MER Article Two Economic Histories Charles Issawi, An Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). Roger Owen, The Middle East in the World Economy, 1800-1914 (New York: Methuen, 1981). James A. Reilly • 3 min read
MER Article Gran, Development by People Guy Gran, Development by People: Citizen Construction of a Just World (New York: Praeger, 1983). This ambitious book seeks to serve as a guide to building new societies in the Third World (and ultimately everywhere else) based on grassroots participatory development and the democratic empowerment o Karen Pfeifer • 1 min read
MER Article Abraham and Abraham, Arabs in the New World Sameer Abraham and Nabil Abraham, eds., Arabs in the New World: Studies on Arab-American Communities (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1983). Eric Hooglund • 2 min read
MER Article Fawaz, Merchants and Migrants in Nineteenth-Century Beirut Leila Tarazi Fawaz, Merchants and Migrants in Nineteenth-Century Beirut (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983). Carolyn L. Gates • 1 min read
MER Article Algerian Migration Today Richard Lawless and Allan and Anne Findlay, Return Migration to the Maghreb: People and Policies, Arab Papers 10 (London: Arab Research Centre, 1982). Philippe Adair, “Retrospective de la Reforme Agraire en Algerie,” Revue Tiers-Monde 14 (1983). Jean Bisson, “L’industrie, la ville, la palmeraie au David McMurray • 4 min read
MER Article Letter from Bangkok In 1975, around 1,000 Thai workers left for Bahrain and Saudi Arabia; by 1982, 108,520 workers, over one third of all Thailand’s expatriate work force, had left for 11 different countries in the Middle East region. Their remittances, totaling over $450 million, amounted to the equivalent of half the A Special Correspondent • 4 min read
MER Article Letter from the West Bank Driving through the West Bank on Land Day, March 30, we pull to the side of the road outside Balata refugee camp, on the outskirts of Nablus. In the valley, two bulldozers move slowly against the backdrop of the Nablus hills, plowing a new road through wheatfields. Spring has come early this year, a A Special Correspondent • 7 min read
MER Article The Immigrant Experience in Sweden Mahmut Baksi was born twice. The first time, in Kozluk, a village in Turkish Kurdistan, in 1944. His left-wing and nationalist activities brought him into conflict with his landowning family and with the Turkish authorities. Mahmut chose to leave, and he sought political asylum in Sweden in 1971, wh (Author not identified) • 10 min read
MER Article Egyptian Labor Abroad Hardly more than a decade has passed since Egypt’s pioneering emigrants first offered their skills to the nascent development of neighboring Arab countries. Measured against the volume and impact of its labor contributions, this seems a short time indeed. In that time, the limited opportunities once Robert LaTowsky • 21 min read
MER Article Labor Migration in the Arab World The Arab world comprises 18 states and was inhabited, in 1980, by more than 150 million people. [1] Two factors vital to economic development—population and oil—are, however, distributed in an extremely uneven manner among these states. The abstract possibility of mutually beneficial cooperation bet Fred Halliday • 20 min read
MER Article From the Editors (May 1984) One of the great achievements of the capitalist class in the United States has been its ability to enlist the enthusiastic support of the trade union leadership in this country for a foreign policy of intervention and counterrevolution, a policy clearly against the interests of the organized working The Editors • 4 min read
