Arab Awakening Research Articles

The evolution of the internal political situation in Libya after the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime

Researchers from Western countries and some Russian scientists initially enthusiastically classified anti-government protests and uprisings in the 2010s in a number of Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa as «Arab Spring» or «Arab Awakening».However, the consequences of these «springs» and «awakenings» in some countries of the abovementioned region caused less delight and more anxiety. Indeed, if Tunisia after its «Arab Spring» returned to stable development, in Egypt one general (Hosni Mubarak) was replaced by another (Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi), then in Yemen, and especially in Libya, as a consequence of the «Arab awakenings» civil wars occurred, that are still ongoing, and threaten the complete disintegration of the above-mentioned countries.Based on the above, it is quite obvious that the analysis of the causes, the content of the main stages and consequences of the evolution of the internal political situation in Libya after the overthrow of the regime of M. Gaddafi in October 2011 is not only an urgent scientific, but also a political task. The purpose of the article is to analyze the reasons for the destabilization of the internal political situation in Libya since October 2011, the content of its key stages and consequences. When writing the text of the article, the following scientific methods were used: problem-chronological, comparativehistorical, periodization method, historical-genetic, historical-retrospective, etc. The development of the internal political situation in Libya since October 2011 has led the Libyan state to total disintegration. The Libyan statehood, which until October 2011 was not particularly strong and stable, is confidently drifting towards fragmentation and autonomy within not only individual regions, but even individual cities.

Soraya Antonius’s Arab awakening: Palestinian identity, activism, and Anglophone literature

ABSTRACT While scholarship on Anglophone Palestinian literature has burgeoned in recent years, there has been no attempt to retrieve and assess the work of Soraya Antonius (1932–2017), author of two remarkable English-language novels depicting British-ruled Palestine from the 1910s to 1948, The Lord (1986) and Where the Jinn Consult (1987). Exploring and contextualising Antonius’s contribution to this literary corpus, this article examines the cultural, political and linguistic forces shaping her writings. It begins by tracing the fusion of Anglophile mimicry and anti-colonial resistance typical of her parents – George Antonius, author of The Arab Awakening (1938) and Katy Antonius, Mandatory Jerusalem’s leading socialite. While her parents funnelled their Levantine-cosmopolitan options into a distinctive Palestinian identity, the Nakba compelled their daughter to take the opposite trajectory, leaving Palestine to pursue cosmopolitan possibilities elsewhere. The article’s second section thus considers her work in 1960s and 1970s Beirut, first as a journalist and editor, committed to developing a critical discourse on Western Orientalism, and subsequently as an activist and spokesperson, advocating the Palestinian cause. Probing how these biographical and professional strands shaped her fiction, the final section demonstrates how the first novel’s Anglophile fascination with the coloniser’s mindset is replaced, in the second novel, with a decided focus on Palestinians’ perspectives. Echoing Albert Hourani’s critique of the ‘Politics of Notables’, Where the Jinn Consult thus offers a loving yet bitter account of her parents’ generation, complacent and ineffectual in the face of looming catastrophe.

Islam and the Arab Awakening

Tariq Ramadan, Islam and the Arab Awakening, New York, USA: Oxford University Press, 2012. ISBN: 978-0199933730, 256 pages

THE REFLECTION OF THE ARAB SPRING TO THE DEMOCRATICATION OF TUNISIA: RASHID AL GANNUSHI AND THE NAHDA MOVEMENT PARTY

The Republic of Tunisia, located in North Africa, is an Arab state that gained its independence from France on March 20, 1956 and witnessed the firsts. The official name of Tunisia, which came under the rule of the Turks in 1574, has remained as Tunisia since then. Tunisia, the country of firsts, was the first constitution made under Ahd-ül Aman in 1861 and the first non-governmental organization Tunisian Workers' Union was established in 1924. The first action that ignited the Arab Spring started when 26-year-old computer engineer Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire in front of the governor's office on 17 December 2010. While ethnic and sectarian turmoil led to coups d'etat and civil war in the Middle East and North African countries where the Arab Spring spread, Tunisia's weak army organization as well as the experiences of civil and political sectors in the historical process were effective in overcoming the troubles it experienced during the revolution without being dragged into civil war. One of the important factors positively affecting Tunisia's democratization process is the Ennahda Movement Party, which represents a moderate Islamist democratic politics. The name Ennahda, which is defined as the Arab awakening, the Arab resurrection, the Arab Renaissance, was given to the party led by the philosopher and politician Ghannushi. When the effects of the Arab Spring on democratization are evaluated, the Ennahda Movement Party is an important event for the development of Tunisian democracy. The study will analyze the contributions of the Ennahda Movement Party and its leader, Rashid Al-Ghannushi Gannuşi, which made significant contributions to the democratization of Tunisia, to the democratization of Tunisia. Within the scope of the study, the reflections of the Arab Spring on the Tunisian revolution and the political process will be explained.

