This is a very well-structured and well-researched book analyzing the relation between authoritarianism and emigration in Egypt. The analysis is divided chronologically into three phases, each one relating to the three successive authoritarian regimes of Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak. From the conceptual point of view the author distinguishes between the domestic, regional, and international effects of emigration. The theoretical discussion engages two debates in political science: one about authoritarianism and the other about migration.

Implicitly adopting a realist approach to migration, Gerasimos Tsourapas analyzes how intraregional migration of Egyptians in the Arab world has been used by successive Egyptian governments to allow for regime survival. The analysis is predicated on the definition of Egypt, from the Nasser government until the Mubarak one, as a nondemocratic regime using labor emigration policy to ensure its survival. However, whereas during the Nasser period, emigration policy was very restrictive, under Sadat and then Mubarak, Egypt started using much more permissive policies in the context of the Arab region to achieve regime stability. The approach adopted by the author is heavily reliant on realist assumptions, à la Myron Weiner (The Global Migration Crisis: Challenge to States and Human Rights, 1995), in attributing to the state the ability to control migration, although this is actually never discussed in the book. This very strong assumption should at least be contextualized within existing theoretical debates.

Unfortunately, this book fails to address the question of whether the state can effectively regulate migration. This is the so-called policy gap or gap hypothesis, which, in migration studies, is the problem of the existence of a gap between migratory policy aims and outcomes (Mathias Czaika and Hein de Haas, “The Effectiveness of Immigration Policies,” Population and Development Review, 39(3), 2013). This is also a theoretical question because, its answer differs according to which international political economy (IPE) approach is used. For example, neorealists such as Weiner but also Richard B. Freeman (in several works) and George J. Borjas (Friends or Strangers, 1990) strongly believe in the ability of the state to regulate migration and deny the existence of the “policy gap.” Indeed, from this perspective, if the state is unable to contain and regulate migration, it is because it lacks the political will to do so.

In contrast, neoliberals, such as Caroline Brettel or James Hollifield, argue that nation-states cannot regulate migration but that international institutions can. This entails debate about global and regional governance in international migration. Neo-institutionalists à la Robert Keohane would predict that the increase in migratory flows is the consequence of the formation of coalitions of interests favoring them in the most powerful liberal states, which would eventually lead to regional and global governance solutions for international migration. Moreover, from the perspective of neoliberal interdependence, states should be more prone to opening their borders, both to trade and to migration, in the presence of an international regulatory system or institution that can control and regulate similar flows. Overall, although the book focuses on authoritarian regimes, the possibility of the existence of a policy gap should have at least been explored by the author.

Another question that could be further elaborated in the book is the relation between intraregional and extraregional migration and the relevance or irrelevance of political motivations for both, such as regime survival, as opposed to economic dynamics. Given the different waves of migration in Egypt—both intraregional and, more recently, extraregional—it is difficult to overestimate the role that economic factors played in it. With these considerations in mind, it would have been appropriate to distinguish between the different phases of Egypt’s migratory policies with respect not only to the political dimension but also to the economic situation of the country, the region, and the globe. Finally, some mention of the role of globalization in changing Egyptian migratory practices and policies could have been made.

Historically, Egypt has been a land of immigrants, not of emigrants. This was true even when standards of living were very low. Scholars have since identified five phases in the evolution of the Egyptian migratory flows after the 1952 revolution. The most distinctive characteristic of the recent phase of Egyptian migration (1992 onward) is the increase in permanent migration to more developed countries, especially to Europe, as a consequence of economic globalization. Egypt has been considered a paradigmatic case of marginalization within globalization; the MENA area is a case in which the process of regionalization within globalization failed to happen, and the creation of “Fortress Europe” is regarded as the factor inducing Egyptian migrants to enter the EU irregularly (Leila Simona Talani, From Egypt to Europe, 2010).

Within this context, it is debatable whether the authoritarian Egyptian state of Mubarak had any power to control labor emigration, and even if it is possible to hypothesize that Egypt was in favor of both intra- and extraregional migration, it is doubtful whether this was mainly motivated by regime survival and not by economic factors. The book would have benefited from a clearer identification of the realist assumptions to migration underlying it and from a more sophisticated discussion of the economic factors shaping Egyptian migratory patterns, both within the Arab world and outside it.

Overall it seems that the author overplays the role of politics and of the state in determining migration dynamics and underplays the role of the economy. Although the main goal of this contribution is precisely to demonstrate how, by using migration policies, the three Egyptian authoritarian regimes considered were able to consolidate their power, the causal link between emigration policy and the consolidation of authoritarian rule is not strongly established. In fact, the book mostly proves the contrary—that migratory policy dynamics are chiefly determined by economic factors and not by political aims. Therefore, the book could have benefited from a clearer identification of the dynamic interplay between economic and political factors. This would have helped mitigate reliance on the primacy of politics as the main heuristic variable used to explain migration from Egypt.

The identification of a direct relationship between the aims of authoritarian leaders in Egypt and the dynamics of Egyptian migration should be treated with more caution and other, more structural determinants of this process given more empirical as well as theoretical relevance. This could be done, for example, by relaxing the realist framework of the analysis in favor of integrating political economy arguments into the discussion and considering the role played by economic and structural variables in the determination of Egyptian migratory dynamics in their different phases.