Nasser's Educators and Agitators across al-Watan al-‘Arabi: Tracing the Foreign Policy Importance of Egyptian Regional Migration, 1952-1967

Tsourapas, Gerasimos

Abstract

The Egyptian state’s policy of dispatching trained Egyptian professionals, primarily educational staff, across the Arab world rarely features in analyses of Egypt’s foreign policy under Gamal Abdel Nasser. This article relies primarily on newly declassified material from the British Foreign Office archives, unpublished reports from the Egyptian Ministry of Education, and an analysis of related articles in three main Egyptian newspapers (al-Ahram, al-Akhbar, al-Jumhuriya) in order to provide a detailed reconstruction of regional migration’s importance for Egyptian foreign policy. It debunks the conventional wisdom that Egyptian migration became a socio-political issue only in the post-1973 era, arguing that the Nasserite regime developed a governmental policy that allowed, and encouraged, Egyptians’ political activism in Libya, Syria, Yemen, and the Persian Gulf according to state foreign policy priorities in the 1952-1967 period. By presenting a cache of archival material in analytical and critical context, this article offers concrete evidence of how migration buttressed Egypt’s regional ambitions under Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Citation

Tsourapas, G. (2016). Nasser's Educators and Agitators across al-Watan al-‘Arabi: Tracing the Foreign Policy Importance of Egyptian Regional Migration, 1952-1967. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 43(3), 324-341. https://doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2015.1102708

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 4, 2016
• Deposit Date: Mar 15, 2016
• Journal: British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
• Print ISSN: 1353-0194
• Electronic ISSN: 1469-3542
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 43
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 324-341
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2015.1102708
• Keywords: Emigration; Nasser; Egypt; Egyptian Migration; Foreign Policy; Middle East; Arab Cold War