The evolution of the Gulf Coopera-tion Council approaches to security issues after the Arab Spring

The painful consequences of political, economic and social shocks provoked by the Arab Spring forced the political elites of the Middle Eastern states to revisit traditional approaches to maintaining stability and security in the region. This inevitably aff ected the activities of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which was from the outset established in order to enhance cooperation between the countries of the region primarily in the fi eld of security. This paper attempts to identify the key milestones, factors and trends that have shaped the GCC decision-making process in the security sphere over the past 10 years since the beginning of the Arab Spring. The author shows that the Arab Awakening has encouraged the GCC member-states to deepen military-political integration, aimed at strengthening their defense capabilities, as well as their abilities to respond to external and internal challenges. The author notes that the GCC countries still view Iran as the main source of all these threats; moreover, con-sidering substantial strengthening of Iran’s infl uence in the Middle East their position has even hardened. Tehran is accused of meddling in the internal aff airs of the GCC member-states, supporting illegal Shiite groups operating on their territory, and instigating religious discord. In this context, it is quite natural that the Iran’s nuclear programme is of particular concern to the GCC. At the same time, the author emphasizes, that although the GCC member-states declare common approach towards Iran, their practical actions can vary signifi cantly. In particular, it was Qatar which opposed an excessively hard-line approach towards Iran. This fact, as well as accusations against Doha of supporting terrorist and extremist groups, led to two crises that shook the GCC in the 2010s. However, the fact that these crises have been eventually settled shows that security issues still press regional actors towards strengthening the capacities of the GCC. Especially since military threats have been compounded by a new threat — of the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The author concludes that this new threat, which has already incited the GCC to promote cooperation in a health sector, will also strengthen the member-states’ focus on various nonmilitary challenges including epidemiological and environmental ones.

