World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies

Barcelona, July 19th - 24th 2010

· NOT_DEFINED date: THU 22, 11.30 am-1.30 pm

· NOT_DEFINED institution: INALCO (France)

· NOT_DEFINED organizer: Delphine Pagès-El Karoui

· NOT_DEFINED language: English / Français

· NOT_DEFINED description: More than 3 millions of Egyptians have left – temporarily or permanently- their country to live abroad, mainly in the Arab states, Europe and North America. This panel aims to be a platform for scholars specialized in Egyptian migrants from various disciplines to set a network of researchers and launch a research project on a comparative study between the three migratory systems, exploring not only their similarities and differences but also their connections and articulations. This panel may propose eclectic theoretical approaches, combining macro- and micro-perspectives of analysis.

- Studying migratory experiences insisting on the complexity of personal trajectories (circular migration, return migration) and taking in account the diversity of Egyptian migrants: if irregular low skilled migrants are more numerous in Europe, there is also an important migration of high skilled Egyptians, in particular in Arab countries ; if the young single males are prevalent, one can notice singular trajectories of Egyptian women migrants, usually highly educated ; with the exile of thousands of Coptic Egyptians towards America and Europe, the evocation of a Coptic Diaspora became more relevant. The incorporation of Egyptians in the host societies should be questioned: in France, Egyptian (low-skilled) migrants have few social bonds with French people, except with the North African immigrants. Even in the Arab states, Egyptian migrants suffer from racism and exclusion. Do the different regional contexts of migration play an active role in recombining the migrant identities? We should also pay attention to the development of transnational families. It’s not rare than children –especially daughters– even born in Europe have been sent back to Egypt to live in a traditional Arab social environment to preserve their moral values.
- Focusing on the impacts in Egypt of a world-wide emigration, considering the strong links Egyptian migrants keep with their motherland. Local development in small towns in the Nile Delta, networks, economic and social remittances will be subjects of interest. If the religious imports of wahhabi customs by migrants from the Gulf is often denounced as a major driver of reislamisation of the society, what kind of norms, moral values and practices do the migrants bring back with them from Europe or America?
- Migratory myths and fictions which are recurrent in the press, literature or cinema should be described. From instance, if, in Egyptian films dealing with migration to the West, the migrant is often seen in a negative way, as the person who is gaining his freedom but losing his values, the portray of European countries is more friendly than America, entangled in moral decay.
- Analyzing migration policies: Egypt government recently signed bilateral agreements with Italy on circular migration, but also with Canada and Libya. Do migration policies strongly differ according to the migratory regional systems?

Chair: : Ayman Zohry (The Egyptian Society for Migration Studies)


Paper presenter: Friederike Zigmann (Institute for Geography, University Osnabrueck) ‘Transnational networks, diversity of migrants and migrants’ networks regarding the impact of local contexts in the case of Egyptian emigration to Italy’
Egyptian migration to Italy is until today scarcely considered in migration research and even in research on Egyptian migration itself. Strong indications from statistics and other research point to an increase in migration flows from Egypt to Italy with significant evidence for the phenomenon of chain migration from certain villages in the delta-region. From the analysis of interviews with Egyptian migrants in Rome and Milan it becomes also apparent that the flows of migrants are more diverse than the foremost assumed dominance of low skilled migrants from rural areas. Actually a lot of these migrants stem from the cities of Cairo and Alexandria and hold high education levels, which are not represented in their current jobs in Italy. While migrants from the so called “rural” areas most of the times posses dense and kinship based networks, that are almost solely concentrated on Italy, “urban migrants” are more integrated in diverse networks, especially family networks, which comprise a wide variety of destinations.
The reasons for the phenomenon of chain migration from villages can be drawn from the evolution of a “culture of migration”. Concurrency, less possibilities at the labour market and high degrees of social constraints in villages foster the dynamic of transnational networks and the evolution of transnational social spaces, in which migration becomes just an expected and/or ordinary step in the biographies of young men. Mostly these villages have a migration history to other Arab countries, like Iraq, Jordan, or Lebanon. Not only has the shift occurred because of changing conditions (war in Iraq), but also hierarchies of valuation and images of Europe and the Gulf States do play a role.

Paper presenter: Delphine Pagès-El Karoui (Migrinter/INALCO) ‘Egyptian migrants in Paris : an invisible minority?’
This paper presents cross-disciplinary approaches, between sociology and geography, from the case study of Egyptian migrants in Paris. European countries (mainly Italy, United-Kingdom and France) appear to be a new destination for Egyptians, even though Gulf States remain their principal destination. In France, they represent a sort of invisible minority which is very few documented, excepted some researches about illegal migrants’ networks in Paris (Saad, Müller-Mahn). From an empirical study on the Parisian region that accounts for 80% of the Egyptian migrants in France, we’ll provide a broad overview of this recent migration, streaming basically from Cairo and urbanized villages of the Nile Delta, building strong networks between France and Egypt, and often perceived as temporary, albeit return is frequently postponed.
We’ll focus on spatial patterns of immigrants (residential patterns, places of work and social spaces) to analyze the process of incorporation in the metropolitan area. From instance, mapping Egyptian residences inside Paris reveals a concentration in two different areas: some live in the north-eastern districts (18th, 19th, 20th) which are still - but maybe not for a long time - popular districts bearing high concentration of immigrants, in particular of North African origin, but others live in the classiest residential areas (XVIth and XVth, which are also the two principal districts of Lebanese migrants). One of the challenges of this study will be to capture this diversity among migrants (in terms of socio-economic position, professional occupation, illegal/legal status, religious and cultural belonging) to deepen the analysis of the variety of processes of incorporation into the French society and the heterogeneity of constructions of senses of belonging. The family should be a privileged unit of analysis to question transnational practices and to examine how migrants build, reinvent their identities from multiple sources and resources. Finally, we’d like to refine new conceptualizations of mobility’s changes on the relationships between the social and the spatial.

Paper presenter: Francesca Marchetta (Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute), "Born to be alive?: Return migration and the survival of Egyptian MSEs"
The role of the micro and small enterprises for the Egyptian economy can be hardly overstated: 46.5 percent of the workers are employed in private non agricultural activities, and 95 percent of the enterprises operating in this sector have no more than four employees, with mostly being family-run businesses. The establishment of a micro enterprise leds to the creation of employment opportunities, and it increases the income prospects not only for the entrepreneur, but also for his household. McCormick and Wahba (2001) and Wahba and Zenou (2009) provide evidence that the migration experience and foreign savings increase the probability of becoming an entrepreneur upon return. But Egyptian MSEs are extremely vulnerable and they face a considerable hazard of closure at any point in time, so that the establishment of a new entrepreneurial activity might be of little significance for the household if this is not going to last and to develop. This paper draws on the Egypt Labour Market Panel Survey 2006, whose sample covers individuals who had been interviewed in the 1998 round of the survey: this gives us the chance to observe the differences between the firms established by returnees and the ones established by stayers and to analyse their survival and evolution over time. We then rely on a recursive bivariate probit model to show that MSEs run by Egyptian returnees have better chances of survival than the other MSEs.