FeRN Seminar Series: “The harga is the women’s fault” – Fearing migration’s revolutionary potential in a Tunisian border town
| Dates: | 2 April 2025 |
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| Times: | 15:15 - 16:30 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Arts, Languages and Cultures |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, External researchers, Adults, Age Friendly, Alumni, Current University students, General public |
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| Speaker: | Valentina Zagaria |
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Valentina Zagaria
Leverhulme Research Fellow
Social Anthropology Department, University of Manchester
Abstract: Dignity (karama) in Tunisia became politicised during the 2011 revolution through demands for systemic change that would allow citizens to reproduce valued lives without feeling ‘socially dead’ or like they were simply surviving. It did not, however, challenge pre-existing unequal household, gender, and generational relations. Nevertheless, in the decade following 2011, certain power lines did shift more in favour of women and the youth. In the coastal town of Zarzis, for instance, gender and family dynamics were altered locally also following legal and technical changes to the EU border regime. Yet pursuing a dignified life via the harga – the unauthorised ‘burning’ of the border to Europe – folds into morally thorny questions and fears of change. The media, politicians, and the local community blamed the persistence of the harga on young men desiring immoral Western lifestyles, on mothers selling their gold to subsidise sons on journeys that might lead to their deaths, and on young women craving to marry a man with a visa and the capital that is assumed to flow from it. This paper asks what kinds of competing politics and societal visions are ‘engendered’ through the harga. What do the fears surrounding unauthorised migration reveal about the transformations underway in this post-revolutionary context?
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2.218
University Place
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