1 Introduction: Political Demography in Tunisia and Morocco

Demographic change in the Maghreb is central today to a better understanding of social and political dynamics across the Mediterranean region. As the uprisings of 2010–2011 powerfully illustrated, demographic trends have considerable domestic and international implications, particularly when young people are the protagonists of revolutionary change. This chapter focuses on the political demography of Tunisia and Morocco. Our aim is to move away from an obsession with youth bulges or ‘hordes’ of young people at the doors of Europe and to understand the relationship between demography and political outcomes. Morocco and Tunisia have been chosen for two interrelated reasons. First, they present similar demographic trends, having experienced massive migratory movements over several decades and a decreasing fertility rate in the early 1980s. In recent years, fertility trends have continued to decline in Morocco and have risen slightly in Tunisia. Second, both countries were at the forefront of the 2011 Arab uprisings, but they experienced contrasting trajectories. The Ben Ali (Tunisia) regime collapsed in early 2011, leading to a successful process of democratization, which culminated with the approval of a new liberal-democratic constitution in January 2014. Conversely, the Moroccan regime implemented cosmetic institutional reforms to assuage protesters and its political system based on the institutional and constitutional primacy of the executive monarchy remains unchanged. Thus, Morocco and Tunisia are useful cases to discuss divergent political outcomes despite reasonably similar demographic trends.

This chapter develops into three sections. We first discuss demographic changes in Morocco and Tunisia, and then their socio-political implications and demographic politics (on ageing politics, see, e.g., Vanhuysse & Goerres, 2012; this volume). We take into account variables such as unemployment rates, inactivity rates, the role of education, the spread of the informal sector and the ‘waithood’ phenomenon, to ask two questions: first, do Morocco and Tunisia face a youth-related crisis? And second, what are the consequences of broad demographic changes for regime stability and legitimacy in Morocco and Tunisia? In this regard, we address the problems and opportunities these countries face. We focus specifically on the role of the supposed youth bulge, its meaning and its mediatized impact. What is the political role of demographic changes in Morocco and Tunisia? Is there a dominant political discourse on demography? We consider the institutional arrangements the Moroccan and Tunisian governments introduced to cope with the main challenges of demographic shifts. We conclude our chapter with a brief summary and broaden our discussion to future scenarios.

2 Demographic Trends in Morocco and Tunisia

The data we use in this chapter come from multiple sources, namely the Open Science Framework—Global Political Demography Database, the National Statistics Institute of Tunisia (INS), the High Commission for Planning (HCP) in Morocco, the Economic Research Forum (ERF) based in Cairo and the World Bank. The lack of data that some countries experienced in the post-Arab uprisings years impacts overall reliability (Pellicer et al., 2015); moreover, there are justified concerns when collecting data from authoritarian countries. For instance, throughout the Ben Ali era in Tunisia, public information was manipulated to serve propagandistic claims about the regime’s successes (Al-Issawi, 2012). While data about the real rate of unemployment, and in particular youth unemployment, have always been a source of dispute between national governments and international financial institutions and investors (Hibou et al., 2011),Footnote 1 this is less of a problem for population data.

The total population of Morocco in 1990 was just below 25 million people. It increased to above 34 million in 2015 and might reach 42 million by 2040. The same trend occurs in Tunisia, where population size surged since 1990 from above 8 million to above 11 million people in 2015, with more than 13 million people expected by 2040 (Goerres et al., 2020). But while total population has been growing in Tunisia and Morocco since 1990, the average annual rate of population growth has decreased. This leads us to address two mythical phenomena: massive population growth and the ‘youth bulge’. Moroccan and Tunisian population growth is inferior to the Arab world average (UN Population Division, 2017). When compared with the African and sub-Saharan African growth trend, it is even much lower. As Fig. 1 shows, the average annual rate of population change in North Africa is decreasing, especially in Tunisia. Thus, when compared to the rest of Africa, North Africa is not undergoing a demographic explosion. In addition, it should not be assumed that a demographic explosion is, in itself, negative.

Fig. 1
figure 1

(Source UN Population Division (2017); World Population Prospects. The 2017 Revision, custom date acquired via website)

Average annual rate of population change in comparison

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The composition of the population in the region today is mainly youth-based. However, the median age is increasing over time: from 19 in 1990 to 27 in 2015 and 36 in 2040 in Morocco and from 21 to 31 and 38 in Tunisia, respectively. The so-called youth bulge for the future may thus need to be reassessed. Cincotta (2017) highlights that political demography has been crucial in identifying which countries can or cannot hope for a democratic future and points to the strong correlation between increasing median age and increasing liberal democracy: “the younger a population is, the less likely it is to be a liberal democracy”. This correlation, for Cincotta, is “political demography’s most tested relationship” (Cincotta, 2017: 2). Interestingly, Cincotta puts forward eight main rules about political demography forecasting. First, the most age-structurally mature states are expected to have the best chance to be liberal democracies. Second, the age-structurally youngest states (below 25.5 years’ median age) are the least likely to become liberal democracies in the short run. Third, “where a revolution occurs in a state with a youthful population, expect either the authoritarian regime to remain in power or to be replaced by another authoritarian regime” (Cincotta, 2017: 2). Fourth, youthful states reaching the ‘free’ status of Freedom House can lose it within a decade, as Mali did for example. Fifth, to states whose population is less than five million, rules one to four do not apply. Sixth, “expect states that are ruled by an ideological single-party regime or another type of ideological political monopoly—for example, Iran’s theocracy—to mature without liberalization” (Cincotta, 2017: 2). Seventh, states led by revolutionary leaders or a strong man are less likely to attain the ‘free’ status. And eighth, “expect a state ruled by a military junta/ruler or absolute monarch to yield to a more democratic regime before the population attains a mature age-structure (before a median age of 35.5 years)” (Cincotta, 2017: 2).

