Introduction to a Special Issue on Labor in the Middle East and North Africa: Precarity, Inequality, and Migration

Abstract

Despite its political and strategic importance, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has been largely absent from cross-regional comparative treatments of industrial and labor relations. This special issue builds on a rich, multidisciplinary, and methodologically diverse body of research on labor and employment in the MENA, bringing together a collection of cutting-edge work in this field. The goal is to bring the study of the MENA into conversation with international and comparative scholarship on industrial and labor relations and to encourage more systematic inclusion of the MENA in comparative work. Drawing on research on Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Israel, and the Gulf states, contributors to this special issue advance comparative scholarship on migration, labor market outcomes, worker agency, and the relationship between unions and precarious workers. This introductory essay situates these contributions in the context of three bodies of research in the study of labor in the MENA: resistance and contentious activism, labor market challenges, and migration.