Egypt Labor Research Articles

Microhistory as Industrial History: Environment, Sugar Capitalism and Labour in Egypt, 1863–1879

Microhistory as Industrial History: Environment, Sugar Capitalism and Labour in Egypt, 1863–1879

Vocational education and training (VET) development and social dialogue in Egypt: A historical institutional perspective

Vocational education and training (VET) development and social dialogue in Egypt: A historical institutional perspective

The Impact of Some Economic Variables on Agricultural Labor in Egypt

The Impact of Some Economic Variables on Agricultural Labor in Egypt

The inflation's impact on the consumer expenditure of agricultural and non-agricultural labor in Egypt

The inflation's impact on the consumer expenditure of agricultural and non-agricultural labor in Egypt

واقع إنتهاکات حقوق عاملات خدمة المنازل فى المجتمع المصرى رؤية سوسيولوجية The reality of violations of the rights of domestic workers in the Egyptian society: Sociological View

الملخص : يستدعى کل حديث عن انتهاکات حقوق الإنسان ، بصورها المتعددة ،حديث آخر، قد يکون أکثر أهمية ، حول الظروف والسياقات المجتمعية العامة ، عالمية کانت أم محلية ، التى تفضى إلى تحويل الإنسان إلى طرف ضعيف في علاقة عمل تقوم على اللاتکافؤ ، منتهکة لحقوقه الإنسانية العادلة فى الحرية والمساواة . ولعل من أبرز صور تلک العلاقات القائمة على اللاتکافؤ، والتي قد تفضي إلى ارتکاب العديد من الانتهاکات ، مجال الخدمة المنزلية .حيث تهدف الدراسة إلى التعرف على أوضاع عاملات خدمة المنازل فى مصر، والوقوف على بعض الإنتهاکات التى قد يتعرضن لها ، وکذا معرفة الأسباب التى تقف وراء تلک الإنتهاکات ، ومدى مساهمة جمعيات حقوق الانسان فى التصدى لها ، والتحقق من موقف القانون ازاء أوضاع عاملات خدمة المنازل فى مصر، ومن ثم طرح مقترحات من أجل التصدي لما قد يتعرضن له من انتهاکات واعتمدت الدراسة فى منهجيتهاعلى المنهج الوصفى التحليلى لدراسة الواقع الفعلى للمشکلة ، وتقصى أسبابها وعرض سبل مواجهتها معتمدة فى تطبيق هذا المنهج على دليل المقابلة شبة المقننة على عينة من عاملات خدمة المنازل ، بالإضافة إلى عينة من مسؤولى جمعيات ومنظمات حقوق الانسان غير الحکومية من أجل التطبيق الميدانى ، والذين عملوا بشکل مباشر على ملف إنتهاکات حقوق عاملات خدمة المنازل فى مصر. وتوصلت الدراسة إلى مجموعة من النتائج أهمها عدم وجود تقديرات أو إحصاءات رسمية يمکن الإرتکان إليها لمعرفة حجم العمالة المنزلية فى مصر، و تعرض العديد من عاملات خدمة المنازل لأنواع متباينة من الإنتهاکات المادية والمعنوية ، کما أن الفقر وسوء الأوضاع الاقتصادية والاجتماعية السبب الرئيس وراء إنخراط النساء فى الخدمة المنزلية ، و استبعاد العمالة المنزلية من قانون العمل ، وعدم وجود مظلة اجتماعية وصحية وحماية قانونية لهم . کما أفادت نتائج المقابلات ضرورة تضافر جهود الدولة ومنظمات المجتمع المدنى من أجل التصدى للإنتهاکات التى قد تتعرض لها العمالة المنزلية ، وضرورة تقنين أوضاعها فى القانون المصرى . Abstract: Every study to violation of human rights still needs another one, may be more important about the general societal context, global and local, that involve any human being in unequal work relationship, in violation to his human rights in freedom and equal. The clearest case of this relation represents in the house workers; especially women. This study aims to identify the situation of domestic workers in Egypt, identify some violations that they may be exposed to, as well as the reasons behind these violations, and the extent to which human rights associations contribute to addressing them, and verify the position of the law on the situation of house workers in Egypt, and then put forward proposals in order to address the violations they may be exposed to. The study relied on the analytical description method to study the actual reality of the problem, and to investigate its causes and present ways to address it, based on the semi-structured interview on a sample of house workers, in addition to a sample of officials of some human rights associations and non-governmental organizations for field application who worked directly on the violations of the rights of house workers in Egypt. The most important results are: There is lack of official estimates or statistics can be used to know the size of domestic labor in Egypt. Many domestic workers are subjected to varying types of material and moral abuse. Poverty and poor economic and social conditions are the main reason behind the involvement of groups of women in domestic service. Excluding domestic workers from the labor law, and the absence of a social and health umbrella and legal protection for them. The results of the interviews indicated the need to join the efforts of the state and civil society organizations in order to address the violations that may be experienced by domestic workers, and the need to legalize their status in the Egyptian law.

