MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL M VOLUME 68, NO.

3, SUMMER 2014
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The Cost of Belonging:
Citizenship Construction in the State of Qatar
Zahra R. Babar
In Qatar, processes of constructing citizenship have been strongly state-driven
over the past four decades. This article reviews the primary inuences on Qa-
tari citizenship laws, including historical and contemporary social contexts
that have impacted the development of relevant legislation. The article argues
that the existing nancial privileges of Qatari citizenship as well as the pres-
ence of a dominant nonnational population have led to an ever more restrictive
legal environment around access to citizenship.
The interaction and interrelationship between citizenship and migration have been
studied in many other contexts, but so far have been absent in scholarship on Qatar.
This scholarly gap exists despite the fact that Qatar continues to demonstrate high
levels of migration inows, with no sign that these will be diminishing soon. This
paper examines the evolution of citizenship laws in Qatar and reviews the particular
rights and privileges that Qatari citizenship provides. This analysis engages with the
broader literature on migration and citizenship, and draws causal explanations for why
citizenship laws in Qatar have continued to remain highly exclusive, and why they
have grown more restrictive over time. This article argues that in Qatar, as a result of
particular state-society relations, welfare benets are exceedingly high for nationals,
and consequently, the state shows great reluctance to expand citizenship, as it would be
economically burdensome. Additionally, the number of temporary migrants, who now
dominate the national population, has also increased pressure on the state to further
restrict citizenship access. While migration and material benets of citizenship are not
the only determinants of Qatari citizenship, they are certainly critical ones.
The manner in which concepts of citizenship evolve within a particular polity is
intrinsically linked to the development of migration policy and governance.
1
Citizenship
and nationality laws lter out those individuals who are not eligible, and create levels of
exclusion that impact migration governance.
2
While the state builds citizenship around
norms of inclusion, in reality the process is just as potent for creating norms of exclusion.
In Qatar, processes of constructing citizenship have been strongly state-derived and state-
Zahra R. Babar is Associate Director for Research at the Center for International and Regional Studies,
Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. She has previously written on migration
and citizenship in the Persian Gulf states, GCC regional integration, and food security in the Middle
East. She has edited, with Mehran Kamrava, Migrant Labor in the Persian Gulf (Columbia University
Press, 2012) and with Suzi Mirgani, Food Security in the Middle East, (Oxford University Press, forth-
coming 2014). The author wishes to gratefully acknowledge Dwaa Osman, Dianna Manalastas, and
Aminah Ali Kandar for the contribution they provided in the preparation of this article.
1. Zahra Babar, Free Mobility within the Gulf Cooperation Council, Center for International and
Regional Studies Occasional Paper No. 8 (2011), p. 14.
2. Catherine Dauvergne, Making People Illegal: What Globalization Means for Migration and
Law, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 61.
404 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL
driven over the past four decades. A normative creation of national citizenship has evolved
alongside a legal framework with stringent criteria of eligibility. This article reviews the
primary inuences on Qatari citizenship laws, including historical and contemporary so-
cial contexts that have impacted the development of relevant legislation, and this analysis
suggests that the evolving processes of restricting citizenship are inexorably intertwined
with broader patterns of regional migration. It further posits that the existing nancial
privileges of Qatari citizenship as well as the presence of a dominant nonnational popula-
tion have led to an ever more restrictive legal environment around access to citizenship.
In addition to the clear impact on the juridical-legal framing of citizenship, the
decades of hosting ever-increasing numbers of alien migrants have also impacted Qatari
citizens self-conceptualization. The continuous presence of a large number of foreigners
has reinforced citizens sense of their distinct Qatari-ness, and shaped a sense of national-
ity along clear lines of cultural belonging. The fact that the visible majority of the popula-
tion is nonnative presses Qataris to conceive of their own citizenship along raried lines.
As Rainer Baubck has so eloquently stated:
How migration changes citizenship depends to a large extent on how states and their
citizens perceive migrants and on how they construct the meaning of citizenship.
Migration is seen through the lenses of particular national conceptions of citizen-
ship, and this perception of migrants falls back into ideas about citizenship.
