Sociology of Suffering The Daily Life of Youth in Sfax’s Low-Income Districts

Abstract

Based on field research undertaken in the al-‘Aqaribah neighborhood of Sfax, this study attempts to provide a sociological understanding of the day-to-day life of Tunisian youth in «popular» or low-income neighborhoods. A systematic, qualitative, walk-through survey puts focus on the young actors themselves as producers of meaning—as opposed to the structural processes enveloping them per se. The study highlights the experience of marginalization and social exclusion in al-‘Aqaribah district, but not as something predetermined, produced externally to the key actors themselves, or removed from their control. Rather, it examines a mix of social experiences and subjective senses that the young people of these neighborhoods resist. This paper looks at how young people take up different strategies to ensure that they can «stay alive» and gain access to the urban consumer society.