Introducing the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey 2018

Abstract This paper introduces the 2018 wave of the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey (ELMPS), previously fielded in 1998, 2006, and 2012. The ELMPS has already become the primary source of data for a large number of scholarly and policy studies on the labor market and human development issues in Egypt, and this new wave will further enhance its value as a critical data public good. This longitudinal survey is nationally representative, tracking both households and individuals over two decades. In this paper, we describe the key characteristics of the 2018 wave, including sampling, fielding, and questionnaire design. Changes in the collection of retrospective data starting in 2018 are discussed, and we demonstrate that they improved the data quality. We examine the patterns of attrition and present the construction of weights designed to correct for attrition, as well as to ensure that the sample remains nationally representative. We compare the ELMPS data with other Egyptian data sources, namely, the 2017 Census and various rounds of the Labor Force Survey (LFS). The data provide important new insights into Egypt's labor market, economy, and society.

From driver of change to marginalised actor: organised labour in post-revolutionary Egypt from a comparative perspective

ABSTRACT The paper analyses why Egypt’s labour movement, while having played a significant role in the run-up to the 2011 revolution, has been increasingly marginalised politically ever since, failing to achieve either significant labour-specific gains and/or broader objectives related to the overall process of political transformation. It does so by investigating Egypt’s movement of independent trade unions, the most dynamic element within the country’s labour movement, from a comparative perspective. Specifically, the paper uses the experience of Brazil’s New Unionism in the 1980s as a contrasting case, identifies the factors that have enabled and constrained what is arguably the most successful example of a New Unionist movement in the Global South, and applies this explanatory framework in an in-depth study on the trajectory of Egypt’s New Unionism since 2011. The study identifies four key differences between the Brazilian and the Egyptian case that help explain the post-revolutionary trajectory of independent labour in the latter: the different sequencing of neoliberal reforms and political liberalisation; the revolutionary character of the Egyptian uprising; the different role of individual movement entrepreneurs; and the lack of significant socio-political allies in the Egyptian case.

Prevalence and risk factors for child labour and violence against children in Egypt using Bayesian geospatial modelling with multiple imputation.

