Harry Pettit, The Labor of Hope: Meritocracy and Precarity in Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2024).

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Harry Pettit (HP): In Cairo back in 2014, after reaching out to youth employment training initiatives at the beginning of my fieldwork, I met a group of young, educated, but un/underemployed men and women who were aspiring after Egyptianized neoliberal capitalist dreams of successful careers, high-end consumption, and global mobility, but finding few paths to reach them as they struggled in precarious, low-paid call center jobs. 

At this time a lot of writing on Egypt was focused on locating “revolutionary subjects” in response to the 2011 uprising, whereas this group—despite being acutely aware of structural inequities in Egyptian society—were noticeably disengaged from this collective radical hope. Instead, they held an attachment to forms of hope that placed faith in the capitalist system to fulfil their dreams.

I wanted to understand why that was, and through spending time with them I also wanted to share the intimate pain that this group experienced as they attempted to chase a meaningful life. But, to avoid individualizing and exceptionalizing this pain, in writing the book I also wanted to place the spotlight on what I saw as producing that pain: a capitalist system in Egypt and a global political and economic system that produces extreme inequality while also selling the cruel meritocratic promise that a good life is realizable for all.

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?

HP: The book provides an intimate look at the experience of changing economic and social relations in Egypt as a result of neoliberalization. It plots the emergence of a disconnected middle class who are exposed to the upper-class lifestyles of the economic elite, but who are pushed into a decrepit public education system and low-paid, precarious jobs. Building on previous work on Arab masculinities by scholars like Farha Ghannam and Nafissa Naguib, it reveals the intimate, emotional struggles of young men to live up to markers of middle-class Egyptian masculinity in the realm of work, family, and relationships. But the main focus of the book is the workings of a meritocratic moral economy—produced by a globalized industry of training, entrepreneurship, self-help, and recruitment, but circulated among middle-class Egyptians as well—which embeds the notion that success and social mobility is open to all. 

The book also speaks to broader literatures examining the lived experience of capitalism that is producing large-scale inequality, insecurity, and impoverishment. It considers how neoliberal economic systems are producing a simultaneous diminution of employment pathways, alongside a structural raising of aspirations in the context of globalization, expanding education, and technological advancement. Scholarship has responded to this by examining how this produces racialized and gendered forms of “waithood” or “timepass,” especially among youth (Honwana, 2012; Jeffrey, 2010). Some literature (e.g. Miyazaki’s The Method of Hope) has examined how, in response, marginalized communities enact alternative hopes through overt resistance or sustaining life outside capitalist regimes of value. This focus, I argue in the book, sidelines the empirical reality that, despite the production of disconnection and precarity, most people continue to invest in the hopes and dreams offered by capitalism. Thus, drawing on feminist literature on emotion by Sara Ahmed, Eva Illouz, and Lauren Berlant, I develop a political economy of emotion and hope that traces how capitalist systems continue to capture the attention of the very people harmed by them. I consider the everyday practices through which young, educated, underemployed Egyptian men keep going as a form of emotional labor. This takes the concept of emotional labor into the realm of social reproduction, into homes, cafes, shopping malls, in order to understand the psychological work enforced by labor markets as they produce poverty and precarity. 

J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

HP: The book represents my first research project! It emerged from my PhD project and subsequent postdoctoral positions, with the theoretical framework of labor being developed after the PhD. 

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

HP: Firstly, I hope Egyptians read the book. Perhaps they will recognize the pain created by an economic system in Egypt and a violent global border regime, which sell the idea that dreams are realizable while putting up barriers that prevent people from living a dignified life. But this pain is not unique to Egyptians. Globally, there are populations who are encouraged to develop grand dreams but prevented from achieving them through political and economic regimes that restrict movement. I hope that this book contributes in some small way to breaking down those regimes. 

The book should appeal to people who are interested in the predatory face of neoliberalism in Egypt and its influence on the labor market, gender and class relations, and forms of morality. It takes an in-depth look at Egyptian masculinity and middle-class life. It shows the intimate struggles and pursuits of middle-class men as they chase jobs, careers, relaxation, intimacy, marriage, and migration. 

More broadly, I hope the book appeals to students and researchers who are interested in the intimate life of contemporary capitalism, and in particular the power of ideologies of meritocracy. It should also appeal to people interested in the political workings of affect and emotion, and in rethinking our understandings of labor. 

