As part of the joint publication of Coping with Uncertainty, the chapter by Jörg Gertel comes under the title of Economy and Employment, giving us insights on Economy and Youth Employment in the region after the Arab Spring. 

Since the Arab Spring, the economic situation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries has deteriorated. Not only do armed conflicts dominate everyday life in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, but the situation is extremely problematic for many other countries as well. Millions of refugees live in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. Revenues from tourism, an important pillar of national economies, have collapsed in Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia, while at the same time, international investments are declining, with few exceptions, due to political instability. Unsurprisingly, the latest Arab Human Development Report indicates that the Human Development Index – a measure of a country’s level of development – has fallen substantially since 2010; meanwhile, inequality in the MENA region has increased (UNDP 2016). By no means, however, are these problems of exclusively internal origin. On the contrary, internal and external causation of societal polarisation are globally articulated; they result, for example, from the colonial past, asymmetric exchange systems, enforced deregulation and privatisation, together with the expanding impact of the international financial system, entailing and accelerating the processes of commercialisation and commodification including its severe social consequences. Yet, how do young people themselves assess their economic situation in this destabilised context, and to what extent are they affected by economic insecurity and uncertainty?