Learning from Tunisia

Social discontent among a large population of young people and the increasing prevalence of the internet played a key role in the Jasmine Revolution which overthrew Zine el Abidine Ben Ali earlier this week. Tunisia is a country of young people (60% of the population is aged under 30), students (who account for 34.6% of the 19-24 age group) graduates, and Internet users (33.4% of the population had access to the web in 2009). Unemployment is a major problem: 30% of young people and 22% of young graduates are without jobs. Faced with a situation in which many of them had no career prospects — and thus no possibility of a normal family life — they took charge of their destiny and dealt what will hopefully be a fatal blow to a corrupt and oppressive political and economic system.

On the other side of the Mediterranean, millions of young graduates are also forced to contend with insecure employment (when they are fortunate enough to find jobs) and sclerotic political and economic systems, which have resulted in a dearth of opportunities — most notably in Italy and Greece. Although their circumstances are not fully comparable with those endured by their peers in Tunisia, the outlook for many young Europeans is anything but bright. As it stands, they are unlikely to rebel against the democratic regimes in their countries, but their disenchantment is apparent on one hand in their disinterest in politics (the 18-24 age group has the highest rate of abstention) and on the other by their participation in increasingly hardline political parties. Nevertheless, the youth of Europe is still capable of collective expressions of anger, as we saw in the wave of demonstrations which swept across the continent in the autumn of last year.

As it stands, European political leaders, who have introduced systematic and cynical cuts to education and research budgets, have little to fear from the youth of Europe because young people are now a minority — only one in five Europeans is aged under 20 — and they no longer have the critical mass that would be needed to bring about radical change. But if there is one lesson that should be learned from the Jasmine Revolution, it is that oppressed young people will continue to be politically volatile, and sooner or later, a failure to address their needs will have explosive consequences.

Translated from the French by Mark Mc Govern