Empirical Youth Studies in the Arab World

Empirical Youth Studies in the Arab World

Organisatoren
Sonja Hegasy, Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin
Ort
Berlin
Land
Deutschland
Vom - Bis
06.10.2003 -
Url der Konferenzwebsite
Von
Sonja Hegasy, Berlin

The Centre for Modern Oriental Studies in Berlin held a workshop on 'Empirical Youth Studies in the Arab World' on 6th October 2003 convened by Dr. Sonja Hegasy. Primarily intended as an introductory reflection on comparative surveys of political attitudes among young adults in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), it brought together sociologists, Middle East scholars and anthropologists who study youth throughout the world using quantitative methods. Both the topic and the methodology are rare in Germany. And efforts to compare the Arab world with other world regions are still seldom made.

Sociologists and anthropologists working on youth in Germany (Prof. Richard Münchmeier, FU Berlin), in Latin America (Dr. René Bendit, Deutsches Jugend Institut, Munich), Sub-Saharan Africa (Prof. Erdmute Alber, Universität Bayreuth) and Morocco (Prof. Mokhtar el-Harras, Université Mohammed V, Rabat) assembled for the first time to discuss the feasibility of quantitative surveys and their methodological and analytical challenges. The round table addressed two main topics: a) the study of young adults' political attitudes and b) the feasibility of quantitative research in the Middle East.

Some scholars argue that it is not possible to carry out quantitative surveys in the Arab world, deploring the lack of a 'culture of inquiry'. Admittedly, there is strong suspicion of scholars - whether local or foreign - and their motives for posing certain questions. Middle Eastern Studies have long since neglected the study of youth, so that little is known about how young adults judge their own regimes or indeed the rest of the world. There is, however, an urgent need to orient ourselves towards the majority of citizens in the Arab world, i.e., people under the age of 35.
The round table began with a presentation by Prof. Münchmeier of the 13th German Shell Jugendstudie carried out in 20001. Shell AG has been financing quantitative surveys on youth attitudes in Germany at regular intervals since 1953, at which time the studies were regarded as a contribution to the democratic reconstruction of Germany after WWII. Using a sample of 4546 young adults, 648 additional samples with foreign youth, 30 qualitative explorations and 32 biographical interviews, the 13th was the most substantial Shell Study ever carried out. A budget of 750.000$ allowed for a wide coverage. Prof. Münchmeier and his colleagues embedded the survey in its political context and concentrated on two focal points: a) personal concepts and biographical perspectives in the era of globalisation and b) European unification. Foreign youth were included for the first time, recreating the topic as youth in Germany rather than German youth. However, this is not to say that the 13th Shell Study is designed as a migrant study.

The survey got under way with the question of how young people feel and think at the beginning of the 3rd millennium. Münchmeier stressed that ‚modern youth' is not a universal category and that each youth study must define its own theoretical characteristics clearly. Age alone is not sufficient as a definition of ‚youth', since it is more than a purely biological category. There has been talk in industrialized countries, therefore, of a new biographical phase between youth and adulthood known as ‚post-adolescence'.

Dr. Hegasy presented her work with 700 young Moroccans between 18 and 35, who participated in a survey in May/June 2003. As part of the project entitled ‚Changing Concepts of Political Legitimacy in 19th and 20th century Morocco' (with Dr. Bettina Dennerlein)2, she researched the attitudes of young adults towards the authority of the Moroccan king. When Hassan II died in 1999, many observers had doubts about the ability of the inexperienced and shy Mohammed VI to acquire sufficient political authority as head of state, spiritual authority as commander of the faithful and theological authority as the highest religious scholar to be accepted by his citizens. The issue of the acceptance of royal authority is at the heart of the study. More striking than this biological fact is the monarchy's new political iconography. The sub-message of the humanised king is a recurring theme in contemporary royal self-depiction. With the growing social disparity in Morocco and increasing social unrest since the 1990s, it is understandable that the king wishes to portray himself - at least rhetorically - as a social reformer and 'King of the poor'. Less comprehensible, however, is the declining virility and authority of his image. Many citizens were shocked by his public marriage, which they regarded as middle-class. The survey started from the hypothesis that strategies of legitimizing royal authority are changing under Mohammed VI from patriarchal, authoritarian means to more rationally established arguments and that this change creates acceptance especially among young citizens and moreover among young women.

