State strategies and gendered labour: neoliberalism’s impact on Tunisia’s working class composition

Kira Brenner

Third World Quarterly, 2025, vol. 46, issue 12, 1481-1501

Abstract: This paper examines the role of the state in shaping the technical composition of the working class in Tunisia. Drawing on dependency theory and autonomist Marxism, it argues that states in the South act in fundamentally different ways than states in the North and that existing Marxist state theories fail to capture these dynamics. By analysing Tunisian development plans during the transition to neoliberalism and contemporaneous newspaper articles, this paper demonstrates that the Tunisian state decomposed an unruly working class in order to create a labour force that would meet the needs of international capital. The state then altered the technical composition of the class by encouraging more women to enter the labour force by changing the state’s role in social reproduction. These changes made the state more attractive to international capital and helped address balance of payment issues. This paper offers a new understanding of how states in the South navigate their unfavourable incorporation into global capitalism, and restructure their labour forces to meet external demands.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2025.2542495

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