Political demographic rules work well because age structure affects both society and state capacity. The potential of political demography as a field is growing quickly (Cincotta and Weber, this volume; Goerres & Vanhuysse, 2012; Vanhuysse and Goerres, this volume). Forecasting is only one aspect of it. In fact, political demography is deeply linked to security, too. Changes in demographic conditions, migrations, population growth, changing proportions of ethnic and religious groups have serious political and socio-economic outcomes within societies (Cincotta, 2004). Cincotta employs eight ‘demographic topics’ usually linked to conflict, violence and regime-instability. These are the ‘youth bulge’, a rapid urban population growth, a low level of per capita cropland/fresh water, high mortality rate among working-age adults, differential growth rate among ethnic and religious groups, migration, ageing and high sex ratios.

The population pyramids in Fig. 2 provide crucial insights into the socio-political conditions in Morocco and Tunisia. We can see a ‘bulge’ in 1990, which disappears in 2020 and in the 2040 projections. Morocco and Tunisia are thus getting ‘older’, and following Cincotta, they are more likely to manage potential future unrest without descending into widespread chaos. In fact, although the democratic process is likely to have ups and downs in Tunisia, it would be ‘statistically uncommon’ for the country to experience a civil war: the Cincotta threshold for stability is met in countries where the median age is 26 years old (the borderline between a ‘youth bulge’ and a ‘young population’).

Fig. 2
figure 2

(Note Males are to the left [black], females to the right [grey]. Source Computations by Richard Cincotta)

Population pyramids for Morocco and Tunisia

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Table 1 shows the demographic shift on different socio-economic indicators such as migration, absolute size of the population, population density, urban density, home ownership by age group, youth/prime age unemployment gaps, electoral turnout rate by age groups and fiscal revenue as percent of GDP. We briefly discuss the data to illustrate the demographic change in our case studies.

Table 1 Demographic shift on different socio-economic indicators
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Political demographers focus their attention on the relative size of age groups and the political implications of changing demographic trends. Both Morocco and Tunisia show a decrease in the size of the youngest age groups (5–9 and 10–14) since 1990. There is a slight growth for the group of 15–19-year-olds between 2015 and 2040. The strongest growth is among 30–34- and 80–84-year-olds. In other words, Tunisia and Morocco are growing old. This is also confirmed by fertility trends. In Tunisia, the fertility rate dropped from 2.98% in 1990 to 2.25% in 2015 and it will keep on falling to 1.9% by 2040. The same trend is occurring in Morocco, where a 3.7% fertility rate in 1990 falls to 2.6% in 2015 and will drop to 2.0% by 2040. How can we explain such a decreasing trend? What are the main political demography consequences?

3 Young People’s Social and Economic Circumstances

Tunisia and Morocco now have the lowest fertility rates in North Africa. The variables most likely to have influenced the fertility rate over time are the unemployment rate, the inactivity rate (NEET), the role of education, the spread of the informal sector and the waithood phenomenon. Sutton forecasted that the fertility rate in the Maghreb region would have soon reached “projections to near zero […] by the year 2025” thanks to birth control policies (Sutton, 1999: 111). This projection was based on the belief that urbanization, the education of women, a greater participation in employment and family planning would lead to a strong fertility decline. However, this has not materialized. For instance, family planning policies did not perform well because of governments’ negligence and lack of investments. Family planning in Tunisia was launched after independence in 1964 (Lapham, 1970: 241). In Morocco, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and later, in 1966, the Ministry of Health supported similar policies. However, both the Moroccan and Tunisian regimes progressively abandoned the policy because of a mixture of lack of funding, backlash from traditional sectors of society and changing political priorities. Government policies facilitated the decrease in fertility rates, as Sutton had argued, in a context of increasing urbanization, female education and slight diminutions in conservative social attitudes over time in both countries. Conservative political and social views persist in Tunisia for instance, but they have been decreasing over time, particularly with regard to the role of women in society (Teti et al., 2018). The problem is that increased urbanization and education did not translate into employment for many young people, especially women. As Fargues argues (2017: 3), “[r]ising education levels naturally translate to rising expectations”; however, these expectations were frustrated. Fargues (2017: 4) claims that such a frustration is one of the leading causes of emigration and youth discontent.

