Ali's Blog
About
Entries
Chat
Kool Webpages
Guestbook
Kool Books
Truth Table
Contact
The roughly 200,000 Qatari population make up about 10% of the entire country's demographics, with the rest of Qatar's population being composed of expatriates. Being a member of the national class in Qatar comes with considerable socio-economic capital not experienced by any national class anywhere in the world thanks to the extensive state welfare system. Being read as a Qatari therefore brings forth a certain kind of prestige dawned in a sea of non-Qataris. Qatari social markers symbolise and signal this prestige; wearing the thobe or the abaya, speaking the dialect, what car one drives and even one's spending and grooming habits, etc. all mark one as a Qatari. These markers make up a dynamic archetype of a Qatari identity for other to strive towards but which often proves to be elusive for many that try.
Since I won’t write one, I propose an in-depth analysis, preferably ethnographic, of the relational dynamics within the Qatari identity archetype, moving beyond the simplistic migrant-local binary to explore the role of tribal affiliations and other localised markers among Qataris themselves and those who trail behind the archetype, continually reaching towards it but are never really there. What types of social differentiations, inclusions and exclusions exist among Qataris and on what basis do they exist? There has yet to be research on this even though it is common knolwedge among Qataris themselves who are in the 'know'. In Qatar, certain individuals, such as members of specific tribes, those from particular family backgrounds often experience their own forms of unique privileges or marginalisation, which are qualitatively different from the distrubtion of privilege and precarity among non-Qataris, which otherwise exists along national and sometimes racial lines. The latter has been extensively documented—too extensively perhaps that it brought about an unfair air of exceptionality to Qatar's treatment of migrants.
Yet, there is one social group in Qatar that has not received any attention, namely native-born non-citizens. This group experiences a very unique type of alienation and are perceived as perpetual outsiders, trailing behind the social hierarchy of "real" natives. Among them are Palestinians who were expelled from their country during the 1948 Nakba where many of them landed in the Arabian Gulf, including Qatar. Some were nationalised and others were not. Most strongly cling to their Palestinian identity but others have also embraced their Qatari side, having lived here for at least two generations now. The formal path to citizenship is notoriously difficult in Qatar even though a few Palestinians had attained it. But the main point is that both naturalised Palestinians and those who are residents in Qatar for generations feel a specific type of uncoercive alienation that is a byproduct of a Qatari archetype that is quite robust and exclusionary, constantly looks to weed out the 'inauthentics' and forces those on the peripheries to shift their practices in order to reach it. The citizen-non-citizen and the authentic citizen-inauthentic citizen hierarchies are not only deeply ingrained in Qatari society but are also codified in its laws.
It is worth investigating how these groups navigate and perform their Qatariness in an attempt to assimilate into the idealised prototype Qatari identity and blend into the mainstream. It is important to consider whether these individuals feel alienated or insecure due to their status as "insider-outsiders" in the presence of more dominant Qatari social groups who are not only entitled to more economic benefits but also enjoy greater social capital. I suspect that many will acknowledge this sense of subtle alienation but will also accept it as how things anyway are, as I also suspect that many of them perceive their status in Qatar as nonetheless and all things considered dignified, despite its position in relative terms.
Many Qataris perceive that the identification category ‘Qatari’ is to be under ontological threat, due perhaps to the lack of determinacy in continuously oscillating between traditionalism and modernism, or because of a perceived threat of the dilution of a sense-making framework (nationalism) by external forces (globalisation, western acculturation) or because of a permanent insecurity inherent in being a minority in ones own country. Yet, I suspect that this anxiety is doubly and constantly felt by these groups as a result of their more precarious position—a sort of meta-insecurity, insecurity about identifying with an insecure interpretive framework.
