Arab Worlds Beyond The Middle East And North Africa

Just like people around the world have done for generations, Arab people from the Middle East and North African (MENA) region have immigrated to various nations around the world. A number of ‘push’ factors account for why groups have left their homeland and ‘pulled’ to another nation to settle. The history and patterns of Arab migration out of the MENA illustrates the wide array of reasons for these patterns, primarily illustrating that mass emigration and settlement are highly linked to a number of factors, including social, political, economic, familial climates of each nation-state and its policies. If it is one takeaway that this edited volume brings to light, it is that the Arab MENA does not only include a diverse population within each nation-state it also illustrates the ways in which their settlement in new nations have contributed to their own identity development patterns, their communities, and that of their new nation-state. This book celebrates the achievements and acknowledges the challenges of the new communities that Arabs have built around the world. It shows examples of societies that have embraced the Arab diaspora as well as examples of sidelining these communities. These examples come from a number of subject areas, from music to international affairs. The examples are both contemporary and historical, authored by individuals with a diverse set of disciplinary lenses and professional training. This book is meant to fill a gap in the literature as it expands on the understanding of Arab communities to inform and inspire a more nuanced, inclusive approach to the study of the Arab diaspora. It does so by revealing untold stories that challenge stereotypes to push for more inclusive media representation of Arab identity and its development in various regions of the world.

This book explores specific problems related to the phenomenon of the Arab Spring in North Africa. These topics include sexual minorities, youth, and gender issues, as well as broader themes covering the ideological, social, political, and religious backgrounds of the Arab Spring.

The Arabs is widely considered one of the essential books for understanding the Middle East and the peoples who live there. David Lamb, who spent years as a correspondent in Cairo, explores the Arabs’ religious, political, and cultural views, noting the differences and key similarities between the many segments of the Arab world. He explains Arab attitudes and actions toward the West, including the growth of terrorism, and situates current events in a larger historical backdrop that goes back more than a thousand years. Now thoroughly revised and updated, The Arabs takes the story up to 2001. Lamb analyzes the developments that led to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and helps the reader to understand how things got to that point. A veteran journalist, Lamb combines his extensive experience in covering international politics with his deeply informed insider’s knowledge to provide an intimate portrait of the Arab world today.

Most governments in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region use trade policy to protect certain industries, provide tax incentives to promote a particular type of investment, and make subsidized credit available to firms of a certain size. Such government intervention, known as industrial policy, is the topic of this book. The aim is to assess whether state intervention leads to net benefits to society, why policymakers intervene, and how to bring about a healthier balance between states and markets. Answers to these questions are given in six chapters based on research papers that were presented at a conference held in Cairo in November 2005, and include case studies on Egypt, Morocco, Turkey, and Jordan. Contributors: Hasan Ersel, Ahmed Galal, Najib Harabi, Nihal El Megharbel, Mustapha Nabli, and Marcus Noland. An Egyptian Center for Economic Studies / World Bank Publication

MENA is one of the least globally and regionally integrated regions in the world. Though home to 5.5 percent of the world’s population and 3.9 percent of the world’s GDP, the region’s share of nonoil world trade is only 1.8 percent. Deep economic integration could help policy makers address the critical development challenges that have been brought to the forefront by the Arab Spring by boosting growth, fostering diversification, and stimulating employment. The level of tariff protection vis-à-vis the rest of the world remains high by international standards, particularly in North Africa. Nontariff measures have become the most important barriers to trade in goods in the Arab world. Trade in services is extremely limited. To boost services trade, reforms will be required to ease entry and licensing restrictions, promote competition, harmonize and strengthen regulatory practices and arrangements, and lower restrictions on the mobility of foreign workers residing in the region. Continued public ownership in some services sectors also represents a hurdle to service flows. Backbone services such as telecommunications, financial services, transport, and power are crucial to boosting productivity and international competitiveness. Building strategic infrastructure networks while opening infrastructure services to competition and trade could help reduce production costs, increase foreign direct investment, promote knowledge spillovers, and expand markets. Logistics performance, which varies substantially across countries, has generally been constrained by slow and ineffective introduction of risk management, little effort to monitor customs performance at the border, and insufficiently improved facilities at border crossings. Priority should be accorded to measures that improve the efficiency of border crossing points, including through the harmonization of customs procedures. The proliferation of PTAs, with their different sector and product coverage, rules of origin, and implementation requirements, poses a formidable challenge for capacity-constrained MENA institutions. If an Arab Customs Union is to be established by 2015 and an Arab Common Market by 2020, then efforts will need to be made to strengthen the rules and discipline applicable to PAFTA and other regional trade agreements. Mechanisms for tracking and enforcing commitments to regional economic integration also need to be strengthened.