BackgroundThe incidence of child labour, especially across developing nations, is of global concern. The use of children in employment in developing economies constitutes a major threat to the societies, and concerted efforts are made by the relevant stakeholders towards addressing some of the factors and issues responsible. Significant risk factors include socio-demographic and economic factors such as poverty, neglect, lack of adequate care, exposure of children to various grades of violence, parental education status, gender, place of residence, household size, residence type or size, wealth index, parental survivorship and household size. Egypt is the largest country in Africa by population. Although UNCIF 2017 reported that the worst forms of child labour in Egypt are concentrated in domestic work, forced begging and commercial sexual exploitation, the situation has received little attention. There are still very few studies initiated specifically to look at child labour in domestic service in Egypt and those that exist have been limited in the scope of their methodology. Geographical coverage and research for child labour in Egypt is also limited, as are accurate statistics and data. There was, therefore, a strong case for looking again at the domestic child labour phenomenon in Egypt, especially after the Demographic Health Survey (DHS) released the first data about child labour in Egypt in 2014. This study builds on the few findings of earlier work, and broadens coverage by including advanced methods and geographical effects of this problem.ObjectivesThis study focuses on identifying socio-demographic, economic and geospatial factors associated with child labour participation.MethodsWe used the 2014 Egypt Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS) from the Ministry of Health and Population in Egypt, with the record of 20,560 never-married children aged 5–17 years engaging in economic activities, in and out of their home. The data focused on demographic and socio-economic characteristics of household members. Multivariate Bayesian geo-additive models were employed to examine the demographical and socio-economic factors for children working less than 16 hrs; between 16 and less 45 hrs; and over 45 hrs weekly.ResultsThe results showed that at least 31.6% of the children in the age group from 5–10 were working, 68.5% of children aged 11–17 years were engaged in child labour for a wage, and 44.7% of the children in the age group from 5–10 were engaged in hazardous work. From the multivariate Bayesian geo-additive models, female children (with male children as reference category) working at least 16 hrs (OR: 1.3; with 95% CI: 1.2–1.5) were more likely to be engaged in child labour than girls working 16 to 45 hrs (OR: 1; 95% CI: 0.3–1.5). Children born to women without formal education, in non-hazardous jobs, irrespective of the hours spent at work, were more likely to be involved in child labour (52.9%, 56.8%, 62.4%) compared to children of mothers with some level of education. Finally, children who have experienced psychological aggression and physical punishment are more likely to be used as child labour than those without such experience across the job types and hours spent. North-eastern Egypt has a higher likelihood of child labour than most other regions, while children who live in the Delta are more engaged in hazardous work.ConclusionThis study revealed a significant influence of socio-demographic and economic factors on child labour and violence against children in Egypt. Poverty, neglect, lack of adequate care and exposure of children to various grades of violence are major drivers of child labour across the country. The spatial effect suggests the need to give more attention to some areas that have high rates of child labour, such as the Nile Delta, Upper Egypt, and North-eastern Egypt.

Information needs of local domestic workers in the Arab Republic of Egypt

Purpose– The purpose of this study is to provide first-hand information regarding domestic labour/labourers in Egypt. The researcher tries to investigate the information rights and needs of these vulnerable and marginalized groups in Egypt in terms of its thoughts, perceptions, attitudes, motivations, techniques, preferences, ways, tools and problems encountered towards using of and accessing information. The study, therefore, attempts to look at, as possible, the many different characteristics of local domestic workers in Egypt and affecting their use of and access to information.Design/methodology/approach– Methodology used here was an adaptive form of snowball sampling of a heterogeneous demographic group of participants in the local domestic work in Egypt, used to select focus groups to explore a range of relevant issues.Findings– Demographically, this study showed that local domestic labour in Egypt, to a great extent, is occupied and performed by women and children, and the average age of the total interviewed participants was around 31 years. Over half of participants were uneducated, followed by nearly a quarter of them were with no formal education and just a small number had some primary education. This study concluded that a large number of participants were described as illiterate and nonskilled labourers. Participants’ income proved that it was one of barriers to use of and access to information where a large number of participants were labelled as low-income workers. The information-seeking behaviour (ISB) profile of participants indicated a preference for verbal over written, informal over formal and undocumented over documented information channels and sources to solve problems relating to everyday existence using some helping tools and devices especially cell phones. The most popular information sources mentioned and followed by participants were verbal information with friends, peers and colleagues in neighbouring households either via telephones, especially cell phones, or face-to-face meeting. TV and Radio, newspapers and magazines were, respectively, the most famous formal sources participants use. Information related to work, family affairs, security and health issues was most commonly desired and wanted by participants. Participants mentioned that their priorities of accessing information were to help in work-related activities such as cooking cleaning and decorating, to know new kitchen recipes, to assist in the education of the employer’s children. Others added that they were also seeking for information for getting promoted and having some fun especially through audiovisual sources like TV and Radio. They were not commonly using libraries due to the fact that most of them were uneducated, and the education of the some others was limited. However, this study showed that there was a little and accidental use for some libraries like public and children libraries and a small number of them was using the employer’s home library. In terms of using technologies related to the use of information like the Internet, the study found such access was an issue, as a very small number of participants were using it mainly for personal information. Regarding challenges, concerns and problems faced by local domestic workers in Egypt during using of and accessing information, the study found that the most important challenges participants faced in this study were the illiteracy and lack of awareness about the basic rights and perception of information rights and needs. Other challenges like the time, psychological burdens, the social image being domestic worker, lack of accessible information channels, lack of training and skills and also lack of money needed to access information were also an issue.Research limitations/implications– This study comes to respond strongly to the great global concern on the neglected and marginalized sector of work/workers in Egypt. It provides information on invisible forms of domestic labour/labourers, and indicates how their rights, especially towards accessing information, are violated. Any findings of this study may generate interest and create awareness on the needs and conditions of domestic labour/labourers among marginalized labour advocates, policymakers and the civil society.Originality/value– The literature on this topic is scarce and, therefore, this paper gives important and significant insight into how to assist local domestic workers in Egypt with information needs.

