The Politics of Migration in Modern Egypt : Strategies for Regime Survival in Autocracies

The Egyptian regime consistently employs labour emigration to their own advantage in order to remain in power. Drawing on a wealth of unexplored sources, Tsourapas identifies the complex strategies that authoritarian regimes develop to ensure that migration aids their survival and shows that cross-border mobility and power are inextricably linked.

In this ground-breaking work, Gerasimos Tsourapas examines how migration and political power are inextricably linked, and enhances our understanding of how authoritarian regimes rely on labour emigration across the Middle East and the Global South. Dr Tsourapas identifies how autocracies develop strategies to tie cross-border mobility to their own survival, highlighting domestic political struggles and the shifting regional and international landscape. In Egypt, the ruling elite has long shaped labour emigration policy in accordance with internal and external tactics aimed at regime survival. Dr Tsourapas draws on a wealth of previously-unavailable archival sources in Arabic and English, as well as extensive original interviews with Egyptian elites and policy-makers in order to produce a novel account of authoritarian politics in the Arab world. The book offers a new insight into the evolution and political rationale behind regime strategies towards migration, from Gamal Abdel Nasser''s 1952 Revolution to the 2011 Arab Uprisings.