The Labor of Hope: Meritocracy and Precarity in Egypt

According to the International Labor Organization, almost half of Egypt’s university graduates remain unemployed and looking for work more than two years after they complete their degree. Many are alumni of the Arab departments of the “faculties of the people”: the disciplines of law, commerce, and the humanities, which produce graduates who are ambitious and credentialed but lack the skills in foreign languages or STEM fields they need to succeed in the increasingly globalized job market. Pettit follows a few dozen young men caught in this limbo over the last decade, tracing the enormous energy they invest in simply not giving up. Pushed into low-paid, dead-end jobs in call centers and delivery services, they spend money they can’t spare enrolling in job-readiness training programs or pitching ideas for new ventures in entrepreneurial start-up labs. Confronted daily with the images of unattainable riches on billboards that festoon Cairo, they drop their résumés at job fairs, line up for positions they have no chance of securing, and relieve their disappointment by aimlessly scrolling on their phones, reminding themselves that attitude matters, that they should persevere, and that, if all else fails, God will provide. It is a deeply disheartening portrait.