The discussion will be held in both Arabic and English, with simultaneous interpretation available.

You can download the agenda from this link.

You can register to attend by following this link for the physical attendance, which will take place in Cinéma Le Rio in Tunis. or this link for online attendance. You will receive a Zoom confirmation email should your registration be successful. Alternatively, you can watch the event live here on our Facebook page.

What is the place of young people in Tunisia today? Between the celebration of a connected and innovative generation and security rhetoric focused on ‘youth violence’, the discourse talks more about young people than it listens. Since 2021, the Arab Reform Initiative and its partners have been working to listen to and critically examine the political and social perceptions of young people in both urban and rural Tunisia. One of our objectives has been to understand the general absence of young people in institutional politics, and what distinguishes those who have been able to make the exception. This question has led us down a number of avenues, ranging from the public policy and how young people can interact with local politics to improve outcomes in their own lives to the role of the family, media, and school on the political socialisation of young people.

In this conference, we will be exploring the nexus between media, negative stereotypes, and young people's participation in public life. Through a series of presentations and moderated debates, this event, involving researchers, civil society organizations, and activists, will discuss the space won by young people and that which is still closed to them and why. This includes an exchange with journalists on the issue of regional stereotypes, a cause of discrimination and exclusion that underlies the feeling of illegitimacy that pervades young people and acts as a barrier to involvement in public life. In addition, given that the media are at the heart of the machine of representations, the conference will also present youth initiatives and efforts to combat negative stereotypes through changing media narratives. The conference’s overall aims are to collectively unpack how negative representations of certain social classes and certain regions in Tunisia impact on youth perception of themselves and their environment, and what steps can be taken to address these drivers of exclusion and marginalization.