Everyday Struggles of Informal Merchants in Tunisia

FOCUS 65 This article examines different tactics among young, informal traders in Tunisia “Getting By” at the Urban Periphery: coping with insecurity from a peripheral Everyday Struggles of Informal position in urban life. Such tactics (De Certeau) involve multiple forms of infor- Merchants in Tunisia mal economic practices, such as street vending and cross-border trade. These tactical practices must be seen in light of changing structural conditions, which have resulted in the wake of the revolution that followed the revolts in December 2010 and January 2011. The article analyzes both everyday forms of popular agency as well as their relationship with the govern- ment and the effects of state power. The empirical case studies result from field research in the popular, peri-urban neigh- Johannes Frische borhood of Ettadhamen, in the northwestern fringes of the Tunisian capital. The The article examines the significance of practices that are situated in the inter- research was conducted between 2012 informal economic practices, e.g. street stices between legality and illegality. As and 2013.1 vending and informal commerce, for these possibilities often avoid state regu- young merchants from Ettadhamen, a lation and control, the article also Peripheries and Marginality: A Conceptual neighborhood situated in the northwest- addresses the ambivalent nature of the Approach ern periphery of the Greater Tunis area. It state-society relations that shapes every- Although Loïc Wacquant’s concept of further addresses cross-border trade in day encounters between inhabitants and advanced marginality draws upon insights the Tunisian-Libyan and Tunisian-Algerian state agents, especially the police. from the American ghetto and the French border regions in which some of these banlieue, i.e. zones of urban relegation merchants are indirectly involved. Periph- Keywords: Tunisia; Urban Periphery; within societies of the Global North, sev- eralization therefore does not imply com- State-Society Relations; Post- eral of his outlined dynamics can also be plete socio-spatial exclusion. Peripheries Revolutionary Transformation; Informal applied to urban peripheries in Tunisia. In rather offer important, albeit limited pos- Commerce the case of Ettadhamen, this holds for the sibilities, to acquire resources through territorial containment of lower and mid- Middle East – Topics & Arguments #05–2015 FOCUS 66 dle class populations in a peri-urban dis- funds, they often do not have access to where the state’s power and its borders are trict that is insufficiently integrated into the social protection. contested and reconfigured and where national economy and the regular wage Peripheries can also be spaces where informal channels, parallel networks and labor sector. Peripheralization is thus the everyday informal practices take root in transnational economic flows perpetuate effect of a spatially ingrained social order the niches of a dominant socio-political connections with the global world econ- that has been produced through both order that is maintained by powerful social omy (Roitman 195). Albeit on a small scale, uneven economic development and the groups and their interests. Looking at the empirical cases of informal merchants governmentality of the Tunisian state. everyday modes of tactical action, one can in the wake of the Tunisian revolution will While this order was shaped under the discover the creativity of peripheries and demonstrate that informal practices can regimes of Ben Ali and Habib Bourguiba, margins as they not only entail passive sub- persist despite the center’s dominance. it has roots in the colonial period. mission but also employ different forms of Although these informal practices primar- Aside from its spatial dimension, periph- popular agency from below (Bayat, “Mar- ily aim at coping with the insecurities, risks eralization and marginalization have par- ginality” 19). Based on her important study and constraints that result from a periph- ticularly affected specific societal groups. on Favelados in Rio de Janeiro, Janice Perl- eral position, they produce forms of surviv- In a society characterized by deeply man argues that marginality constitutes a alism and self-organization that largely entrenched inequalities, instead of main- myth in the sense that it mistakes system- avoid dominant structures and institutions. taining one homogenous working class, atic exclusion and stigmatization for being Such informal economic practices and the processes of neoliberal restructuring passively marginal (131). By the same token, formal system, which is to a greater extent have produced fragmented forms of pre- she also points out that in spite of system- structured by official rules, exist side by cariousness, social