Employment is crucial in determining young people’s economic stability, their choice to form new families and their political behaviour everywhere.Footnote 2 Moreover, “there is still considerable public anxiety around the institution of marriage and the ability of young people to marry in a timely fashion in the region” (Assaad et al. 2017: 10). Marriage in North Africa is considered a “high-risk endeavor” (ibid.: 2), because of its costs and its effects on potential living conditions, especially for brides. Sabha (2014) analysed youth unemployment by comparing Tunisia , Egypt , Morocco and Jordan after the Arab Spring , and shows that in Egypt and Tunisia the condition of youth in the labour market has worsened after the Arab Awakening. The unemployment rate in 2013 was higher among youth in Tunisia and Egypt , which directly experienced the short-term negative economic effects of the uprisings. In contrast, Morocco and Jordan , which did not go through institutional upheavals, did better. If we look at the unemployment rate for females, we can observe that the deepest cleavage before and after the Arab uprisings is, again, in Egypt , followed by Tunisia . As Sabha (2014) highlights, the only country where more women joined the labour force is Morocco . The inactivity rate remained stable in Egypt and Tunisia after the Arab uprisings . Jamoussi & Gassab (2011) demonstrates that unemployment in the region and especially in Tunisia (estimated by the International Labour Organization at 42.57% in 2011) is a structural problem which became even more pronounced after the uprisings, but which was not caused by these uprisings. Achcar (2013) argues that the uprisings across the region broke out mainly because of widespread unemployment and underemployment which affected both the middle and lower classes (el-Meehy, 2013). The structural problem of youth unemployment in North Africa can be linked to the difficulties of planning for a family life without income. As the African Development Bank (AFDB, 2012) reports, Tunisia was already experiencing tourism reduction and the effects of the Libyan and the European economic crisis well before the revolution, with a negative impact on its rate of employment (Tsourapas, 2013). It should be highlighted that although Morocco has not undergone a radical political-institutional change, it has experienced considerable upheaval in 2011, largely for the same reasons as Tunisia (Chomiak & Entelis, 2011), with the movement of unemployed graduates leading the protests . Thus, widespread unemployment is not the product of the Arab Spring , but rather one of its main causes. Fewer young people chose to start new families without financial stability.

Another important element is the NEET rate—people Not in Employment nor Education, or Training (OECD, 2017). An interesting parallel can be drawn between the Maghreb and the northern bank of the Mediterranean, such as Italy. Although the political outcomes are unlikely to be the same given the considerable differences between authoritarian and democratic political systems, the Italian case is revealing of a broader trend related to economic instability and lack of opportunities for young people. Youth unemployment in Italy was 42.7% in 2014 and decreased to 34.7% in 2017, making it comparable to its North African neighbours. The rise of populism and extremist parties is an indicator of profound dissatisfaction with a status quo where unemployment, underemployment and precarity dominate the labour market. Unlike Tunisia and Morocco, the population in much richer, more democratic Italy is rapidly ageing, but Italy and Tunisia are in the same range of NEET percentage: 37% in Italy versus 36% in Tunisia and 21% in Morocco (World Bank, 2016).

Despite different socio-political conditions, we register a fertility rate decrease in Morocco and Italy, but a slight increase in Tunisia since 2011, the year of the revolution. Thus, blaming the uprisings or the ‘youth bulge’ seems misplaced. Changes in demography do have an impact on political choices, but the exclusive focus on countries’ age structure should be challenged. It would be more useful to highlight young people’s perceptions of empowerment or uselessness. A society in which most people are young, educated and unemployed produces specific political consequences. Young Moroccans and Tunisians today are better educated than the previous generations, having benefitted from the expansion of mass education and exposure to a global culture, creating a “revolution of aspirations” (Malik & Awadallah, 2013: 296). There is an “on-going generational struggle for inclusion to have access to better living conditions, better employment and mobility” (Malik & Awadallah, 2013: 296). Building on Gurr’s work, Fargues (2017: 2) argues that the logic of relative deprivation is a strong drive for revolution and can motivate international migration.

The OECD (2017) shows that 30.28% of Moroccan ‘advanced’ educated people were unemployed in 2003. In the same year, Moroccan ‘basic’ educated people were unemployed at 14.5%. Paradoxically, in Morocco, the more literate people are, the less likely they are to find a job (The Economist, 2013: 3). In Tunisia, the situation is similar to Morocco’s. Unemployment rates are higher among university graduates (Honwana, 2013). Poverty has fallen across the Maghreb, but inequalities and unemployment persist: “sadly, for Tunisia, with its relatively well-schooled young population, unemployment has been stubbornly large, particularly for women (22%), recent university graduates (31.2%), school leavers and other youth (31.8%). Ensuring equal access to economic opportunities is a priority for the new government in Tunisia, as with other governments across the region” (World Bank, 2016).

