My paper explores the instrumentalisation of mobility as part of the work discipline in nineteenth and early twentieth century Egypt. Specifically, my paper examines the compulsory reshufflings and transfers of railway labourers in a specific system of reward and punishment. From the minute they were recruited, railway workers were made to understand that their ability to enhance their conditions was subject to “good behaviour.” The railway administration also controlled the freedom of their employees by confining them to labour camps and placing them under military surveillance. What was the logic that informed the system of reward and punishment? Which labour practices were deemed worthy of promotion and which ones were punishable by transfers? Where were punished labourers transferred to? More generally, how did control over freedom and mobility emerge as part of the work discipline? My paper answers these questions in two ways. First, I investigate the hierarchical system that defined the responsibilities of the labourers, their rights, and compensation. As my paper shows, this system was not merely informed by the technical qualifications of the labourers. Rather, labourers had to have political profiles which qualified them to assume their positions in the hierarchy. This hierarchical system was also not fixed. When new circumstances arose, the labourers were reshuffled and transferred to meet the new demands of the railway administration. Yet, certain positions, such as locomotive driving, remained off-limits to Egyptian labourers. My paper examines the assumptions and prejudices that excluded Egyptian workers from these positions. Second, I investigate the specific construction of labourers as necessarily mobile subjects in a colonial apparatus which expected them to be in constant supply without regard to the social bonds they formed in the places in which they lived and worked. Without legal protection, these labourers often found themselves forced to move to new cities and towns far away from their homes. Yet, the labourers often challenged this forced mobility by deserting their worksites and attempting to escape. My paper explores these attempts. In addition to secondary sources, my analysis is primarily drawn from the diaries of workers, witnesses, and travellers and from the Fortnightly Traffic Notices, a series of confidential reports issued by the Railway Department of the British colonial administration.

Saleh, an Egyptian researcher from Alexandria works at a human rights advocacy organization in Tunis, his work is dedicated to Libya, and not Egypt (Unlike the rest of his colleagues). I was very curious as to why. He said, because there is hope for Libya, unlike Egypt. He asks, why work on a hopeless case? What about Mexico, I asked? Why not work on Mexico? Would it be the same? He was taken aback by my question. “No, of course not! I care about the region!” In this paper, I seek to understand the making of “the region” ethnographically, namely Middle East and/or North Africa by following people who move and work “regionally” and remake the region in the process. My research follows organizations that set up shop in Tunisia but work on Egypt or Libya. I ask: how does their presence and work in Tunis contribute to remaking the idea of the region of the Middle East and North Africa? How does this in turn affect ideas and loyalties that extend beyond the nation-state, but still are a part of a historically constituted region? True, their work is of a transnational nature, most of them have colleagues based in European cities, but it is rooted in a particular city. A city with particular connections to other cities. However, I choose not to adopt a transnational framework championing “international citizens,” as was advocated by anthropologists such as Aihwa Ong and philosophers such Martha Naussbaum. Rather, I ask what does it mean to adopt a regional approach? What are the consequences of this approach? Mobility in postcolonial North Africa is guarded by borders, with visas that can be harder to obtain than a U.S visa. That said, the notion of an imagined border of a broader region needs examination. My interlocutors are unexpectedly revisiting and remaking a region inscribed in Islamic, African, and Arab history. The postcolonial period was assumed to supersede regional frameworks with nation-states. Against this backdrop, I will analyze experiences of mobility outside nation-states, but still within a “region,” and ask how this impacts on our understanding of imagined communities that are “Arab”, “North African” or “Middle Eastern.”

Sports clubs proliferated in Egypt since the turn of the twentieth century. Largely organized as joint-stock companies, these clubs contributed to both the organization of the urban middle classes, and the propagation of a physical culture, which by the 1920s formed a critical element in the discourse on national progress. They formed (semi-) professional football teams which participated in a growing number of competitions, both ‘international’ and ‘local’, and the latter both mixed and Egyptian. My paper studies these clubs as sites for negotiating, contesting and articulating nationalism between 1919 and 1952. Importantly, sports clubs became lynchpins of various forms of mobility – physical and social – that were at the heart of defining the nation under colonial rule. Centering mobility, I address three main themes. First is the regulation of players’ field mobility and the formulation of football teams. As clubs moved towards the professionalization of the sport in the early 1920s, they hired coaches to synchronize their players’ field mobility and allow the team to function as one, corporal body. Players resisted this team discipline, which undermined their individual skill. Second, I explore these teams and sites for social mobility. Team membership was initially confined to the elite club members. The popularization of sport through the media in the 1920s however led to the pursuit of talent outside the effendi class, and joining football teams therefore became a means of social mobility. The paper explores the limits and conditions of this inclusion. My paper’s final theme is the emergence of a national football milieu. Nationalizing the sport became a central concern for club managers in the aftermath of the 1919 revolution. The Egyptian Football Association was established in 1921, Prince Farouk Cup was launched in 1922 (eventually replacing the Sultanic cup, in which Egyptian and British teams competed), and a national team was assembled to participate in the 1920 Olympics and the 1934 World Cup. Nationalization efforts however encountered significant challenges, including the high cost of transportation, and the 'uneven development,' which delimited the national domain. Al-Ahli ‘visits’ to Port-Said, Assiyut, and Alexandria are a case in point: these trips were understood to be tiresome, costly, and impossible to conduct on a regular basis. It was not, therefore, until 1948 that the ‘national league’ was first organized. The paper focuses on the period preceding this league, and examines the ways (limits to) mobility contributed to defining the national football milieu.