Striving for job security

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, it seeks to voice the concerns of educated youth in Egypt as they describe their work options and preferences. Second, it seeks to highlight the gravity of the policy gap in addressing work informality, drawing on some of the international experience in this field. Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative research in the form of in-depth interviews, desk-review of policies, and descriptive statistical analysis of a recent national survey of labour in Egypt. Findings – A large proportion of educated youth work within the realm of informality and there is a clear policy gap in addressing this issue. Contrary to what would be expected, young people value access to social security and work stability. They face systemic hurdles related to access to such benefits. Because of the legacy of guaranteed government hiring of the educated in Egypt, young people express a great appreciation of work in the government, for virtually being the only employer offering job stability and social security in the labour market. Research limitations/implications – This paper addresses a gap in the literature on youth employment in Egypt, where there is a dearth of research focusing on the lived experience of employment precariousness. The majority of studies in this field relies on statistics with little qualitative research voicing the views of this group. Practical implications – Reforms are more urgent than timely to extend social security and other measures of social protection to workers within the informal economy. Originality/value – The paper builds on primary data and provides insights about the way educated youth perceive their working conditions and options. The paper also provides a discussion of the social security system in Egypt, its coverage, and possible reform approaches.

Labor and Politics in Egypt

Labor and Politics in Egypt

Labor and Environment in Egypt since 1500

AbstractTaking the long view, this article analyzes how the expanding power of Egyptian elites, and the emergent commercial agriculture they sponsored, forever changed the rural labor practices of peasant cultivators and their relationships to environmental resources. From the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517 until the second half of the eighteenth century, Egyptian farmers initiated and oversaw the construction and repair of small-scale irrigation and other infrastructural works in their local environments. They controlled how and when their labor was used. At the end of the eighteenth century, rural labor in Egypt dramatically changed. It became coerced, required the large-scale movement of peasant laborers, resulted in enormous environmental manipulation, and was often deadly. This article thus explains how forced labor, deleterious environmental exploitation, extractive economics, and population movements emerged at the end of the eighteenth century and how they have come to characterize the relationship between work and the environment in rural Egypt from that period until today.