differentiation and atic exclusion, different forms of internal side in Ettadhamen. exclusion. Unemployed youth, female socio-political organization and coopera- household workers, casual informal work- tion, which are based on solidarity, exist in Ettadhamen: Contested Urban Space in ers and street children belong to such the proximity relations between friends the Periphery of Greater Tunis “precarized” groups. They not only face and neighbors in the Favelas (142). Margin- Ettadhamen was created under the rule of unemployment or unstable and precari- alization and peripheralization are not only Bourguiba in 1966 as a public program ous employment conditions. They are a curse but also as an opportunity where that provided social housing for rural also positioned on the margins of the excluded groups can survive and over- migrants and was given the name otherwise solid social security system in come economic constraints (Bayat, “Mar- al-taḍāmun (“solidarity”). Between 1975 Tunisia (Destremeau; Ben Cheikh 2). ginality” 14). The constitution of the mar- and 1984 it witnessed considerable popu- Since they lack both formalized employ- ginal or the peripheral does not lation growth due to the influx of intra- ment conditions and a sufficient and necessarily follow the logic of total exclu- urban migrants who came from the stable income, which would allow them sion (Yúdice 214). Despite their marginal- Medina and from gourbivilles (“spontane- to make contributions to social security ized positions, peripheries are often sites ous agglomerations”) inside the city of Middle East – Topics & Arguments #05–2015 FOCUS 67 Tunis (ARRU 24). This development was in republic’s zones d’ombre (“shadow the already existing networks in the neigh- contrast to the situation of older informal zones”) and the integration of marginal- borhood (Allal 59). They temporarily neighborhoods that had come into being ized, shaʿabī (“popular”) classes. However, adopted a policing function in an effort to through rural exodus. It was thus the result despite significant infrastruc tural improve- control the neighborhood’s unsafe condi- of a redistribution of populations within ments, problems such as unemployment, tions. Ever since the fall of the regime the capital (Laroussi 45). Most of these crime, insufficient housing, and the socio- enforcement of both security measures residential migrants (56.4 percent) were spatial segregation of the neighborhood and public services that should be pro- also former rural migrants who originated not only persisted but rather increased vided by local authorities such as the from northwestern Tunisia, a traditional (ARRU 55). police and the municipality have been agricultural region, which contains the In 2012, the population of Ettadhamen in neglected. Self-organization and local High Tell Mountains along with Beja, Jen- the Ariana governorate was 142,000 while networks, for example organizations douba and Le Kef as the most important the surrounding neighborhoods Douar belonging to the Salafi movement, consti- cities (Chabbi, “L’Habitat spontané” 25; Hicher and Mnihla counted 157,000 tute parallel structures of social regula tion “Une Nouvelle forme” 90; “Urbanisation inhabitants. In total, these three neighbor- and control. Clashes between young, spontanée” 181). In view of this historical hoods comprised 300,000 inhabitants, unemployed people and security forces background, Ettadhamen serves as an which made it one of the most populated have given Ettadhamen the label of a law- example for the proliferation of “fringe peri-urban agglomerations in North Africa less zone where control mechanisms by urban communities” (Ali and Rieker 3) (Chabbi, “Une Nouvelle forme” 168). In state agents and institutions are whose members were situated in the January 2011, it was one of the first neigh- limited (Belhassine). However, since peripheries of larger cities negotiating borhoods within the capital where mobi- August 2013, when the organization Ansar and reproducing the rural-urban nexus lizations of youth, most of whom were al-Sharia was classified as a terrorist (2). In the late 1970s, the insecure condi- unemployed, targeted local police sta- group, security measures have been rein- tions of habitation in the neighborhood tions. The protests also entailed acts of forced and several activists belonging to prompted the Tunisian state agencies to pillage and sabotage. The three major the militant branch of the Salafi move- implement a number of urban planning industrial sites and the maison des jeunes ment have been arrested.2 projects that aimed to regulate real estate (“youth center”) were burned down by Ettadhamen is predominantly a residential and improve infrastructure. These projects protesters. Moreover, a number

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