Qatar’s Societal Security

This book examines the evolution of Qatar's societal security perceptions, focusing on the impact of the 2017 Gulf crisis following the blockade imposed by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE and Egypt. The crisis fundamentally reshaped how societal security is understood in Qatar. Since the 1990s, Qatar has been expanding its concept of societal security to address migration as a presumed threat to national identity. Local citizens regarded communities of migrants increasingly as a threat to existing cultural and linguistic norms, and as a challenge to the country's traditional “we”. The crisis of 2017, which isolated Qatar through a regional blockade, fundamentally changed the perception of the country's societal security. In response, Qatar turned ‘Baladna’ (‘our country’) into a symbol of inclusion, expanding tribal solidarity into a unifying national identity that encompassed both citizens and non-citizens. Following Nordic models, the understanding of social security in Qatar has transformed from a concern about identity to the protection of vital functions of society as a whole.