In the mid-decades of the twentieth century, postcolonial state elites in the Middle East pursued strategies of accelerated economic growth and sought to mobilize their populations as a central resource for development. At the same time, the labor question stood at the heart of the struggles that shaped state welfare regimes. How could industrial work, as a process generating the economic value central to development policies, simultaneously serve as the foundation for social protection?
This talk presents preliminary reflections from my research project which examines the intertwined histories of industrial labor, development, and welfare in Egypt (1940s-1980s). The project explores how labor mobilization and management became central to the economic planning and social engineering strategies promoted by state elites and international actors, while industrial workplaces simultaneously emerged as contested sites where norms and regulations were negotiated. By examining these tensions, the project seeks to move beyond some of the dominant frameworks that have shaped understandings of the rise of the developmental welfare state in Egypt and the wider region.
Malak Labib is a social and economic historian of Egypt. She received her doctorate from Aix-Marseille University / Institut de Recherche sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman (2015). Her first book, published in French under the title of Recenser L’Égypte: dette publique et politiques de quantification a l’ère imperiale, examined the politics of public debt and statistics in late nineteenth and early nineteenth and early twentieth century Egypt. Her current research interests focus on the global history of development, the history of industrial labor as well as the trajectories of postcolonial state formation. From 2020 to 2024, she was a research Fellow at the Institut français d’archéologie orientale (IFAO) in Cairo. During the current academic year, Malak is a EUME Fellow of the Gerda Henkel Foundation at the Forum Transregionale Studien and the Centre Marc Bloch.
Rim Naguib received her PhD in Sociology from Northwestern University (2016) and her MA from Sciences Po Aix-en-Provence (2006). Her research interests address three related fields: the colonial recourse to deportation of foreigners and ‘local subjects of foreign extraction’ in the policing of communism in interwar Egypt; the post-colonial securitisation of Egyptian nationality practices and of the management of foreigners’ residence; and the political and cultural history of Egyptian patriarchal nationalism. She is currently working on her book manuscript, Undesirable Subjects: Deportation in Colonial and Post-colonial Egypt 1914-1971. She has been a fellow at EUME since October 2019, and receives a Gerda Henkel Foundation scholarship since July 2024.
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