AM12 - Crises sociales

 The problem of precarious housing includes all countries of the world, developed and on the path of growth. The aim of this intervention is to find out which programs are most successful to eliminate precarious housing in Algeria. The State carried out successive re-housing operations. The first of them was according to the Precarious Housing Absorption Program (RHP), which included all Algerian cities, especially the Metropolis cities, such as Constantine, Oran, Annaba, Algiers, etc. These re-housing operations were carried out according to a planned program in which the census, investigation, and distribution of collective housing were carried out. Secondly, this program was preceded by another program carried out in cooperation between the World Bank and the Algerian state in 1998 in order to find radical solutions to the problem of precarious housing according to different principles. As a result, the re-housing of citizens took place in individual dwellings (évolutif). Through this intervention, we will try to answer the following question: Which of the two programs is more effective, and has the state succeeded in reaching cities without precarious and chaotic housing?

Tunisia is a traditional country of emigration which has become a host, destination and transit country for migrants coming mainly from sub-Saharan African countries. The opening of private universities since 2002 and the installation of the headquarters of the African Development Bank (ADB) since 2003, have contributed to the emergence of a sub-Saharan African migration. 
In recent years, migratory flows from sub-Saharan Africa have been marked by the presence of women, mainly from Ivory Coast. Sub-Saharan women migrants may face conditions of precariousness and vulnerability, including irregularity of their administrative situation, discrimination, racism, rejection and exploitation. These economic and social obstacles increase the vulnerability of migrant women in the host country, and make their integration into society more difficult. 
With all these social, cultural and economic constraints, sub-Saharan migrant women may give birth out of marriage and in a society that stigmatizes the status of the single mother. This situation increases their vulnerability and puts them in a position of social pressure. These migrants arrive with other representations. In the host country, they are faced with an imposed normative framework and a hostile context. They become judged and stigmatized.  
Our research question is: How do single migrant mothers, residing in Tunisia, perceive their motherhood in a host country that already stigmatizes this status?  
Our research on the experiences of single sub-Saharan mothers is part of a socio-anthropological approach. We have opted for a qualitative approach that gives primacy to fieldwork

This communication is based on an ethnographic fieldwork led between 2018 and 2022 and aims to study how, in a situation of lasting instability, characterized by the weakening of the collective frames of identity’s definition (Salhi, 2015), the salafist career constitute a way for urban young males to shape personal social identity. For these young men, the religious socialization initiates a personal life-experience characterized by the adoption of values distinct from those of the original belonging group. Besides, it is a decisive event by which the young man presents himself as a responsible adult, able to enter the matrimonial and professional market. In a situation of pain and trouble [galère] (Serres, 2014) where the personal future is uncertain, the salafist socialization offers oneself to invest the “here-and-now” and to shape the future through references to the past – the salaf [Islam of the beginnings] – and to the elsewhere – the mythicized East (Asad, 2009).

The paper is a part of my PhD research, which focuses on the analysis of the welfare systems in Islamic countries. The basic question of my research concerns the relation between the global tendencies concerning social protection and the responses of the Islamic society to external pressures. 

My presentation deals with the different “welfare bargains” I identified studying social protection in Islamic countries. The welfare bargain describes the ways social groups access welfare protection and -more broadly- defines their rights over public resources. The welfare bargains evolved during the recent decades, and multiple social actors saw their accessibility over state resources change. 

The Islamic countries under consideration include nations in the MENA Region (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia) and South Asia (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia). The ratio behind the selection of the country aims to investigate those societies which are influenced predominantly by Islamic welfare traditions and social relations. Therefore, the study excludes those societies which could be identified as post-Soviet welfare systems (in Central Asia) or an African welfare system (in the Sub-Saharan countries). 

My study relies on a macro-level class analysis of the role of the Islamic movements in addressing the needs of different social classes during the transition process. My findings show how the rise of the Islamic movements -from the late 1970s since the recent years- can be understood as a reformulation of the welfare bargain and as a request for visibility from the marginalized social sectors. 

Since recent years, welfare protection in Islamic countries has remained a generally understudied subject. My research aims to contribute to the current debate and follows the path that had been traced by -for example- Prof. Markus Loewe -and his study on social contracts in the MENA region- and Prof. Rana Jawad -who focused on the role of religious charities in Lebanon.