Group Resources and Protest Participation in the Egyptian and Tunisian Arab Uprisings

Protests erupted in December 2010 in Tunisia and in January 2011 in Egypt were the product of large cross-class coalitions in which workers joined middle class professionals, peasants, and unemployed young people. Most scholars agree on the fact that these protests were largely spontaneous and lacked coordination by major social movement organizations (SMOs) like trade unions. Indeed, in repressive contexts, the oppositional space in which classical SMOs can operate is rather narrow, and the aggregation and mobilization of resources frequently derives from informal networks and loosely structured social groups, often sustained by virtual ties. This nonetheless, while SMOs and trade unions may have not played a crucial role in the coordination of protests, pre-existing affiliations of individuals to trade unions and other organizations which survived the repressive context likely contributed to convey those group resources –civic skills, shared solidarities, ties with other members – often necessary to mobilize people into protests. In this framework, whether protesters during the Arab uprisings were affiliated to trade unions or other associations, whether they were linked one another through informal ties of friendship or through social media platforms, and how these different ties overlapped and affected different sectors of the population, has been hardly systematically investigated. Drawing on social movement insights on the role of intermediate structures of mobilization and on area studies focused on the Middle East and North African region, this paper aims to examine the role of various types of group affiliations for different sectors of the population who joined protests in December 2010 and January 2011 in Tunisia and Egypt. In particular, the paper investigates workers’ affiliations, including, inter-alia, affiliations by middle class professionals as well as low-skilled workers. The empirical analysis draws on individual level data collected in 2011 in Egypt (1,144 individuals) and in Tunisia (1,187 individuals) through the second wave of the Arab Barometer survey. The Arab Barometer dataset contains detailed information on the anti-regime protests occurred between 17 December 2010 and 14 January 2011 in Tunisia, and between 25 January and 11 February 2011 in Egypt. The empirical analysis will investigate the moderating effect of various types of group affiliations on the impact that the occupational status has on protest engagement. Affiliations examined in the paper include both involvement in various types of organizations -trade unions or professional organizations, political parties, charities - as well as informal affiliations such as friendships and virtual ties.