| In my thesis, I analyze the transformation of the middle classes during the current period of market reform in Morocco. I suggest that policies of development and modernization led during the post-Independence era (1950s--1970s) to the formation of a 'modern middle class'. Structurally, this class evolved through the expansion of public education, government administration, public sector enterprises and social services, and professions. Created through the ideology of nation-building, the modern middle class likewise perceived its identity in terms of a specific social and political role within the borders of the modern nation. With the adoption of a structural adjustment program in 1983 and subsequent negative consequences to employment and relative income, university, professional school, and high school graduates are forming what I call the 'detached middle'. Efforts to promote integration into the global market economy have pushed these graduates to seek employment in the service sector in addition to the occupations of the older middle class, tying the fate of this generation to levels of foreign and domestic investment and the more general organization of the private sector rather than the political power of the regime. The re-organization of the division of labor as well as increased exposure to global cultural images and symbols has shifted identification among the young, urban educated to a non-contained, dislocated global economy and away from a national project. Their detachment from the nation-state leaves both national 'development' and the more specific need in market reform for local institutional and organizational change without the 'middle class' as an agent and local economic and political elites without the 'middle class' as an ally. |