While young people were told that education was the way to a better life, reality is a constant reminder that for many of them this is not the case. The political repercussions of this ‘expectations gap’ have been significant and are likely to remain so in the near future. Boughzala and Kouki (2003) argue that unemployment persistence in countries like Tunisia is not only caused by labour market rigidities and by population growth, but also by the size of the informal sector and low levels of investment within the formal sector and in public infrastructure and services. According to Malik and Awadallah (2013), “the political system has been unable to find a recipe to create what can be termed as ‘good’ and reasonably secure jobs. For instance, the public agencies responsible for granting subsidized credit to small entrepreneurs and encouraging growth in this sector were often ineffective” (el-Meehy, 2013: 8). This is because authoritarianism does not genuinely ‘liberalize’ markets and networks of privilege are created between private businesses and political elites. In any case, the absence of opportunities drives young people to make alternative choices. Many tend to opt out of the job market altogether, particularly young women. These young women often tend to see marriage as a way out of the family home, but face difficulties in finding suitable young men with stable and reasonably well-paid jobs.

Therefore, many young men and women make their livelihood in the informal sector and/or the illegal economy (The Economist, 2013: 4). It is not only relevant to emphasize the formality or informality of jobs per se, but also the formality or informality of the job-seeking process, whereby institutions are bypassed in favour of patronage links (wasta in Arabic). Similar dynamics take place also in more developed economies and more democratic political systems (see e.g. Facchini, 2017 on Italy). In Morocco, “networks matter intergenerationally for finding employment. All else being equal, the chance of a worker holding a formal job in Morocco increases significantly if his or her father also has a formal job” (Gatti et al., 2014: 20).

Job market data for Morocco and Tunisia are fuzzy. In both cases, we do not know the true percentage of young people voluntarily choosing the informal sector. Quillen (2017: 31) reports that from 2011 to 2015 the number of people employed in the informal sector jumped from 28% to more than 32%, topping 1 million workers in 2015, and that the parallel economy accounted for as much as 38% of Tunisia’s GDP in 2013. According to Merouani et al. (2017), there can be strong reasons for young people to choose the informal job sector, e.g. higher incomes and more time flexibility. The issue is to understand whether people choose informal jobs as a last resort or not. Even though highly educated people are more likely to be insured, the same people often choose to work in the informal sector. Ultimately, “Moroccan youth working in informal jobs reported being significantly less satisfied than youth working in formal jobs” (Gatti et al., 2014). Interestingly, if the informal sector is a curse for the economy of a country, it can also be a blessing for poor people who could not survive otherwise. That said, the informal sector certainly discourages youth in the Mediterranean region in building new families or leave the family home because precariousness rules the way in which they find or hold on to a job.

4 Waithood

Another crucial factor influencing the fertility rate across North Africa can be labelled the ‘waithood effect’ (Dhillon & Yussuf, 2009), as many young adults in each cohort entering the labour market cannot find stable jobs. As Malik and Awadallah (2013: 309) explain: “the future of the Middle East crucially depends on whether it can convert this youthful transition into a productive transition”. The economic prospects of large sectors of North African youth have not changed significantly since the uprisings. In fact, high unemployment, lack of social mobility and absence of hope remain the most significant problems according to their own citizens (Abbott & Teti, 2017). Many young men and women live in a permanent state of waithood, simply waiting for life to happen. Interestingly, Honwana (2013) explains that the concept of waithood today can be extended to young people tout court, and not only to MENA countries’ youth. Honwana considers that ‘youth’ is shaped by society’s expectations, such as economic independence and family building. But such expectations are difficult to meet because the social contract between state and citizens is broken and the socioeconomic system is ‘rigged’. Young people’s inability to reach these goals is perceived to be the outcome of contemporary neoliberal dynamics, which both Tunisia and Morocco are incapable of exiting. In an ‘optimistic scenario’, according to Honwana, such a socioeconomic context could push young people to challenge the system and attempt to free themselves from their waithood condition. Young people are not passively waiting for change: they are reinventing their survival in non-socially conventional ways. “Waithood represents the contradiction of modernity, in which young people’s opportunities and expectations are simultaneously broadened and constrained” (Honwana, 2013: n.p.). However, the many localized loci of activism and ‘youth escapism’ in Tunisia and Morocco do not seem to have the capacity to generate a national widespread momentum for radical economic change (Hanieh, 2015).