Arab Modernism as World Cinema: The Films of Moumen Smihi by Peter Limbrick

Reviewed by: Arab Modernism as World Cinema: The Films of Moumen Smihi by Peter Limbrick Terri Ginsberg (bio) Arab Modernism as World Cinema: The Films of Moumen Smihi by Peter Limbrick. University of California Press. 2020. 302 pages. $90.00 hardcover; $34.95 paper; also available in e-book. Pressure has been placed on Arab film scholars to "delink" from Western and Eurocentric frames of intelligibility in the name of decolonial epistemologies. The ensuing debate is not new in academic circles, but it is undergoing a contemporary reconditioning as postcolonial states in the Middle East region turn to hybrid forms of nationalism fostered by neoliberal investment imperatives dominated by the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia in collaboration with the United States and Israel.1 The contemporary call to break with the West claims a different structural base than a similar call issued over thirty years ago by Egyptian political scientist Samir Amin, for whom "delinking" from the West was a revolutionary matter of transitioning from capitalism to socialism and carried no rejectionist position vis-à-vis European theory, in particular Marxism.2 For Amin, dismantling neocolonialism would require a radical internationalism, not today's reactionary isolationism whose interests lie in consolidating local and regional entities into competitive blocs within the global capitalist system. [End Page 214] The importance of Peter Limbrick's Arab Modernism as World Cinema: The Films of Moumen Smihi becomes evident within this context. Limbrick focuses his text on the overlooked Moroccan independent filmmaker Moumen Smihi, whose entire cinematic oeuvre and artistic life stands as a counter to contemporary currents. Smihi was born in Tangier, attended a French lycée, and frequented local ciné-clubs before pursuing higher education and cinematic training in France. There he was exposed to existentialist philosophy and poststructuralist theory, including works by Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Lacan, and Roland Barthes, and to the revolutionary writings of Karl Marx. Smihi interpreted the significance of these works in the context of twentiethcentury Nahda (Arab Awakening) intellectuals such as Taha Hussein, considered by many the founder of Pharaonism, and Tawfiq al-Hakim, both giants of modern Egyptian literary culture, and in light of medieval philosophers of Islamic classical thought, such as the ninth-century theologian Al-Jahiz, who theorized evolution from the perspective of anti-sectarian rationalism, and the twelfth-century philosopher and novelist Ibn Tufayl, who argued for the interrelationship of religious and rational thought. Smihi went on to make films almost completely outside of the commercial structures and neocolonial state funding and distribution networks that continue to overdetermine the political aesthetics of Arab cinema. He has thus been able to formulate a cinematic intertext that integrates European modernist modalities—the neorealism of Roberto Rossellini, the ciné-ethnography of Jean Rouch, and the poetic realism of Pier Paolo Pasolini—while emphasizing their Arab influences and articulations. These include the Egyptian new realism of Salah Abu Seif and, especially, the literary arabesque. Through what amounts to a deconstruction of European modernism, Smihi's films enable what Limbrick calls a radicalization of Arab subjectivity: a renewed sense of Nahda founded upon an uncanny illumination of the proverbial Western civilizational narrative as it bypasses Islamic classicism and dissimulates its European scholastic appropriation—a tack now being followed on its obverse by the reactionary calls for delinking. Limbrick reading Smihi advances this "new Nahda" as against contemporary irredentism as a means of restoring European modernism to its historical moment—the intellectual legacy of Islamic rational philosophy. In turn, modernism and its profoundly transnational character are redeemed for Arab, not only Moroccan or Egyptian, cinema. Smihi's deconstructionism appears most saliently at the formal register of his films. For Limbrick, Smihi's films reconfigure Alexandre Astruc's caméra-stylo for the purpose of reconciling modernist ciné-écriture with the Defeat-conscious realism famously advocated by Tunisian cinéaste Nouri Bouzid as a remedy to the Arab world's cultural colonization.3 Such reconciliation is facilitated by intellectual montage, noncausal digressions, and a cinematography that resists omniscience and moral absolutism, recalling both early Soviet filmmaking and a certain immanentism attributable to some forms of Islamic textuality—for example, those related to Sufism. In this [End Page 215] way, Smihi's...

When two anti-Zionists corresponded: a short note on George Antonius and Elizabeth P. MacCallum

ABSTRACT The article follows a correspondence between two anti-Zionist activists, George Antonius, author of The Arab Awakening and a member of the Palestinian Arab delegation to the 1939 London ‘round table’ conference, and Elizabeth P. MacCallum, a Canadian expert on the Middle East and later the ‘Middle East desk’ of the Canadian Department of External Affairs. Following a very negative book review of The Arab Awakening by the American journalist Albert Viton, MacCallum tried hard to publish positive reviews of the book. She failed, as she failed several years later in her attempts to thwart Canadian support for the UN Palestine partition resolution.

The Deauville Partnership with Arab Countries in Transition: Tracing the Trajectory of a Unique Format

This paper reconstructs the history of the Deauville Partnership with Arab Countries in Transition – a unique multilateral format established at the 2011 G8 Summit in Deauville, France to help the countries affected by the Arab Awakening navigate through the transition. It identifies the Partnership’s particularities, main objectives, pillars and key phases. The conclusion is drawn that this format stood out because of a regional actors’ participation, a deeper engagement of multilateral institutions and all members’ willingness to cooperate with new partners. The Partnership’s umbrella format allowed to unite stand-alone projects, to increase their legitimacy and cumulative effect. This logic manifested itself clearly under the US and the UK chairmanships (2012–2013) when the members’ interest in the Partnership and expectations were the highest, ensuring a visible progress in all dimensions supported by the Middle East and North Africa Transition Fund under the World Bank trusteeship. However, a dramatic deterioration of the global and regional geopolitical environment in 2014 hindered the intensification of efforts, and the German impulse to reinvigorate the format in 2015 did not last for long. The initial enthusiasm of partners waned, which resulted in a discrete reformatting of the Partnership in 2019, despite the new wave of protests in the Arab world. The Partnership has nonetheless had a positive effect: the Arab countries enjoyed interacting with key donors and multilateral institutions on a regular basis, while the external actors have accumulated a valuable experience of coordinating response to macro-regional challenges. Hypothetically, this experience might still be relevant today but the establishment of a novel and inclusive format with such a clear emphasis on democratic transition in the Arab World is beyond possible.

