an
Page 34 and 35: of reforms deemed capable of settin
Page 36 and 37: or the ‘developing’ and ‘emer
Page 38 and 39: unemployment rate among young peopl
Page 40 and 41: as well as in Tunis. In addition, T
Page 42 and 43: conditions. In order to operate, th
Page 44 and 45: I.2.E. Managing supernumeraries by
Page 46 and 47: I.2.F.a. The confusion between disc
Page 48 and 49: their behaviour. Disciplinary power
Page 50 and 51: II.The reconfiguration of power,THE
Page 52 and 53: of the cumbersome bureaucratic mach
Page 54 and 55: II. 1. The uncertainty and the chan
Page 56 and 57: opposing or supporting the transiti
Page 58 and 59: a year, including all those who, wh
Page 60 and 61: factory for the Tunisian Chemical G
Page 62 and 63: Justice Program of the European Uni
Page 64 and 65: such zones, it is not only the natu
Page 66 and 67: II. 2. The stakes for a radical tra
Page 70 and 71: II.2.A.d. The system of incentives
Page 72 and 73: Europeans are tackling this issue,
Page 74 and 75: has not stopped. Tunisians still ma
Page 76 and 77: The ambiguities are obvious and any
Page 78 and 79: II.2.B.b. How the bureaucracy works
Page 80 and 81: II.2.B.c. Taking into account the b
Page 82 and 83: diminishing trickle. At the nationa
Page 84 and 85: construction of these arrangements,
Page 86 and 87: Conclusion86The current situation i
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