In terms of impact, first I hope that the book shows the humanity of Egyptian and Arab men, a group who are portrayed as violent and threatening over and over again by Western representations in order to devalue their lives. Second, the book reveals the powerful ideological attachments that capitalism creates. In doing this, it also forms part of a project that is attempting to reveal how forms of power work on and through affect and emotion, and a project that is breaking down narrow understandings of the labor involved in making a livable life in precarious contexts. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

HP: I am working on two other projects at the moment. The common thread across these projects and the book is an empirical commitment to examine ethnographically the diverse practices through which people are surviving within late-capitalist systems that are producing high levels of precarity and impoverishment. Through a close analysis of these practices, I want to break down narrowly economistic, productivist approaches to the work and labor necessary to maintain livable life—and the violent structures which underpin them. The first project applies these questions to the context of people who rely on foodbanks in London for welfare and as a form of work. The second and current project examines the attempts of undocumented Syrian, Filipino, and Cameroonian migrant workers in Lebanon to access cash in the context of prolonged economic crisis and the extractivist practices of the state and economic elite.

J: How did the young men in the book view you as a white, Western researcher?

HP: This is a question I have been thinking about a lot lately, especially in the context of the current genocide in Gaza where the mainstay of Western academia is turning the other way, even many of the people who have extracted data from Palestinians and the wider region for years. This leads to the question of how, or indeed whether, white, Western researchers should engage with postcolonial contexts. Personally, in the last few months I have sidelined my research and tried to put energy into forcing our universities and society to take a stand. 

But I am also reconsidering the way I will go about doing research in the future. I have written about the often uncomfortable experience of doing the fieldwork that went into this book. Some of the young men and women I met initially became frustrated with me because, while I wanted to do research “on” them and learn about their experiences, they wanted to interact with me as a friend and as someone who could potentially help them in their pursuit of their aspirations. For some, this led to them ending our relationship. For others, we managed to openly discuss this tension, and become friends over time. This involved me sharing my own vulnerabilities as they were sharing theirs. It also involved me helping them materially in ways that I could. 

But this was a messy, imperfect process. Indeed, it is impossible to overcome the structural relations of racialized and colonial power that govern the research relationship. I have and continue to learn from critical anti-colonial scholarship on how to navigate this. It involves difficult but necessary choices. This necessarily includes the admission that some research should not be done. But when it is done, research must involve a commitment to breaking down these relations of power representationally, through decentering the white, Western voice, and breaking down violent stereotypes of the non-Western other. But it must also involve material action, through our hiring practices, through the support we offer to the people we do research with, and through taking actions towards breaking down violent structures of domination.

Excerpt from the book (from “Chapter 3: Without hope there is no life,” pp. 97-101)

I said it would be different

When I left Cairo in August 2015, Adel, Eslam, and Mohamed felt positive about their trajectories. Adel insisted that when I return in October, he will have left the call center and taken an accountancy course. But when I returned, Adel had neither left the job nor done an accountancy course: “I said I would be in a different place, but it is so hard, taking a course takes money.” He admitted struggling to find an affordable course but declared he would leave the call center to look properly: “you can earn 20,000LE as an accountant!” he exclaimed. Adel had finally taken the English course, but the lack of improvement punctured any euphoria. The classroom was overcrowded, so he did not have chance to speak. He showed me an old Charles Dickens book he had brought from home: “I am still trying, God make it easy, we need to do what is on us (rabbina yisahhil, lazim naʿmil illy ʿalina)”. In this moment of anguish and regret at his immobility, Adel called on God to smooth his passage. He was trying to do his duty in return. But Adel was upset with himself. After lamenting how much money Egyptians need for everything nowadays, he again focused on his laziness: “if I wasn’t lazy I would have left the job and looked for other work already, I could have found it and saved money for a course.” Adel then told me about a self-help book he downloaded by Zig Ziglar, an American guru who helped Egyptians “keep positive and not get fed up with trying.” He was shocked I did not know him: “he is an inspiration to youth, you should ask, they will all know him.” He described his favorite passage: 

“Two guys are trying to get water from a well, it is really hard to do, and the guy was struggling when it got near the top, and wanted to give up. But if you let go you have to start over again. So it is a metaphor for life that you shouldn’t let go, you should keep struggling until you reach your goal.”

Adel then told me about an Egyptian guru, Ibrahim al-Fiky, who had written books in Arabic. He started as a waiter and ended up owning a chain of restaurants. One of his best lessons was that the worst thing to do is “talking only, talking about your goals and not doing them.” Adel recognized himself in this. He was lazy, talking about doing accountancy courses, changing jobs, or learning English, but never doing them. 

