It is a path of disappointment, which begins the next day to graduation, after the students rejoice with their friends, families, and professors, and live the saying of Imru’ al-Qais: “Today is wine and tomorrow is matter.”
The joy of graduation is unparalleled, as it defines the space where young people move from the stage of preparation for working life, to fighting the battle of finding their place in society, through the labor market.
When they enter the labor market, disappointments start emerging from institutions that the graduate thinks are waiting for him with open arms to receive him, so he specializes in compiling excuses and polite methods of rejection, just because in my country no one cares about the youth, and no government has made an effort to prepare a place for them in the field of work, nor is it concerned with a better future for them.
Between the beautiful dreams of studying at university, and the painful reality that graduates live in, there is a path of suffering that makes their souls loaded with wounds, and no one knows how it can end.
Unemployment is steadily increasing all over the world, and it is increasing at a higher rate here. The worst thing about it is the decline that we see in the average age of unemployed. Unemployment is getting younger, I tell my students, as the percentage of unemployed people among young people has become a threat to civil peace. Hence, some desperate unemployed young people get involved in jobs that are neither legitimate nor legal, in an attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of their person and degree and secure their life needs.
Even the programs proposed by some industrially advanced countries to curb unemployment, were not as effective as it was expected. Neither continuous training, nor providing young people with multiple specializations, nor apprenticeship contracts, nor tax exemptions, gave the desired results. In every case, companies find a way to circumvent themselves in order to make a profit at the expense of unemployed youth, whose unemployment has become of long-term.
This is in advanced industrial countries, so what would be the situation in our country, where we are still far from establishing such policies, and alienated from everything related to workforce planning and linking it to education and economic growth?
In the light of circumstances of this kind, where it is very difficult to find – or establish – decent work, and where the available jobs, in terms of their content and income, place those who accept them in a state of Malthusian unemployment, that is, income is barely sufficient for basic food needs. Therefore, the person finds himself in a situation where he disbelieves in his country, and decides to leave this place, where there is economic injustice and social marginality. Otherwise, the disappointed young man loses his values and ethics, and indulges in activities that lead him to criminal prosecution.
The other possible option is for the unemployed person to accept work in a field other than his specialty, which weakens his productive ability and puts him in a state of disguised or hidden unemployment. Suffering from disguised unemployment is bitter, because the work he will get is of lower rank and income than the work for which he is trained, and here too self-esteem sinks to the bottom of its ranks.
All of this is accompanied by the intersection of clientelism and employment in a war over efficiency, although the private sector prefers employment based on efficiency, in order to obtain high productivity from the labor force it uses. In many cases, clientelism or favoritism in my country are still stronger than scientific standards in use.
Where does the reason lie in all this path full of disappointments?
The problem lies in the foundation of the economic and educational systems, or rather in the foundation of the structure of our systems.
How do you want salaries to provide a decent life when the tax system worsens the bad distribution of income and wealth?
How do you want young people to find suitable jobs and not fall prey to any form of unemployment when there is no coordination and close cooperation between the educational and the productive sectors?
Since before the Mandate era, Lebanon has been experiencing a class split that we see increasing day after day. The middle class, which is the main crossing point in class mobility, is experiencing a crisis of survival, advancing at times and receding at other times, according to security and political stability, or according to the financial surplus in certain periods.
In a study conducted by fellow researchers at the Economic Society, they found that those who hold the country’s wealth are a group comprising 400 families, who own productive sectors, from transportation and shipping to banks and insurance companies, and these families are linked to each other through kinship and intermarriage. It is worth noting that this “cast” is cross-sectarian. When interests is there, sectarianism vanishes.
Lebanon, like all small countries, does not provide room for sufficient socio-economic mobility, and does not allow the generations who come to work to achieve their aspirations. Lebanon, with its size, in addition to the absence of effective policies on the educational and economic levels, is not a country in which a person can achieve his aspirations, unless he is politically or financially advantaged, and it is usually both.
There is no place for you! Those in charge of the country’s wealth and capabilities say to young people looking for a future. The ambitious Lebanese and Arab youth find the doors of livelihood – and the doors of human dignity – closed in their face, and they find no way to build themselves except through emigration.
You find them in thousands lining up at the doors of embassies around the world, enduring mistreatment at times, in order to obtain any document that would allow them to emerge from the swamp of unemployment, poverty, and frustration.
And do you ask why Lebanese immigrants do not keep their identities, and their children do not claim them when their parents lose them, except occasionally?
The answer is simple: To them Lebanon is like a quince fruit, every bite is a choke!
By Dr. Michel E. Abs
The Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC)
