Labour Migration and Policy Negotiations: the 1976 Tunisia-EEC Cooperation Agreement and its Impact

The article analyses the social dimension of cooperation, with particular attention to labour mobility, between Tunisia and the European Economic Community within the framework of the 1976 cooperation agreement, which emerged as part of the Global Mediterranean Policy. The aim of the article is to offer a perspective from a Global South country, moving beyond the Eurocentric narrative of North–South migration, and to show how Tunisia demonstrated its own capacity for agency, even while operating within an increasingly restrictive international context. Within this broader strategy of North–South cooperation, Tunisia sought to expand the scope of its dialogue with the European Community. Tunis’s objective was not only to alleviate domestic social tensions and enhance human capital, but also to legitimise a broader demand for European involvement in the country’s development. The transfer of skills, regulation of migration flows, social protection for workers and shared development became the central pillars of the Tunisian proposal. In this way, the Tunisian government sought to seize the political momentum generated by the Global Mediterranean Policy to promote an alternative model of cooperation that reflected its own aspirations.