Again, the analysis should not be limited to tribe or citizenship-based groupings alone, although that will be a worthy study on its own right. This will miss a significant portion of the populaiton. Many long-term residents of Qatar, including those born and raised in the country, often grapple with their own identity crises as they strive to align themselves with the elusive Qatari archetype. This abstract benchmark serves as both a measure by which individuals assess themselves and a point of reference for structuring their lives. To successfully 'pass' as Qatari is to attain similar privileges, rewards, and social acceptance while managing the stigma of being perceived as an 'other.' Goffman's work on performativity and stigma is particularly relevant in this context. The Arabic cognate to stigma, 'Aib', carries significant behaviour-orienting power which many Qataris invoke as a way to order, reinforce and govern the conduct of themslevs and other Qataris (via humiliation, shame, and other psychological punities) in relation to the (ever changing) Qatari identity archetype, especially in opposion to identites seens as incommensurate; sexual identities, 'westernised' identties, the assumption of heterdox familial roles etc. Thus you get the saying that these conducts and identites are 'un-Qatari'. Deviations from this archetype are in other words diluting a Platonic essence which needs protection by reproducing the acts and discourses that constitute it. Individuals may modify various aspects of their presentation, such as their accent, vocabulary, attire, and grooming habits, in an attempt to be perceived as “authentic” Qatari citizens.
However, for some, subtle markers, including dialect imperfections, family names, or skin complexion, can still betray their efforts and reveal their 'otherness'. Those who are unconditionally accepted as part of the nation are positioned in relation to these 'visible' others. By excluding these otherwise suspect groups, a tacit national framework is employed to assert access to key material and ontological resources, or national-cultural capital. This exclusionary process serves to reinforce the dominant group's status while maintaining the boundaries that separate the 'genuine' Qataris from those perceived as outsiders. Below I briefly consider the Palestinian population in Qatar who I suspect experience the most profound sense of ontological insecurity as exiled diasporas who are long residents of another nation yet not fully part of its ethos.
Of course this may lead to a stronger identification with their Palestinian identity and to form closer ties with the Palestinian diaspora in Qatar. And this is quite often the case for newer residents in Qatar. But here I am specifically referring to gerenrational Palestinian residents who's parents and grandparents had all lived in Qatar, and thus more likely to belong to the ingroup but still feel alienated from it. I also suspect that, in their status as insider outsiders, they also generate indeterminacy to the national identity, where the dichotomy of 'insiders vs outsiders' becomes blurry, and the believability of a bounded, essentialist identity is called into question.
Jeff Huysmans' (1998) notion of ontological security serves as a powerful lens to illuminate the process through which meaning is forged and sustained through identity exclusion and inclusion. Huysman invokes George Simmel’s (1908) Simmelian “stranger”—an enigmatic entity that is neither friend nor foe, insider nor outsider, part of the self nor part of the other. A presence transcending the realms of categorisation, cloaked in the mystique of strangeness.
The stranger is not an outsider or a newcomer but someone who is both within and outside a group simultaneously, poised between familiarity and foreignness, intimacy and distance. She is part of the group but remains detached, maintaining a certain distance from the group's core members.
In being in this state of limbo, she emerges as a spectre haunting the notion of, not only a bounded identity, but of ontological security—the sense of biographical stability, consistency, and continuity in an individual's or a collective's experiences and self-identity. It is the psychological assurance that comes from having a coherent and predictable narrative of the world and one's place within it. The stranger dissolves ontological security by echoing indeterminacy and chaos out of the very potential of order, the very potential of creating clear dichotomies and borders.
Born in Qatar's embrace, the Palestinian resident is the modern archetype of the Simmelian stranger, the embodiment of a national paradox—non-national national, member of a nation without a nation. She wanders the world as a universal stranger, a perpetual exile, her life a testament to the contradiction of belonging and unbelonging, intimately tied to a homeland that exists only in the realm of memory and longing. Not a visitor from a distant land, for there no longer exists 'another land' to call her own—no place to rest her weary heart, free from the mantle of visitor or stranger.
This Palestinian condition of liminality exemplifies the modern paradox of statelessness; people devoid of their own territorial roots and yet are the quintessence of rootedness. The Palestinian today is an ethereal phantom of custom, roaming adrift in a time marked by inflexible borders and unwavering national principles—echoes of a migratory history within an epoch of permanence and settlement. At the periphery of Qatari society, she resides—unclaimed by Qatar or any other nation, as the concept of ‘nationhood’ is traditionally understood.