The discussion that followed showed that for obvious reasons the Moroccan study could not rely on a comparable research design nor data collection (access problems, denial of research permit, different budget sizes). In addition to these shortcomings there is a lack of systematic, quantitative surveys in the Arab world that would allow for comparative statements on e.g. inter-generational change in society or cross-country comparisons of young people's attitudes in the region. The Shell Study has the advantage of looking back on a history of 50 years.
Still, it is not futile to carry out quantitative surveys in the Arab world. Most importantly, Hegasy showed that the written questionnaires allowed to approach such a sensitive subject matter as the authority of the Moroccan king which would otherwise be hard to tackle. Furthermore, the questionnaires opened up long discussions up to three hours with a number of chosen individuals. This supplement information was noted and allowed for a contextualisation of the quantitative answers. Indeed, in the majority of cases only the anonymity of the written questionnaire, which was filled out in the presence of the interviewer, allowed to approach the subject.

Dr. Bendit talked about his experience of empirical youth studies in Latin America. In contrast to the Arab world, many Latin American countries have administered national youth surveys within the last ten years. Youth research in this world region has made some key contributions to the theoretical and empirical analysis of groups of young people such as 'popular urban youth' (marginalised youth), 'young women' of different social origins, working class youth, et al. Dr. Bendit provided some background information on demographic developments and the quantitative relevance of youth in the structure of the population. Youth in Latin America should be seen in the frame of urbanisation, the duality of Latin American societies and the extreme social polarisation (concentration of wealth vs. expanding poverty). In this context, Dr. Bendit discussed migration processes from rural to urban areas and the creation of "mega-cities" over the last 30 years. These developments changed the classic social construction of youth as "student youth." Dr. Bendit presented a summary of the historical development of theoretical reflection and empirical youth studies from 1930 to the present day. Four main periods were identified: I) Between 1930 and 1960, although philosophical and psychological essays on adolescence and youth were produced, there was no development in empirical research . II) In the period from 1961 to 1980, a predominantly Latin American perspective prevailed, based on macro-sociological analysis, and the first empirical studies on youth were published. III) The period between 1985 (UN International Youth Year) and 1992 saw the emergence of sociological approaches with a stronger link to European and US theoretical concepts. IV) In 1992, the first extensive national youth surveys were finally launched, accompanied by the expectation that findings would throw some light on the development of Latin American societies in general during their critical transition to democracy. Dr. Bendit closed with a description and analysis of some of the main features of the Mexican Youth Survey (organisational aspects, construction of the sample, field work strategies, data analysis and interpretation in the context of cooperation between the Mexican Youth Institute and several universities).

Prof. el-Harras presented his findings from a recent survey on street prostitution in Morocco. The study was commissioned by the Association de lutte contre le SIDA. El-Harras used qualitative and quantitative methods to study young female sex workers. In his presentation, he evaluated the two methodological techniques that were used: closed questionnaires and focus groups. The questionnaire included topics such as sex workers' personal and familial status, sexual practices, their relationship with clients, STI prevention methods, knowledge of STI, sex workers' internal group organisation, and future prospects. It was administered to 316 sex workers in five cities. As for the qualitative part, ten focus groups were held to discuss topics already raised in the questionnaire as well as issues such as the spatio-temporal framework of 'street prostitution' in Morocco, the relationships of sex workers with their families, their economic behaviour and their recommendations for the future. El-Harras stressed that although the questionnaire was a theoretically appropriate tool to study young sex workers, it needed to be adjusted in practice to the sensitive nature of the subject in order to minimise doubts and suspicion raised by the interview per se and by the personal and familial questions in particular.

During the final discussion, Prof. Asef Bayat (ISIM, Leiden) cautioned overemphasising the problem of representativity. E.g., to gain insights into the life of sex workers in Morocco, it is not necessary to question sex workers all over the country. The difficulty of defining youth, remained a common denominator of the discussion. What does youth mean in the Arab context? Do thirteen year-old children still fall into the category of youth if they have been working since the age of six? Can they be compared to 18 year-olds in Germany who have never experienced responsibility for the family income or well-being of individual family members? Another question that arose frequently during the round table discussion was the use of quantitative in addition to qualitative methods. Prof. Alber stated that quantitative findings could confirm the results of qualitative studies. When applied correctly, they allow for comparison of soft data and hard facts, e.g., social norms can be verified. Prof. Alber underlined that since science is an open process, data always contains surprises that can only be discovered in the course of statistical evaluation. Prof. Freitag emphasised the complementary aspects of both methodological approaches and recommended continuing with a combination of the two. Participants agreed that qualitative approaches still enjoyed greater credibility in the scientific community than quantitative ones

Footnotes:

1 Fischer, Arthur; Münchmeier, Richard et al., 2000: Jugend 2000. Opladen
2http://195.37.93.199/Projekte%202004/Seite1.htm

Kontakt

The Centre for Modern Oriental Studies (http://www.zmo.de) invites interested scholars to contact Dr. Sonja Hegasy (sonja.hegasy@rz.hu-berlin.de) for cooperation in developing a project proposal for doctoral or post-doctoral research.

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