Migration and the middle-class youth in Tunisia: An adaptive strategy coping with the covid-19 crisis

Abstract

In Tunisia, as in many developing countries in Africa, the socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 crisis have been severe (Rioux et al. 2020; ILO 2022). The effects have been particularly damaging for vulnerable workers, those in the informal sector (Le & Marouani 2021), and, more broadly, the middle class. This middle class, shrinking since 2010, has seen some of its members slip into lower-income categories, as Bonnefond and Mabrouk (2023) highlighted. The ‘lower middle class’, primarily composed of workers, and the ‘middle class of entrepreneurs and self-employed people experienced significant income losses during the crisis. This situation has underscored the Tunisian government’s inability to implement effective public measures to support this crucial intermediate social category (Bonnefond & Mabrouk 2023). This disintegration of the ‘middle classes’ following the containment crisis seems widespread in the developing world (Kochhar 2021; Bonnefond & Andrianampiarivo 2023).