Once again Adel reoriented consciousness away from structural barriers. This time he referenced US and Egyptian self-help books, spread through friends, which have increased in popularity since Egypt’s economic liberalization. This industry, alongside Hollywood film, profits from the promotion of the hopeful promise of rags-to-riches mobility. The narratives extended by self-help are affective because they easily relate – Adel had talked repeatedly about his goals without reaching them. His lack of money, education, and connections in a weak labor market ensured this. All he could do was talk, plan and plan again. However self-help directs people away from structural issues, submitting them to individual character faults. They become powerful because people keep investing in them. Adel actively sustained an injurious meritocratic moral economy between successful and failing individuals because it enabled him to hope he might change, again. His attachment becomes ‘cruel,’ as Lauren Berlant argues, because he cannot detach from the meritocratic terrain. It is the only way to maintain his ability to engage with the world. The alternative of letting go is too much to bear. This requires constant deferral of the relief that might be enabled by the object that is hoped for, in this case a fulfilling job. 

Two days before my departure in November, I found Adel on the sofa in the morning studying from a battered Arabic accountancy book. It was a first-year university textbook that he had brought from home. However, he was struggling to remember the material, and in any case needed to learn accountancy in English. On this day, another roommate joined. Mostafa used to work in the call center but had been fired due to an injury lay-off. He spent six months looking for a call center job with regular daytime shifts so he could take an evening HR course, which he was now doing. His long-term ambition was to travel abroad to do a master’s on a scholarship, for which he had applied and been rejected several times. Each time rejection came he became dejected for a few days before searching for the next opportunity and considering how he can be more competitive. This time, he thought his HR course would make the difference. Mostafa also took advantage of my presence, asking me to find a language-exchange partner who could teach him English. During intense conversations in these two days, despite acute awareness of the structural barriers facing Egypt’s youth, Mostafa expressed optimism he will make it:

“Allah has promised if you make a certain amount of effort, he will make sure you have a something in return. So you have to work hard and you can make it. I regret only that I didn’t develop myself sooner, I regret that I will arrive at my goal late, but I will get there, I am working hard to make sure that happens.”

When I asked why Mostafa felt regret when he knew the barriers facing Egypt’s youth, he replied: “I have to blame myself, if I just look at the hard circumstances, I would not be able to keep my goal alive.” He described how there are two kinds of people in Egypt, those who have it easy, and those who need to struggle to achieve success. Of those who struggle, there are those who sit and complain about the conditions and those who believe they can make it through hard work. Some get fed up with trying and give up, and others keep going. Mostafa was someone who keeps going: “you have to go out and search, go out into the streets, not just stay in your house and watch TV and expect something to come, you have to go into the streets and grab it, that’s how God will reward you.” He quoted Thomas Edison as evidence of the ability of individuals to overcome failure: 

“it took him 1000 attempts to find the right answer for the lightbulb. People saw his 999 previous attempts as failed attempts, but he said no, they were vital to learning and reaching the successful last attempt, even if I go through lots of failure I can reach it eventually. I have had bad experiences which have returned me back to the start of the journey. But I am ready to keep going.”

Adel looked to Mostafa with jealousy, perceiving that he was marching towards success. His presence stimulated more regretful lamentations regarding Adel’s perseverant friend in the Saudi company and his rejection from the New Horizon’s training course long ago. I asked Adel why he could not leave the job and do courses for a while. He replied: “I wish they would make me leave, fire me, so I am pushed into doing something!” After pushing further, he reluctantly admitted this would cause financial problems. 

Adel struggled to admit his structural predicament. Instead, he cried out to be fired. This is the destructive cry of those who have no choice but to endure stagnation. I then reminded Adel that he previously said he was lazy. “Yes, I am,” he replied. I said I did not agree with the idea that youth are lazy. He agreed, asserting that he knows youth work hard, before pondering: “I am unsure if people are lazy, or if it is the conditions here.” This exchange demonstrates the cracking of the meritocratic myth, and an acknowledgement of the overwhelming structural barriers facing young men like Adel in the pursuit of dignified work. But Adel was always shifted back towards individualizing narratives. On my final evening, he asked what piece of advice I would give him from my research. I struggled to answer, not wanting to fuel the meritocratic moral economy. After saying I did not really know, I let out in a comical voice: “find wasta or money, or travel!” This was not enough for Adel: “that’s all you have out of your research?!” I scrambled and said he should look for a job with fixed shifts so he can take courses like Mostafa. This answer was better received. It reintroduced hope.