Qat, a psychotropic drug harvested from the Catha edulis plant, is commonly consumed in Yemen, as well as in eastern Africa and other areas of the southern Arabian Peninsula. Despite critiques that qat production and consumption strain agricultural and household resources, respectively, the qat industry makes a significant contribution to national income in Yemen. Not surprisingly, the industry is a significant source of employment in the country, employing roughly 500,000 Yemeni workers, or 7.9 percent of the Yemeni labor force. This research examines the significance of these workers in the Yemeni cultural economy and in light of the socioeconomic development goals of the Yemeni state. Specifically, this research examines the agency of these workers in the process neo-Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre terms 'the production of space.’ This production of space entails individuals shaping the material landscapes of their lived spaces, a recursive process which both reinforces and alters the social processes which create the spaces in question. In the context of this research, spatial agency involves members of the qat industry shaping the social (both mental and material) spaces in which they work. This paper analyzes semi-structured interviews conducted in and around Sana’a, Yemen with workers in various stages of the qat supply chain, ranging from farm to marketplace. Previous research on the qat industry has found it to be influential in creating material changes on the Yemeni agricultural landscape: altering agricultural practices and constructing infrastructure to serve qat producing areas. Previous research has also found the spaces of qat consumption to be significant venues for the production and reproduction of Yemeni social relations. This paper identifies an active participation by members of the qat industry, discursively and materially producing commercial spaces of qat production and trade, and in maintaining social relations therein. Since qat is a substantial element of the Yemeni economy and labor issues are a significant component of development policy, these economic spaces, as well as the social relations that both influence and are influenced these spaces, have important implications for the development goals of the Yemeni state.

The paper is a part of a larger project that seeks to present a social and political micro-history of Nazareth from 1940 to 1966. By tracing local politics and identity formation in this Arab urban center, I explore Palestinians’ bids for citizenship in both the British colonial state and the Israeli state. The municipality of Nazareth constituted an important point of contact and contestation between the state and the residents of the city. Hence, it offers a rich arena of exploration of the interaction between political and economic realities, state control mechanisms and local reactions. In this paper, I explore this interaction through one episode, a strike of the municipal sanitation workers. In October 1952, the “Conference of Arab Workers in Israel,” a trade union connected to the Israeli Communist Party, and after prolonged negotiations with the municipality, called for a strike by Nazareth municipal workers represented by the union. They demanded that workers rights and salaries be made equal to those of Jewish municipality employees throughout Israel. The strike faced various responses amongst the residents of the city who while sympathetic to the workers, suffered from diminished life quality due to lack of sanitation services. The strike resulted in confrontations between strikers and strikebreakers, which eventually led to the arrest of several activists, including the secretary of the Conference. It also resulted in an elaborate distribution of leaflets in Nazareth by both supporters and opponents of the strike. Both parties argued their interest was in the general good of Nazareth and accused the other of having ulterior motives resulting from connections to the military government (by the supporters of the strike) or to the Israeli Communist Party (by opponents ). Both employed the language of democracy, citizenship and communal good. Elaborating on this case allows exploring questions of local politics, class relations and the role the state played in this seemingly local issue. In addition, examining a strike held in 1952, only four years after the establishment of the state of Israel, can shed light on the ways Palestinian citizens were incorporated into the state and the ways in which they responded to their new position. This paper draws on an array of sources, including state archives (Israeli State Archive and IDF Archives), Arabic newspapers of the period (al-Ittihad, the Communist Party newspaper and al-Yawm, the official Arabic language daily, affiliated with the ruling MAPAI party) and interviews.

Jerusalem has long been the symbolic focus of the Palestinian national struggle. While a great deal has been written on traditional elite families of Jerusalem and their role in the development of the city as a “national capital,” the historical contributions of Arab residents of the city outside of these elitist families have often been ignored. This paper will begin in the early mandate period (1922-1929) when Arab Palestinians began migrating to the city from Hebron and trace their social and political developments in Jerusalem. The “Hebron Jerusalemite” is now a foundational presence in Jerusalem. This paper will explore the early manifestation of this phenomenon and counter the traditional history that links their presence to the elite politics of Jerusalem. I will show how as merchants they moved into Jerusalem and worked, alongside the “Jerusalem fallah,” to counter the elite politics of the city. The fallahin from villages in the western corridor of the city were newly integrated into central aspects of the social, political and economic life of Jerusalem. By the end of the first full decade of mandate rule in 1929, Jerusalem, therefore, grew to absorb its surrounding towns and villages into its metropolis. Reinforcing the life of the “Jerusalem fallah,” the growing colonial capital city also welcomed a similar phenomenon in what can be described as a “Hebron Jerusalemite.” That is, throughout the 1920s, Arabs from Hebron and its surrounding villages, either re-located or established a second residence in Jerusalem. Besides contributing to the evolution of social relations in the city, the presence of these “non-elite” elements in the city also fundamentally changed the city’s politics. This paper will show how these demographic and social changes directly contributed to the current make-up of Arab Jerusalem. While much attention has been paid to other Palestinian cities and their history of resistance, very little attention has been paid to Jerusalem as a popular center of struggle. A “new Jerusalem” emerged in the Mandate period and this “new city” was the epicenter of a new era of popular politics and mass mobilization. Understanding the historical roots of those in the front lines of this challenge to maintain an Arab presence in Jerusalem, is an attempt to recover a history long ignored by the histories of political elites. Just as the history of Palestine is the history of its people, this is a history of those who live(d) and experience(d) Jerusalem.

This paper studies the political and institutional responses recently given to population mobility between the Horn of Africa and the Arab world. It stems from a fieldwork conducted in the Yemen, in Sudan and in Saudi Arabia among public administrations, private sector institutions and migrant communities. It confronts the weberian definition of the modern state which implies territorial and population control with the “government” of mobility encountered in Sudan, in Yemen and in Saudi Arabia. Refugee movements, economic migration, transit and circular mobility challenge receiving and transit countries in their modern state ethos. Continuing population movement due to permanent political instability and economic crisis lead Arab states neighbouring the Horn of Africa to design political and administrative arrangements meant to manage population mobility. But various determinants and contexts account for the forms institutions take. 1) The political economy of institution building in Saudi Arabia reflects the ambiguity of labour import policies: demographic concerns and unemployment issues raise political problems for different political actors who have been trying, since the early 1990s, to bind market based logics and implement saudisation policies. 2) Regional diplomacy, domestic politics and international intervention influence the Sudanese management of a large refugee population. Refugee law and institutions, as well as ad hoc diplomatic responses to refugee arrivals and claims, reflect the political sensitivity of forced population movements at the margin of the Arab and African regional systems. 3) American and European influence on Yemeni politics since 9/11 accounts for the greater coercion of population movements, especially on refugee trends from the Horn of Africa. From these three case studies, we describe the evolution of state control on population movements in different contexts. In Sudan, the state negotiates its autonomy vis-à-vis international intervention on refugee issues in order to gain independence on conflicting domestic politics. In Saudi Arabia, it reasserts demographic concern over labour market preferences and international regulation and tries to nationalize its labour market. In Yemen, the government is making the most out of the country’s transit position on refugees and migrants’ routes and of the security agenda of foreign powers in the region. In a comparative perspective, this paper refers to the history of state institutions devoted to migration management and refugee issues, to the study of jurisdictional arrangements concerning refugees and migrants (refugee law, labour law, immigration law), to the sociology of institution building.