In Tunisia, as Muldering (2013: 3) argues: “the most basic of societal contracts—that children will one day grow up, begin to contribute productively to society, and then raise families of their own—has been broken for an entire generation of youth in the Arab world trapped in a liminal period: waithood”. Kovaceva et al. (2018: 10) point out that actual waiting is longer for women than for men in North Africa (but see Pontiggia 2016 on young men). In Morocco too, waithood is a characteristic of youth. According to a SAHWA national case study, we observe that Moroccan youth are politically sensitive, but not active in the public sphere for sure. “This could be explained by the weak impact of education and employment policies on knowledge, the importance of virtual and alternative spaces for observing youth practices and giving them new opportunities, and the lack of confidence in institutions and migration alike. Young people’s representations, in the post-2011 context, are thus directed inwardly, more towards personal success than collective actions” (Aït Mous, 2016: n.p.). According to Aït Mous though, we have to be mindful of the fact that youth in Morocco is not a homogeneous group. There are huge differences between rural and urban areas, women and men and social classes. The Moroccan Government has attempted to be proactive in tackling waithood by both protecting youth from being engaged in work too early (minimum work age raised from 12 to 15 years) and promoting youth participation in politics (voting age lowered from 20 to 18 years) (Aït Mous, 2016). However, youth participation in politics is low and raising the working age has not mattered much in a country where illegal work is widespread. What matters to young people is achieving labour market conditions that deliver a fair living. If entrepreneurship was deemed the ‘magical solution’, the reality is that the informal economy is still one of the most important sources of income for young people. Morocco creates more than 40,000 units of informal jobs every year (Boukhriss, 2016). For Moroccan women, work is also not emancipatory, because most of the time, they work until they find a husband. Finally, state-sponsored programmes do not seem to deliver the changes needed. For instance, the 2006 Moukalawati (My Firm) programme aimed at reducing administrative procedures and facilitating access credit in order to boost private entrepreneurship. However, the programme did not succeed, because credit was not easily obtained and, at the same time, entrepreneurs in Morocco complained that prospective employees did not have the skills required because the educational system does not prepare young people sufficiently and it lacks coordination in promoting entrepreneurship. One of the effects of the waithood is also a loss of interest and trust in politics. Fargues (2017) links waithood to migration, since relative deprivation makes young people particularly keen on leaving their birth country to find opportunities abroad. As Fargues (2017: 3) argues, demographic change is a key contextual or ‘predisposing’ factor for both migration and revolt: “a lack of opportunities combined with a demographic bulge among the young accounts for many migratory and political processes at play in the Arab world today”.

5 Migration

Given the high unemployment rates and the inability to fulfil their potential, many young people opt for emigration when possible. While both Tunisia and Morocco have long exported their labour force, it was initially assumed that it was a price to pay before economic development kicked in at home. Migrants were considered as net contributors to the country’s development because they would send remittances home and contribute to domestic economic growth by boosting household spending. Economic growth, however, either stagnated or benefited only the few selected, with remittances simply serving to fill the vacuum of decreasing state spending on services. In a context of slow or unequal growth, emigration remains a priority for many young people in both Morocco and Tunisia because they see very few economic opportunities at home (Abbott & Teti, 2017). However, emigration has considerably changed over time as the issue has been ‘securitized’ in Europe, the US and Canada, the countries of choice for the clear majority of potential migrants from North Africa (although many Tunisians also made their way to Qaddhafi-led Libya). The closure of borders and the increasing difficulties in accessing legal migration—reserved only for the selected, connected and educated few—have pushed many thousands into the arms of human traffickers, boosting the number of ‘illegals’. Precise numbers are notoriously difficult to obtain, but Italy, for instance, received 4500 ‘illegal’ Tunisians in 2017 alone. Spain, for its part, detected 22,900 people in 2017 coming via Morocco or Algeria. In any case, changes in migratory policies on the part of receiving countries have led to more young people being ‘confined’ at home. Migration to the Gulf States has not been able to compensate for the loss of widespread and open access to Europe.

This has far-reaching political implications. Gubert and Nordman (2009) argue that while the Gulf region was the natural destination for many Mashreqi citizens, Europe—and Libya before 2011—was the favourite destination for Maghrebi migrants. Gubert and Nordman (2009: 3) claim that the migration issue has always been present in the Moroccan and Tunisian political debate, particularly in Morocco, where emigration is considered as a form of export to be promoted for the benefit of the country. Moreover, Moroccans are the most numerous in Europe. The authors show that the push factors for massive migration from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia are both GDP per capita and demographic pressures. In the first case, GDP exerts a push effect in particular for low-educated workers who need to overcome poverty constraints in order to afford the fixed costs of migration. The second push factor—the demographic pressure—expressed itself in the ‘brain drain’ of the most educated people. A crucial indicator here is migration pressure, defined as “excess domestic labour supply in the presence of negative per capita income differences with other countries” (Groenwold et al., 2016: 4). Bruni and Venturini (1995) make a distinction between migration pressure and actual migration, namely between the macro-level and the micro-level phenomenon. While migration pressure is about the macroeconomic level, actual migration depends on “the propensity of an individual to migrate, i.e. the probability that an individual willing to migrate will indeed migrate” (Groenwold et al., 2016: 4).

Tunisia has always had a migration policy based on two main principles: encouraging Tunisians to emigrate and checking on Tunisians abroad. Natter (2015) analyses Tunisian migration after the Arab Spring and assesses that the revolution had three main effects on migration. First, the absence of Tunisian border checks in 2011 allowed a consistent non-controlled flow of Tunisians to reach Europe. Second and most crucially, Tunisia experienced massive immigration from Libya after the fall of Gaddafi. For Tunisia, which had not experienced high immigration since colonial times, this prompted immediate practical challenges of accommodation, health care and food provision, and led to new migration and asylum laws (Natter, 2015: 2). Recent immigration from Libya to Tunisia has been strictly limited though. Tunisia acquired the status of a transit country, so that Libyans are allowed into the country only if they can prove their exit. Third, the democratization process suddenly made Tunisia attractive to Western civil society activists and NGOs.