Финансовые посреднические фонды Всемирного банка как многосторонний механизм трансфера помощи в политически нестабильные регионы (на примере Транзитного фонда «Довильского партнерства»)

In recent years there has been a steady growth of “multi-bilateral aid,” or voluntary earmarked contributions transferred by international donors through multilateral organizations. The World Bank Group’s financial intermediary funds (FIFs) and trust funds have gained an especially wide recognition and have been particularly instrumental in channelling aid to fragile states — a priority group of partners for achieving the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. But researchers have paid much less attention to FIFs than to trust funds.This article identifies characteristic features of World Bank IFIs as a multilateral mechanism to channel aid to politically unstable regions, focusing on the Middle East and North Africa Transition Fund (MENA TF) established in 2012 to support Arab countries undergoing political transitions as a result of the Arab Awakening. The introductory section examines the particularities, benefits and risks of establishing FIFs as multilateral mechanisms to transfer development assistance. These parameters are illustrated in subsequent sections which discuss the MENA TF’s establishment procedures, governance structure, and mobilization and allocation of funds.The article concludes that for each of the parties involved, hypothetically, World Bank FIFs are a quite convenient mechanism for supporting fragile states. However, the example of the MENA TF conclusively shows that everything depends on the concrete political context of their establishment and operation. In terms of some key parameters (establishment procedure, governance structure) the MENA TF mechanism is very similar to other funds of the same type, but its operation is strongly affected by challenges uncommon to the majority of FIFs, which are focused on more politically neutral sectors. These challenges stem from several factors, including the predominance of political decisions within the Deauville Partnership, a unique list of contributors, and a severity of discord among them given the drastic deterioration of the political climate in the Arab world and beyond in 2014. This not only disrupted plans to engage more donors and mobilize the planned amount of funds, but it also stipulated a visible politicization of aid allocation. Political risks which materialized in the MENA TF operations might occur in other FIFs focused on fragile states and situations. The establishment of additional multilateral mechanisms, thus, requires learning from experience and prioritizing risk assessment and mitigation.

Protestants, Gender, and the Arab Renaissance in Late Ottoman Syria, by Deanna Ferree Womack

<i>Protestants, Gender, and the Arab Renaissance in Late Ottoman Syria</i>, by Deanna Ferree Womack

Syria’s ordeal: A modern state’s disintegration in an age of fake news and superpower regional rivalry

The negative impact of globalization is readily observed in today’s Syria. Ravished by seven years of internal conflict stimulated initially by Tunisia’s Arab awakening, this once proud state has become a magnet for religious fanatics and their wealthy sponsors in conservative Saudi Arabia and other countries far and near seeking geopolitical advantage. Not least Syria has experienced the seemingly futile endeavors by those in the United Nations and elsewhere seeking a solution to this country’s enduring turmoil. Military intervention by Iran and Russia has changed the configuration of the conflict at the critical point in time when Israeli and American intervention provides a dangerous environment for superpower conflict. All the while, Syrians remaining in the country suffer, and those seeking safety elsewhere are threatening to destabilize Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan and, farther afield, the cohesion of the European Community.

Bilateral Relations between Germany and Saudi Arabia: Military-Political Dimension

