The invisible middle class: The margins of agency, representation and urban dissent in Cairo

This paper examines how visual narratives of Egypt’s class politics over the past decade have problematized contemporary urban configurations and socio-spatial ordering. Following the 2011 political rupture, multiple class imaginaries have emerged, intricately linked to the country’s newly reconfigured political economy. Recent state policies have systematically marginalized the middle classes by tightening political control and exacerbating economic pressures, thereby foreclosing avenues for civic agency. Conversely, affluent groups have consolidated their presence in urban politics, shaping emergent spatial dynamics, while underclasses have sustained resilience through localized knowledge networks and grassroots resources. Within this contested landscape, the paper explores creative dissent schemes as sites where class interplay and state–citizen relations are visually negotiated. In these schemes, the city appears devoid of its middle classes, represented instead as a polarized environment housing only the wealthy and the destitute. This phenomenon is conceptualized as the agency of the invisible middle classes. Drawing on in-depth interviews and visual ethnographic methods, the paper seeks to reintegrate questions of class, representation, and agency into broader debates on urban politics. Preliminary conclusions are drawn toward mapping the middle class(es) in post-revolutionary Egypt, highlighting how their visual erasure both reflects and reinforces broader structures of exclusion and dissent.