PRFDHR Seminar Series: The Politics of Migration in Modern Egypt, Gerasimos Tsourapas

How does labor migration facilitate authoritarianism? Dr. Tsourapas examines how migration and political power are inextricably linked, identifying the ways through which authoritarian regimes rely on the export of human capital across the Middle East and the Global South. In Egypt, the ruling elite has long shaped labor 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. He offers new insights into the evolution and political rationale behind regime strategies towards migration, from Gamal Abdel Nasser’s 1952 Revolution to the 2011 Arab Uprisings.
Gerasimos Tsourapas is an Associate Professor in Middle East Politics at the University of Birmingham, and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University during the 2019-20 academic year. His research focuses on the politics of migrants, refugees, and diasporas in the broader Middle East. He is currently the Principal Investigator in two research projects: “The International Politics of Middle East Migration: Problems, Policy, Practice,” funded by the British Academy, and “Migration Diplomacy in the Eastern Mediterranean,” funded by the Council for British Research in the Levant. He has published in leading journals including International Studies Quarterly, International Migration Review, International Studies Perspectives, Third World Quarterly, and the Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies. He co-edited a special issue of International Political Science Review (with Maria Koinova) on ‘Diasporas and Sending States in World Politics’ (2018). His first book, The Politics of Egyptian Migration - Strategies for Survival in Autocracies, has been published by Cambridge University Press (2019).