The Maghreb Maquiladora: Gender, Labor, and Socio-Economic Power in a Tunisian Export Processing Zone

Author

Claire Therese Oueslati-Porter, University of South FloridaFollow

Graduation Year

2011

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Granting Department

Anthropology

Major Professor

Kevin Yelvington, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Stephen Thornton, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Mark Amen, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Maria Crummett, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Susan Greenbaum, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Rebecca Zarger, Ph.D.

Keywords

globalization, culture, women, factory, stratification

Abstract

This study is about Tunisian women's work and lives in the present era of economic neoliberalism. The focus is women in the city of Bizerte, Tunisia, both those who work in Bizerte's export processing zone (EPZ), as well as those who work outside it. This study is a qualitative examination of formal and informal employment, set inside and outside of women's traditional political and economic domain, the home. Through ethnography of women's work and lives, this study's purpose is to contribute evidence against conflating women's "empowerment" with incorporation into global production. However, this study also lends itself to considerations of the possibilities for exertions of power, powers that women in Bizerte now seek that opened through the forces of globalization.

Scholar Commons Citation

Oueslati-Porter, Claire Therese, "The Maghreb Maquiladora: Gender, Labor, and Socio-Economic Power in a Tunisian Export Processing Zone" (2011). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/3737