Middle-Class Employees in the Egyptian Uprising of 2011

Abstract

As participants in political and workplace protests, middle-class employees (MCEs) were overrepresented during the 18 days of the Egyptian uprising of 2011. This is quite surprising, because the democracy movement that called for the uprising had limited organizational capacities that could not have mobilized these sectors, and MCEs historically constituted the social base of the Egyptian regime. By the 2000s, however, the decline in state institutions that tied MCEs to the regime had intensified, aggravating their grievances. I argue that those MCEs who were able to build formal organizations or had joined the democracy movement were mobilized through a formal path, while those who did not joined spontaneously. Spontaneous action here was institutionally structured. It built on preexisting informal networks and prior experiences in both workplace and work-related anti-regime protests. The democracy movement thus created an opening for already aggrieved and mobilized MCEs to join the uprising.