Fight or Acquiesce? Religion and Political Process in Turkey's and Egypt's Neoliberalizations

ABSTRACT The Polanyian expectation that disruptive marketization will lead to movements and policies that seek to ‘embed’ the market in society needs to be tempered by closer scrutiny to historical, religious and political contexts. This article studies how movements respond to marketization. The analysis proceeds through a comparison of the Turkish and Egyptian neoliberalizations, religious movements of the last decades, secular opposition, and finally recent processes, which have led to generally different social takes on neoliberalism. The irony of the Turkish case is that with the empowerment of the Islamists, religious opposition to neoliberalism was muted and secular opposition further marginalized and labelled as ‘anti‐democratic’. As a result, free market policies were not only sustained, but deepened and intensified, turning Turkey into a neoliberal ‘success story’. The (thus far) sustained mobilization of youth and labour in Egypt makes a direct imitation unlikely. Another major factor that would prevent a ‘Turkish’ solution to Egypt's crisis is the contrasting structure of the religious fields. Moreover, while the passive revolution has further solidified the professional and unified religious field in Turkey, the revolutionary process in Egypt seems to reinforce the fragmentation of the religious field. The article points out that making Islam compatible with neoliberalism would be more difficult in a country with a fragmented religious field, such as Egypt. Although neoliberalism was imposed from above and resisted from below in both nations, in Turkey it came to be embraced in the name of Islam and democracy, whereas in Egypt it remains an imposition and popular struggles against it persist. It is suggested that this process and field‐based approach to a Polanyian problem can also shed new light on discussions about ‘actually existing neoliberalisms’.

The “Camp David Consensus”: Ideas, Intellectuals, and the Division of Labor in Egypt’s Foreign Policy toward Israel1

This paper explores the nature, background, and evolution of the “Camp David consensus.” Under this consensus, Egyptian intellectuals and political movements broadly accept that the Egyptian regime must deal constructively and “correctly” with Israel as a state, but insist that society has the right and responsibility to resist Zionism. The consensus rests on particular ways of understanding Israel, and the nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict, that can be traced back to the formative years of the Egyptian republic under Nasser. This has served the interests of both regimes and opposition movements and in this sense represents a “double instrumentalization” of foreign policy. The paper, which examines a range of regime and intellectual pronouncements during the Nasser and Sadat periods, as well as more recently, challenges the growing use within International Relations, particularly in the Middle East context, of the concept of “identity” to explain state behavior.

Labor augmentation in an Egyptian teaching hospital

Objectives: The study documented facility-based obstetric practices for normal labor in Egypt for the first time, to determine their relationship to evidence-based medicine. This paper describes the labor augmentation pattern observed. Methods: 176 cases of normal labor were observed by medically-trained observers using a checklist. Ward activities were also documented. Observed women were interviewed postpartum and all findings were shared with the providers for their feedback. Results: Labor was augmented in 91% (165) of the labors observed; this was inappropriate for 93% or 154 women. Reasons for inappropriateness were: oxytocin ordered at the first vaginal exam (41%); in spite of intact membranes (36%), at the time of membrane rupture (42%), in spite of good progress (24%), or a combination of these. The monitoring of oxytocin-receiving women and their babies was inadequate. Conclusions: Labor augmentation and monitoring deviated from evidence-based guidelines. Obstacles to implementing protocols need to be explored.

Socio-Economic Characteristics of Informal vs Formal Sector Labor in Egypt

Socio-Economic Characteristics of Informal vs Formal Sector Labor in Egypt

WHO ABOLISHED CORVEE LABOUR IN EGYPT AND WHY?

Journal Article WHO ABOLISHED CORVEE LABOUR IN EGYPT AND WHY? Get access Nathan J. Brown Nathan J. Brown George Washington UniversityWashington, D. C. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 144, Issue 1, August 1994, Pages 116–137, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/144.1.116 Published: 01 August 1994

Labour and Politics in Egypt, 1919–1939

The aim of this essay is to analyse the rise and development of a new labour movement in Egypt between 1919 and 1939, the crucial interwar period. As the history of the movement was inextricably linked to the Wafd as well as to the competing political forces in Egypt at the time, I examine the extent to which the various political parties and personalities were able to hamper the development of an independent trade union movement during those years. I also discuss the factors which assisted or hindered, at times, the promulgation of labour laws, and view the achievements of the trade union movement (in different sub-periods) in terms of its success in satisfying the demands of workers, which were being opposed by those of the predominantly foreign local bourgeoisie.