In 2012, Tunisian emigrants accounted for 11% of the total Tunisian population (Natter, 2015: 2). What changed over time in terms of migration flows is their composition. During the 1990s, most Tunisian migrants were low-skilled workers, but today the trend is for young graduates to leave (Natter, 2015). Another new trend is the influx of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa in Tunisia, although total numbers are small (Natter, 2015: 3). Recently, Tunisia has had to enforce immigration policies in reaction to the securitization of the issue by its European partners in the early 2000s. In fact, between 2003 and 2010, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and Mauritania adopted controversial laws on immigration, emigration and smuggling, which “targeted transit and penalized irregular exit” (Perrin, 2016: 5), rather than regulating migration fluxes, but were badly implemented.

In the hands of Ben Ali, the Tunisian law of 2004, which was initially intended to combat human traffickers, became a powerful tool both to meet EU needs and to extend control over Tunisian society, particularly over young people. The Arab Spring uprising did not produce the changes that young people might have expected. Quite the opposite: young people became Tunisia’s first problem because they were and are perceived to go hand in hand with violence, crime, terrorism, revolution, unemployment and migration (International Alert, 2015). In 2012, Islamist Party leader Rashid Ghannouchi declared that Tunisia should stop to “give as a gift” its graduates to Europe. However, the reality is that very poor socioeconomic prospects for many young Tunisians push them to seek a different life outside the country. Tunisian emigration will likely continue at high levels, driven by political discontent and economic precariousness (Natter, 2015: 14).

Interestingly, migration policies today are used as a commodity to maintain and (re)negotiate relations with the European Union and readdress the balance of power. The Mobility Partnership promoted by the European Union “are unattractive to Arab leaders in their current form, and migration will most likely continue with or without such a management tool” (Fargues & Fandrich, 2012: 12; see also Groenwold et al., 2016: 6).

6 Do Morocco and Tunisia Face a Youth-Related Crisis Nowadays?

The socio-economic and political crises that Tunisia and Morocco experience do concern the young, but the youth themselves have little agency in this. After the Arab uprisings, women and youth should have become the focus of governments’ resource and energy investments, but this did not happen. Moroccan and Tunisian youth began organizing and creating social movements to demand the actual implementation of the changes promised: “These movements reveal new modes of action, new practices and new representations that these social groups have developed in relation to their societies, authorities (…) and to the future” (Kadri, 2014: 1).

New movements growing out of youth’s marginalization, feelings of injustice and lack of recognition are reshaping Moroccan and North African societies, as civil society actors are mushrooming. Young people today are more concerned with economic reforms than the previous generations (Kadri, 2014). This has significant repercussions on the political system because ‘new values’ are being injected into it. According to an Anna Lindh Foundation report (2014), the Tunisian context has been rapidly changing, with an increasing number of associations. The 2013 International Alert Report argues that Tunisia is now at a delicate juncture: after the uprising, the Tunisian political context is far from being cohesive and efficient. Religious and regional divides reinforce people’s perception of the Arab Spring’s failure and Tunisian youth is not satisfied with the post-revolutionary setting. It is therefore a time of contradictory trends with young people still mobilizing to obtain the changes they had demanded in 2011, but still plagued by political inertia and economic difficulties, which make many young people opt for emigration.

As Urdal (2006) notes, youth can be both a resource and a danger in the context of a fragile economy. However, youth bulges represent a challenge that government has to address by providing opportunities for youth to participate in education, in the labour market and in governance. This brings the analysis back to the issues of frustrated expectations and political responses to such frustrations. Bricker and Foley (2013: 179) argue that the mere presence of a ‘youth bulge’ is not enough to generate violence; the real challenge these countries face today is the transition of youth into the labour market, regardless of their education level and total numbers. Bricker and Foley (2013) argue that while Tunisia had an above average Youth Risk Factor (the ratio of the young to the total labour force), its youth bulge score remained average, indicating the mere presence of young people or the size of older populations was not a main reason for the unrest (ibid.: 189).

As the MENA market cannot absorb all the job seekers, frustration can turn to political violence. At the same time, violent upheaval also depends on the level of economic crisis, the youth’s education, the presence or lack of democracy and the geographic position. Urdal (2006: 613) observes a difference in behaviour among rural and urban youth cohorts and “youth often constitute a disproportionately large part of rural-to-urban migrants; hence, in the face of large youth cohorts, strong urbanization may be expected to lead to an extraordinary crowding of youth in urban centres, potentially increasing the risk of political violence”. Binzel and Carvalho (2016) argue that religion is useful (and maybe crucial) to relieve frustration and marginalization (see also Skirbekk and Navarro, this volume). Islam is the best tool for young Egyptians to cope with their unmet expectations because it represents a safe space and can be then employed to make sense of one’s situation to eventually provide the symbols and language for political and social mobilization. Although religion should not be conflated with extremism, such conditions can in part explain the growth and continued appeal of political Islam in all its forms, even violent ones (Merone, 2015).

