ABSTRACT
The concept of citizenship in relation to youth was hollowed out under the former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s authoritarian state, and further gutted by a dysfunctional education system and the wasta (connections) plague. The swindled young generation grew up in despair; they were not able to find work, marriage, or a voice. As the numbers of youth increased exponentially, so too did their frantic attempts to address their disorientation in a patronizing state that viewed them as a burden, even if the formal rhetoric referred to youth as “the future” and the “hope of the nation.”
