Program Overview

• Hosts: Deborah Amos
• Length: 51 minutes
• Original Airdate: Jul 2010

Growing up is hard to do, and for young Arabs, it can be a nightmare. The region’s bulging youth population is facing a bleak economic future. Plus, they live in a seething cauldron of tribal, national, religious, social, and political forces that simultaneously pull east and west. It was Paul Gauguin who asked, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? Those are some of the very questions young Arabs are asking themselves, and the answers have implications far beyond the region.

Segment 1: Sean Carberry travels to Jordan to explore how young people are navigating between global, religious and tribal forces as they form their identities. Listen to this segment.

Guests include Muin Khoury, a research analyst with the Royal Hashemite Court in Jordan; Dr. Mohammed al Masri, a political scientist at the Center for Strategic Studies in Jordan; Dr. Musa Shteiwi, Director of the Jordan Center for Social Research; Dr. Diane Singerman, Professor of Government at American University; and Naseem Tarawnah, a founder and editor of 7iber.com.

Segment 2: Sean Carberry reports from Cairo on the conflicting pressures facing Egyptian women as they struggle to reconcile traditional codes of conduct with western norms when it comes to dating and relationships. Listen to this segment.

Guests include Ghada Abdel Aal, blogger and author of “I Want to Get Married!”; Sondos Gamel, Co-Director of the Bussy Project at the American University in Cairo; Engy Ghozlan, Project Coordinator for the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights; Professor Barbara Ibrahim, Director of the Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement at the American University of Cairo; and Marwa Rakha, a relationship and dating writer and blogger.

Segment 3: Jordana Gustafson reports from Michigan on the struggles facing young Arab Americans as they negotiate their identities in the United States. Listen to this segment.

Guests include Rasha Abujaber; Suha Ahmed, a graduate student at Wayne State University in Detroit who works at the Arab-American National Museum in Dearborn, MI.; Anwar Alefnain; Hani Bawardi, University of Michigan history professor; Noha Beydoun, a student in Dearborn, Michigan; Dr. Louise Cainkar, a sociologist at Marquette University; Andrew Daleck; and Pastor Haytham Abi Haydar, of the Arabic Fellowship Alliance Church.

MULTIMEDIA: Growing up Arab-American. Meet three young Arab-Americans about the challenges of growing up Arab and American in United States today. Watch >

Segment 4: Deborah Amos speaks with Nadine Naber, Professor of Arab American Studies at the University of Michigan, about the shaping of Arab identity among young people in the Arab region and in the United States.  Listen to this segment.

Young and Restless / Executive Producer: Aaron Lobel / AAM Producers: Monica Bushman, Sean Carberry, Jordana Gustafson, Matt Ozug, Chris Williams.

Support the for The Arab World's Demographic Dilemma: Young, Unemployed and Searching for a Voice series is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this series do not necessarily represent those of NEH.