In the heart of Qatar, where nationhood serves as an ontological quilt, the Palestinian may find herself woven into a nation of her own—yet a nation unmoored and without a home. Stranger she remains, as her attempts to blend in leaves her distinguishable still—by the curve of her smiles, the cadence of her speech, and the subtleties of her demeanour.
For the hosts, her spectral presence, her strong Arabic roots and similarity, weaves a thread of uncertainty through the intricate pattern of nationhood, challenging not only the established order but also the very possibility of neatly categorising individuals into ‘us and them’. Neither wholly in nor out, she lingers in the interstice, blurring the lines between friend and foe—the lines which form the very essence of the refied nation-state's mythological illusion of boundedness, definitiveness, and substantialness, and thus calling into question the very believability of the myth.
As this challenge to ontological security unfolds, it becomes an exploration of the nature of being itself—in this case, national identity—without allowing the former to be subsumed by the latter. In the shadows of the Qatari landscape, the Palestinians' story unfurls, a poignant testament to the complexities and constraints that encircle the notions of nationhood and identity, ultimately questioning the very foundations of an “authentic” Qatari identity within the nation-state's embrace.
The essentialist myth of a bounded Qatari identity is often differentiated into two groups: authentic Qataris (قطريين اصليين), which comprise of several Arab tribes, and inauthentic Qataris (غير اصلين), consisting of naturalised nationals, families and tribes with non-Arab origins (such as Balochis, Persians, Africans, Yemenis, Egyptians, etc.) and Shia families. Thus, within the national space of 'Qatar,' there exist both distinct and indistinct categories, each defined by the amount of national cultural capital they possess based on invented taxonomies (Hage 1998:54). A combination of discernible features, such as dialect and skin colour, and not immediately discernible features (family name, tribe and other genealogical histories) ultimately determines who is granted entry into the exclusive circle of the former category, illustrating that the use of prejudicial categories must be understood within a very parochial national context.
The case of naturalised citizens is particularly intriguing, especially when examining the contrasting treatment of naturalised athletes like Faris Hassouna and Moataz Barshim. Despite winning gold medals for Qatar and being native-born residents who were subsequently naturalised, they are nonetheless barred from participating in the Shura Council election as voters or candidates. On one hand, they are celebrated as national heroes when it benefits the privileged population; on the other hand, they are relegated to the status of 'others' when it does not (as when the national team loses a game). This division is enshrined in Law No. 2 of 1961, highlighting the complexities and contradictions that underlie the concept of national identity in Qatar.
In some instances, individuals from non-passing groups may resort to concealing or misrepresenting their family names (for example, families like Al-Ahmad, Al-Abdullah, etc., which could denote either a prestigious, ethnically-Arab tribe or a variation often associated with an ethnically-Persian family or former slave descendants of the original tribe) to minimise stigma and pass as Qataris. This underscores the dual need for recognition and belonging, as any claim to membership in a particular in-group identity relies on others acknowledging the claimants as 'passing.'
The groups in question encompass not only other nationalities born and raised among Qataris but also de facto Qatari citizens from subaltern tribes or racial backgrounds, such as Balochis or individuals of African descent. These individuals may be perceived as second-class citizens in terms of social and political capital, even when they are materially well-off. However, these locally-born, “would-be” Qataris or residents do not merely assimilate passively into the dominant archetype. By virtue of their perceived or invented difference, they simultaneously modify it and engage in a power struggle over the native society's classification of who may be considered a national. They, therefore, more than constitute it and are constituted by it.
Furthermore, they influence perceptions of how native-born immigrants and naturalised de facto Qataris, who may still be considered 'others,' ought to behave in order to qualify as members of the nation and demonstrate their 'Qatariness' despite their heritage, tribe, or race. This ongoing negotiation highlights the fluidity and complexity of national identity and belonging within the Qatari context.
Again I am here proposing research questions not conclusion, so please excuse the disjointedness and vagueness of the entry.
/div>