In short, there is indeed a youth-related crisis in both Tunisia and Morocco despite the demographic changes that have taken place, but the problem is not the greater share of younger people in the distribution of the population. There is no demographic explosion of young people. The real issues are linked to the inability of political institutions to respond to socio-economic challenges. The absence of a strong labour market, the inability to relieve pressure through emigration and an unequal distribution of wealth negatively affect young people. Before the uprising, the Gini index was stable, but it proved to be unreliable in the light of the revolutions. Wealth inequality may be much higher and more socially divisive, but harder to detect than expenditure inequality, especially in developing MENA (MENA Economic Monitor, 2015: 17).

Despite the similarities in the reasons for the uprisings, the institutional trajectories differed among MENA countries. In fact, the impact of the ‘Spring’ in Tunisia and Morocco was very different when it comes to the management of the protests and the outcome of the uprising itself. Mohammad VI of Morocco knew how to channel the explosive energy in the streets into more moderate demonstrations and initiated reforms pre-empting further popular demands. As Storm (2012: 119) highlights: “at no point, the situation spiralled out of control, rather, the monarchy stayed firmly in command, and even managed to utilize the Arab Spring protests to its own advantage by overseeing the introduction of a new constitution”. In other words, it did not fundamentally alter the balance of power in favour of elected officials. Thus, the king managed to marginalize the opposition and maintain the control of the country (Berg & Rossi-Doria, 2015). Conversely, in Tunisia, the uprisings broke the previous authoritarian political system and allowed political actors to build a democratic one, which was consolidated in 2014 with the approval of a new democratic liberal constitution.

As already highlighted, participants to the uprisings were not necessarily ‘democracy-driven’ but were more ‘economy-driven’. When asked to rank the top two reasons for the uprisings, both Moroccan and Tunisian citizens mentioned the economy as number one and corruption as number two with the state of the political system farther down the list (Beissinger et al., 2011; Teti et al., 2018). In addition, they were not members of organized associations and parties, they were rather ordinary citizens—many of them religious and not all of them marginalized or disadvantaged people. The economic aspect of the uprisings is indeed connected to changes in the population and Achcar (2013: 12) attributes the low GDP level to an “exceptionally rapid demographic growth” during the period between the 1970s and the 1990s. Later, demographic growth among North African countries stabilized and even decreased, in the period at the end of 1990s and the beginning of 2010, suggesting that the more recent economic crisis might have been too quickly pinned on the youth bulge when in fact the problems are structural.

7 Consequences of Demographic Changes for Regime Stability and Legitimacy

The impact demographic change has had on regime stability and legitimacy differs in Morocco and Tunisia. Morocco managed to defuse the revolutionary challenge through cosmetic reforms and minor concessions. But complicated economic conditions remain even if the country fares better than its revolutionary neighbour in the post-uprising period. In Tunisia, the whole political system has been changed, but political reforms might not be sufficient to spur growth and reduce unemployment. They are perceived as a compromise between old and the post-revolutionary elites to the detriment of the wider population (Boukhars, 2017; Marzouki, 2015; Merone, 2015). Clawson (2009: 1) writes that the MENA population today is undergoing a “demographic transition” which potentially carries “the opportunity from much of the population being of working age with a low burden for caring for the youth and elderly; then, in coming decades, the opportunity of increased capital from the savings of middle-aged workers preparing for retirement”. Yet, if governments do not create enough jobs to make youth’s energies converge in the labour market, the optimistic scenario is unlikely to occur. Clawson (2009: 4) calls youth unemployment and the retirement hope the “twin challenges” MENA governments must face today.

However, the traditional policy response to these “twin challenges” is not working. The political trend is to get youth ‘ready’ for the job market by enhancing their skills and delaying young people’s professional access. This dynamic can be useful in the short term, but it cannot last and it does not lead to development. Malik and Awadallah (2013) argue that the most significant factor preventing the absorption of the youth into the labour market over time is the inability to create a large and innovative private sector that could gradually replace the state in terms of job creation. But problematic political conditions prevent the private sector from expanding. Malik and Awadallah (2013) suggest that neither the oil sector nor the governments can absorb the huge mass of unemployed youth and these two sectors have been unable to do so for quite some time. It follows that the Arab world should have focused on giving an impulse to the manufacturing sector, as many Asian and Latin American countries did, to satisfy the needs of a growing population. The inability and unwillingness to do so should not be blamed primarily on a growing population and the ‘youth bulge’. The explanations for such failure are to be found in the deeply divided political environment across the region, the self-serving authoritarianism of the leadership in place and the narrow interests of the rising bourgeoisie to exploit rents rather than investing in expanding the economy through private enterprise. While the Arab uprisings seemed to challenge both Arab divisions and authoritarian practices, the post-uprisings Arab world does not seem to have changed much. If anything, there is greater chaos, greater insecurity and therefore greater inability to deal with the problem of socioeconomic development even in countries that democratized such as Tunisia.

