ABSTRACT
This chapter examines citizenship negotiation in Egyptian public universities, by following the emergence and transformations of a specific cluster of student organizations that emerged in the late 1990s and that came to be known as Student Activities (SAs). Starting from the premise that universities are particularly relevant locations to observe state–society relations, the author demonstrates how those student organization spaces of non-formal education incarnate the Mubarak era neoliberal social contract, while simultaneously offering spaces of agency allowing students to negotiate the socio-economic order. Second, the chapter shows that in the aftermath of the 2011 Revolution, when the state–society relationship was being questioned at its core, SAs—though growing stronger—did not re-conceptualize their main mission. It is only in a context of state-sanctioned violence, repression, and restrictions on student activities that SA members took a clear stance as an explicitly apolitical enterprise. By doing so, the author argues that SAs became primary sites that reproduce obedient citizens and their allegiance to the new military-backed regime.
