The delay in accessing adult social life suffered by young Arabs leaves them in an unusual social space in which they are neither children nor independent adults. They are at the "margins" of society. Nevertheless, this situation allows the generation of social opportunities and spaces for establishing and managing their own life plans, emancipation or alternative contemporaneities. If marginalisation means distance from hegemonic discourses, this chapter focuses on analysing the diverse routes the youth in Arab Mediterranean countries have developed to "escape" the economic, social and political marginalisation (demarginalisation strategies) imposed by the hegemonic adult-centrism of these societies. The results are extracted from analysis of the qualitative and quantitative data produced in the framework of the European SAHWA project on young people in five Arab Mediterranean countries.

In recent years, a variety of efforts have been made in political science to enable, encourage, or require scholars to be more open and explicit about the bases of their empirical claims and, in turn, make those claims more readily evaluable by others. While qualitative scholars have long taken an interest in making their research open, reflexive, and systematic, the recent push for overarching transparency norms and requirements has provoked serious concern within qualitative research communities and raised fundamental questions about the meaning, value, costs, and intellectual relevance of transparency for qualitative inquiry. In this Perspectives Reflection, we crystallize the central findings of a three-year deliberative process—the Qualitative Transparency Deliberations (QTD)—involving hundreds of political scientists in a broad discussion of these issues. Following an overview of the process and the key insights that emerged, we present summaries of the QTD Working Groups’ final reports. Drawing on a series of public, online conversations that unfolded at www.qualtd.net, the reports unpack transparency’s promise, practicalities, risks, and limitations in relation to different qualitative methodologies, forms of evidence, and research contexts. Taken as a whole, these reports—the full versions of which can be found in the Supplementary Materials—offer practical guidance to scholars designing and implementing qualitative research, and to editors, reviewers, and funders seeking to develop criteria of evaluation that are appropriate—as understood by relevant research communities—to the forms of inquiry being assessed. We dedicate this Reflection to the memory of our coauthor and QTD working group leader Kendra Koivu.1

Uprisings are complex, rare phenomenon, and this article suggests that the shared regional diffusion of protest in the Arab Spring was lubricated by the economic inequalities of neoliberalism. Young people in Egypt and the larger Middle East have been disproportionately disadvantaged by neoliberalism and a demographic youth bulge. They were economically excluded by high unemployment and insecure jobs in the informal sector; they were politically excluded by authoritarianism and state repression; and they were socially excluded by the limbo of “waithood,” or prolonged adolescence as marriage and entry into adulthood was delayed, in part due to the high cost of marriage. Yet, at the same time, these commonly shared grievances facilitated weak ties linking diverse constituencies together, as creative leaders built a “movement of movements.” The April 6 movement, and Kefaya before it, creatively adopted a non-hierarchical model of collective action that was organically suited to the vast informal and subterranean networks already dominant within Egyptian life. Young women and men risked their lives pursuing regime change, and one of the master frames of the uprisings that demanded “dignity” may provide particular opportunities for the women’s movement. A gendered concept, dignity suggests that the state must respect the integrity, safety, and autonomy of the body. Despite massive challenges to the women’s movement and its allies in Egypt as conservative forces are also emboldened by the Arab Spring, the master frame of dignity may resonate across the Egyptian public since it is a revolutionary frame, as well, yet lays bare longstanding grievances of the diverse Egyptian women’s movement.

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