Women, Labor, & Immiseration: Gender Dynamics of Agrarian Restructuring in Tunisia

The project proposes the use of gender as an instrument for understanding the dynamics of IFI-piloted agrarian restructuring in Tunisia and their present ramifications on rural organizing and solidarity formation. The study focuses on Tunisian agricultural women workers – a largely informal and rural workforce – in its quest to grasp the linkages between liberalization-induced alienation – both material and political – of peasants from their land and the rise of the Tunisian ‘feminized agrarian workforce’. Subsequently, it interrogates the position occupied by this labor force in relation to not only the agenda pursued by the Tunisian state and dictated by its creditors but also in relation to local labor actors and civil society organizations which, in the wake of the nation’s ‘democratization’, have (re)engaged with the Tunisian countryside. The project’s novelty lies in its commitment to tap into the workers’ political consciousness, agency, and voice – an exercise the project posits is lacking in the literature – relying on narratives from women agrarian workers while marrying subaltern studies, feminist political economy, and critical agrarian studies.