Youth, education and the labour market in the Arab Mediterranean countries

Abstract

This article provides an analysis of the transitions from the education system to the labour market in five Arab Mediterranean countries: Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia. To approach this question, the issue is contextualised, the situation of the young people in relation to employment is analysed using existing theory, and four hypotheses are proposed on the segmentation of these countries' labour markets. Then, these hypotheses are examined in the light of the data on employment structures and access to the labour market of the different social groups in the Arab Mediterranean countries obtained through the SAHWA Youth Survey 2016 (2017) and the SAHWA Ethnographic Fieldwork (2016). The results confirm that this transition poses a serious problem in most of the region’s countries due to the drastic rise in youth unemployment rates.

Keywords

• Arab Mediterranean countries
• youth
• labour market
• education