In addition to the lack of regional economic integration, there is the problem of ruling elites who are unwilling and unable to provide meaningful change. The absence of accountability and the very limited role of civil society in economic policymaking undermine most efforts of reform (Cavatorta & Rivetti, 2018). In fact, vested interests tend to prevail to avoid upsetting the political system: “There is growing realization in the wake of recent Arab revolts that the status quo is unsustainable and that governance system need to be more responsive to citizens” (Malik & Awadallah, 2013: 309). Heydemann’s work on corrupt networks (2004) demonstrates that liberalizing policies simply resulted in the transfer of public assets into private hands without any real benefit for the population at large. This resulted in the creation of private monopolies that did not contribute to growth and therefore employment—the outcome of a very deliberate policy of ensuring that key social actors would continue to support authoritarianism (Dillman, 2001). As Acemoglu and Robinson (2012) argue, a nation’s wealth or poverty is based on the inclusiveness of political and economic institutions. What is crucial is the extractive nature of institutions: both economic and political institutions are resource-extractive and drain nations’ wealth. The increasing extractiveness of North African regimes over time is one reason for, the Arab Spring occurred (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2012).

It is crucial in economic reforms to actively involve young people, but this would provide them with the means to have a genuine political voice, which might disrupt the networks of patronage still in place despite the move away from authoritarianism. As the political and individual values of the youth are increasingly diverging from those of previous generations in favour of more liberalism in both politics and economy. Paciello et al. (2016) find that youth policy in Tunisia has worsened after the fall of Ben Ali, as social conflicts caused by rising inequalities and a failed development model are increasingly reduced to a question of juvenile extremists and to Islamist/non-Islamist cultural divides, which are dealt with using “a mix of repression and the preaching of tolerance through educational programs”.

8 Conclusions

Instead of focusing on supposed ‘youth bulges’ or youth extremism or youth apathy when explaining the crisis of the Arab world, it is more fruitful to analyse the structural problems—political and economic—that have led to uprisings and demands for change. As Inayatullah (2016) notes, it is better to look at the young population in Morocco and Tunisia both as a challenge and as an opportunity for their governments. What makes a difference is how political and economic institutions operate, as this has tremendous repercussion on the private choices and public stances of ordinary citizens. Radical policy changes are needed in the region to ensure that the youth does not remain a constant source of problems and worry, but despite the 2011 uprisings such changes have not been implemented. It is clear that the presence of active, educated and jobless—or at best precariously employed young people—can become a further source of destabilization for an already economically struggling country. Many young Moroccans and Tunisians cannot meet such social expectations linked to family, status and consumption. Forming families and earning a good life is impossible for the majority, leading to dissatisfaction, a feeling of uselessness and desire to escape through emigration. Interestingly, these feelings and grievances are not confined to the Maghreb region, suggesting that structural problems linked to the economic system in place are to blame. As we observed in the 2018 municipal elections in Tunisia, youth participation was dramatically low and this trend must be rapidly inverted to put youth potential at the core of the policies, as observed by the NGO Mourakiboun (Delmas, 2018), but this is unlikely to occur in a worsening economic environment.

Inayatullah (2016) reflects on the opportunities of demographic change in the MENA region in terms of four future scenarios in 2050. In the first scenario, the development of a peer-to-peer sharing economy and cyber cooperatives would bring governments and economies to work together resulting in greater development. This is unlikely to occur given the existing structural problems and inequalities that plague Tunisia and Morocco. In addition, the concentration of wealth coincides with political power, preventing most likely the creation of a larger middle-class. The second scenario foresees unemployed and disempowered youth stuck in an economic system where the human labour is substituted by automated machines. The outcome of this scenario is the break of social links, especially the intergenerational one. In the third scenario, ‘digital’ natives and the elderly do not communicate at all: they live in different techno-cultural enclaves. This might indeed occur, but it would simply be a social division with the economic problems remaining and the (in)ability of the labour market to absorb young people as unchanged. In the last scenario, Inayatullah (2016: 30) foresees the end of the capitalist system, where the youth bulge is no longer a security threat: “in a post-capitalist society where technology allows for survival for all, fighting over scarce resources becomes a non-issue”. Inayatullah’s predictions about MENA youth are strictly linked to technological revolutions, namely digital, genomics, manufacturing and energy-based. The economy would increasingly move to a “peer-to-peer cooperative and sharing economies challenging traditional capitalism” (Inayatullah, 2016). More prosaically, it appears that without a fundamental rethink of the role of the state in the economy as both an employer and a legislator limiting the reach of large business interests and in fostering citizens’ rights, the Tunisian and Moroccan economies are destined to muddle through. In this case, demographic change might indeed coincide with greater public liberties and even full democratization, but from an economic perspective not much would change for the vast majority of the young citizens.