From Ethiopia to the West Bank, a tale about growing disenchantment of globalism, and fragility

Everyone seems speechless and stunned by the recent electoral waves of so-called ‘national-populism’ around the world (United States, Italy, Philippines, Brazil, Hungary, to name a few). As if we were caught by surprise to suddenly discover the instrumentalised rage and frustration of middle, lower, and other vulnerable social classes expressing, through their votes, their rejection of globalism. But is it really so? And what can two places and contexts such as Addis-Abeba, in Ethiopia, and Tulkarem, in the West Bank, as different as they can be, tell us about this growing globalism disenchantment? 

Recently, I was part of a team that conducted a short qualitative investigation for the International Labour Organisation on living wages determination for garment workers in Ethiopia. In the data we collected, what stroke me the most, was this disincarnating, if not almost ‘dis-human’, conditions of workers; I’m not talking about the working conditions, but what makes our jobs meaningful for our socialisation and social identity. A few examples; factories don’t have necessarily names but are numbered (e.g. I work in factory 23), the turnover rate is spectacularly high, and workers, globally speaking, prefer working in the informal sector rather than in this kind of formal sector. And wages do not allow the female workers to raise children; most of them are single and rely on their parents’ support, making them particularly vulnerable in the community. 

On the other hand, my last field visit in Tulkarem (researching about education and domestic violence), close to Nablus in the West Bank, gave me a glance on another side of this tale. In speaking to a diversity of social and academic actors in the region, I realised that one of the important aspects in understanding domestic violence was related to the working conditions of Palestinians in Israel (or outside). A parent, or both, migrate to Israel to work illegally for an indefinite period of time. The significant need for cheap labour, particularly in the agricultural sector, of the Israeli economy, is well suited to the tensions of the conflict. One can easily imagine the dramatic consequences for children deprived of their parents, but also the constant fear of not seeing their relatives coming back, that fragilizes an entire community.      

This rather unexpected Ethiopian-Palestinian tale illustrates similar conditions prevailing in various regions of the world. The social fragility and vulnerability increase as the willingness of traditional political elites to tackle burning social, political, economic, and environmental issues seems to vanish. Frustration, social despair and precarity are mounting everywhere in the world regardless of the context, which is a major concern for socio-political stability. Putting in power reactionary political forces will certainly not help to alleviate these sources of fragility and more than ever, rethinking possible ways of mitigating it becomes essential.