Germany is an example of power, which is consistently trying to increase its role in global politics, including more active part in the solution of a wide range of military-political questions. At the same time Germany is facing the growing number of challenges for its own security, coming mostly from unstable Asian and African states. This makes Germany pay more attention on the Middle East in searching of new and strengthening traditional links with the regional partners. In this regard the article covers the dynamics, problems and perspectives of the bilateral interactions between Germany and Saudi Arabia in political-military sphere during the 2010s. Traditionally Saudi Arabia was one of the key partners of the ‘collective West’ in the Middle East and has had rather good relations with Germany. The key research method used in the article is the event-analysis. The research paper profoundly investigates the relations between Germany and Saudi Arabia during the first half of the 2010s. The article stresses the mutual interest in expanding and deepening cooperation in the context of the “Arab awakening”, including the solution of the Syrian problem. The key focus is paid to the growing discrepancies in positions of two parts regarding the Yemen conflict resolution in the context of confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The article also describes the dynamics of negotiations between Germany and Saudi Arabia on the highest and high levels in the middle 2010s. The paper points out the growing recession periods in German-Saudi relations in 2016-2017 (taken into account the execution of Shiite preachers in KSA; Qatar diplomatic crises and the assassination of J. Khashoggi). After the signature and implementation of the Iranian ‘nuclear deal’ Germany has been increasingly inclined towards the tactics of “balancing” between Iran and Saudi Arabia. And in this regard has emphasized the unacceptability of a direct military conflict between them. After Trump’s administration withdrawal from Iranian nuclear deal the article stresses the tougher German pressure on Saudi Arabia both in militarytechnical cooperation and political spheres in order to assure the withdrawal of Saudi Arabian military forces from Yemen. In the conclusion the author specifies the politicization of the bilateral military-technical cooperation and the sharp increase of the influence of Iranian factor over the German-Saudi relations. Three scenarios of future development of the confrontation between two states are proposed. Depending on each of them, the prospects for the development of German-Saudi relations are defined.

The Gulf States’ Assistance to Egypt after the 2011 Revolution: Logic, Dynamics, Systemic Impact

The current decade has seen a growing role of the Gulf States (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar) in global aid architecture as a result of the Arab Awakening. The largest packages of assistance have been provided by this group of donors to Egypt, which followed an especially tortuous path, shaped by the factor of political Islam. This paper examines the logic, dynamics and the role of such assistance in Egypt’s tumultuous history after 2011. It consists of four sections - each depicting a particular phase of the post-revolutionary period and containing an in-depth study of the logic of and linkages between the GCC members’ donor initiatives as well as an assessment of their influence on the domestic and external policies of consecutive Egyptian administrations and the behavior of extraregional actors. The general conclusion is drawn that during each of four stages the Gulf States’ actions played a pivotal role in Egypt’s turbulent development. Contrary to a widespread belief in predominance of cultural and religious solidarity in Arab donors’ aid-giving, they mastered foreign assistance as a tool of statecraft as aptly as established donors, while often restructuring it in response to the changes on the ground and/or economic environment. An increased role of the GCC members in Egypt’s fate is explained not only by their growing ambitions and capabilities but also by an excessive cautiousness of the Western countries. In comparison with the latter group - the Arab donors, which did not demand any improvements in quality of governance from the Egyptian authorities and acted very swiftly and decisively, looked as much more reliable partners. Their growing impact forced the established donors to turn a blind eye to the defects of Egypt’s political system or economic governance in order to avoid a complete loss of influence. This interdependence between the behavior of the Western and Arab donors reveals a trend, which deserves a more scrupulous examination on a wider selection of country cases.

Introduction: Nahḍah Narratives

Abstract In the last decade, the field of Nahḍah Studies has been gathering momentum. Scholars from different subject-areas have highlighted several aspects of the 19th–early 20th century cultural fervor in the Arab and south Mediterranean area. Accordingly, the whole set of Nahḍah narratives has been readdressed. By “Nahḍah narratives” we mean both the set of theoretical readings, definitions and views developed by the nahḍawī groundswell, itself and the metacritical narratives developed by international scholarship on the Arab Nahḍah. In dialogue with the recent scholarship, the papers collected here represent a contribution in questioning the “Arab awakening”: their theoretical approaches, crossing comparative literature, literary analysis, history of ideas — achieve a broader understanding of the movement, dwelling especially on intersections with other disciplines and widening the research on the Nahḍah from the point of view of cultural production. The focus on modern Arab journalism, theatre, translation, political essays, prose and poetry writing which characterizes this special issue of Oriente Moderno attempts at going beyond the critical perspectives of a Nahḍah molded on Euro-centric modernity, on a diffusionist model of text circulation and on a “retrospective” idea of a modernity-to-be.

