Globalization and Resistance? Informal Markets and the Rise of Islamic Activism in Cairo

In Egypt, fears surrounding the growth of informal settlements have long been linked to the state’s anxiety about the informal, or casual, laboring class, a large segment of Cairo’s informal neighborhoods.  Together with the rise of militant Islam in the slums of the informal settlements, the plight of the informally housed population has dominated official discourse. Informal settlements arouse anxiety amongst the most learned segments of middle class society unable, or unwilling, to recognize the associated drastic social and economic transformations associated. The catalyst for these fears was sparked by the now infamous confrontations between security forces and Islamist militants in the winter of 1992 in Imbaba.

This paper analyzes the economic and social reality that forms the material basis of the Islamic militancy Imbaba.  I argue that the growth of Islamist activism is associated with broader globally induced political and economic factors. These  combined to produce a transformation of the political articulation of Islamist activism, social organization and urban space. In the first instance, the neo-liberal economic policies (infitah) of Anwar Sadat in 1973 resulted in the decline of public sector industries and the political power of formal labor. Under cyclical recessions these developments have led to a process of “informalization” in housing and labor markets centered primarily on informal settlements such as Imbaba.

Economic liberalization caused speculative land practices creating an increase in the cost and demand for affordable housing. Moreover,  labor migration caused a surge of expatriate remittances and the construction of informal and formal housing. Together these developments have altered social relations and political developments at the community level. In the case of Imbaba, the expansion and reconfiguration of the informal housing  market produced a parallel informal labor market whose structure and social composition generated a new, and more militant form of Islamist activism.