Дилеммы демократизации. Политика ЕС в Египте и Тунисе после арабского пробуждения

Дилеммы демократизации. Политика ЕС в Египте и Тунисе после арабского пробуждения

China’s Policy in North African and Eastern Mediterranean Countries

The object of this paper is North Africa and Mediterranean. The subject of research is China’s policy towards North African countries during “Arab spring” and at the present historical stage. This article is devoted to the role of the North African and Mediterranean countries in contemporary China’s foreign policy and in new Chinese initiative “One Belt–One Road”(BRI). The methodological basis of research is comparative political approach. The fundamental China’s foreign policy principle is non – interference in internal affairs of other countries. The study shows, that “Arab awakening” has become a test for Beijings’ traditional commitment to this principle, composing it by measures for protection of Chinese citizens, business and financial investments abroad. At the same time, Beijing drew conclusions from the Libyan events. Together with Russia it has prevented the escalating of Syrian conflict under the Libyan scenario. In Beijing foreign policy strategy the new initiative BRI takes the leading place. The aim of this research is to show that the North African and Mediterranean countries, located at the crossroads of the land and sea Silk roads, play an important role in new Chinese project. Egypt, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia are in focus of China’s interests. The implementation of Chinese initiative envisages infrastructure projects, which should cover all expanse of the Belt. These projects include the construction of railways and highways, aviation, energy, industrial parks, construction of ports in Turkey, Greece, Israel and other coastal countries. The author makes the conclusion: although China adheres to doctrine of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries and avoids participation in armed confrontation, it aspires to play the role of influential player in North Africa and Mediterranean and to strengthen its economic, political and military influence in this important region.

Salafism After the Arab Awakening: Contending with People’s Power Edited by Francesco Cavatorta and Fabio Merone

<i>Salafism After the Arab Awakening: Contending with People’s Power</i> Edited by <scp>Francesco Cavatorta</scp> and <scp>Fabio Merone</scp>

Party dualities: Where does political Islam go now?

One of the unusual features of the recent emergence of moderate Sunni Islamist political parties onto the formal political scene in the Arab world as a result of the Arab Awakening is that they nearly always emerge as elements in political dualities. Thus the party – a political movement – is wedded to a social movement and, sometimes, to a trade union as well. In addition, the social movement usually predates its parallel political movement. Furthermore, this structural duality seems to be confined to the Sunni world and often seems to be associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. The question then is precisely why this dual structure has been generalized within the political arena now colonized by moderate Sunni political Islam; is it a consequence of formal legal constraints upon such movements or does it respond to their internal dynamics? A further question raises the issue of why these dualities are not replicated within the Shi’a context or amongst secular political movements. And, finally, have they been paralleled amongst political movements arising from different religious traditions and what are the likely outcomes?

The identity struggle within Islam: Discussion of “Thoughts on the inner conflict within Islamic culture: Their existential anxieties and ours,” by Malcolm Owen Slavin, PhD

There is nothing more fitting, the author believes, than for psychoanalysts to help our nations better understand the identity struggle that he believes underlies the radicalization process of radical Islamists. This identity struggle is a very deep one. At its core, it concerns what an individual Muslim feels about his or her bonds to the nation-state and what single cause in their life they are willing to die for. In this article, this struggle is characterized as theo-political and Islamo-national. In order to understand this better as psychoanalysts, the importance of the personal narrative – this sense of how an individual’s identity fits and meshes with the world around them – is stressed. To that end, this article will first given an introduction to the author and his family, and then bring readers to the Arab Awakening, which began in 2011. Dr. Slavin’s paper on Tunisia has highlighted so many of the elements of the changes that transformed Tunisia and some of the substrate that led to that evolution; this article provides the context both regionally and, more importantly, within the Muslim consciousness. The author describes the lens through which he was raised in Wisconsin as a devout Muslim and the son of Syrian political refugees. This then overlays an understanding of what was really happening across the revolutions of the Arab Awakening against tyranny and in the global consciousness of individual Muslims.

Labour Migration Governance in Times of Political Transition: A Comparative Analyisis of Egypt and Tunisia

The 2011 uprisings that culminated into the Arab Awakening were expected to engender seminal changes in the political systems of Egypt and Tunisia. Renewed calls to protect Egyptian and Tunisian migrants abroad were at first launched in the two countries. This paper examines patterns of continuity and change affecting policies and institutions of labour migration in Egypt and Tunisia. After outlining key institutions with mandate over labour migration, including a brief analysis of the two countries’ labour markets, the paper assesses policies that promote employment abroad and protections for migrants. Egypt has made few changes in labour migration policies or institutions. Tunisia went further but without undertaking radical changes in its policies and institutions.