3
CITIZENSHIP: INCLUSION/EXCLUSION
Citizenship is the legal and political relationship negotiated between a state and
individuals residing within its territory. Citizenship is conferred on the basis of prede-
termined and selective criteria of eligibility, and comes with access to a host of social,
economic, and political rights and privileges. While much of citizenship is built on
the framing of juridical/legal status and ensuing rights and obligations, it also extends
conceptually to include the more uid notions of participation and belonging. Citizen-
ship has theoretically evolved over time to encompass many new understandings and
debates, but as scholars continue to point out, its very nature and core continue to
center on questions of exclusion and inclusion. Despite the deepening body of current
scholarship that addresses the globalized dimensions of citizenship and raises ques-
tions of transnationalism and cosmopolitan citizenship and how these might intrude
on or stretch state-embedded notions of citizenship, in practice, citizenship remains
primarily the relationship between a sovereign state and individuals.
4
Citizenship is still
a privilege that is conferred by a state on an individual, and is built around an accepted
right to exclusivity. Citizenship bestows a certain form of membership within a state to
a person, and not just anyone located within a particular geopolitical territory can claim
to be its citizen through sheer virtue of being there.
5
3. Rainer Baubck, How Migration Transforms Citizenship: International, Multinational and
Transnational Perspectives, IWE Working Paper Series No. 24 (2002), p. 2.
4. Irene Bloemraad, Anna Korteweg, and Gke Yurdakul, Citizenship and Immigration: Multi-
culturalism, Assimilation, and Challenges to the Nation-State, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 34
(2008), pp. 16465.
5. Bloemraad, Korteweg, and Yurdakul, Citizenship and Immigration, p.155.
CITIZENSHIP IN QATAR M 405
Scholars of citizenship have largely addressed four separate but interrelated
subcategories: the legal framing of citizenship status, the rights of membership that
citizenship encompasses (economic, social, political, etc.), levels of participation and
engagement in the polity, and questions around identity and belonging.
6
This article is
guided principally by the rst two subareas of citizenship, focusing on the legal fram-
ing of citizenship in the State of Qatar, and the assorted rights and privileges that Qatari
citizenship currently confers. The selection of these two subareas has been dened by
the nature of the broader subject of the paper, namely the interrelationship between
migration and citizenship in Qatar, and how the policies and practices evolving over
time have informed one another. The purpose of this article is to identify current legal
and policy practices around citizenship in Qatar, and how these have been impacted by
the ongoing ow of migration to the country.
The omission of the subareas of participation and belonging is not intended to
minimize their essential conceptual contribution to citizenship. In the Qatari national
context, where the autocratic structures of governance give citizens limited access to
formal means of political participation, where political citizenship is largely absent, and
where citizenship comes with hardly any additional access to self-governance, extensive
focus on citizenship participation and how it relates to migrants participation would
be irrelevant. Currently in Qatar, migrants levels of engagement in the state are legally
and practically limited to their participation in the labor force. While the national/ethnic
construct that embeds Qatari citizenship within a narrative of cultural and historical be-
longing and how this construct relates to levels of exclusion or inclusion for migrants are
certainly worth further exploration, these topics are beyond the scope of this research.
CITIZENSHIP AND MIGRATION
Existing scholarship on the interrelationship between migration and citizenship
has focused largely on how policies and practices are negotiated in liberal democra-
cies.
7
At the core of these efforts is the belief that liberal democracies have a vested
interest in promoting enhanced participation and rights for their citizenry, and in ensur-
ing social justice and equality. Citizenship, which by its nature is exclusive, challenges
the notions of social justice within liberal democracies. The inux of migrants who are
denied the same access to rights and benets to which citizens are entitled highlights
the need to address ways and means by which to ensure social justice for all, citizens
and noncitizens alike. Much of the literature on migration and citizenship focuses on
issues of how liberal democracies reconcile this tension between citizenship laws and
migration, and much work has been done on migrants assimilation, integration, politi-
cal participation, and access to social and economic benets.
Autocratically governed countries like Qatar are seldom included in citizenship
and migration studies. Existing empirical data available on the impact of migration
ows in small, oil-based economies has, to date, demonstrated that despite massive
inows of migrants, citizenship laws remain extremely restrictive. Scholars analyzing
6. Bloemraad, Korteweg, and Yurdakul, Citizenship and Immigration, p.154.
7. T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Douglas Klusmeyer, Citizenship Policies for an Age of Migration,
(Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002), pp.13.
406 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL
this data have concluded that for small-population states, migration ows are often
unpredictable and may as a result have a limited impact on the legislative or regulatory
environments governing citizenship access.
8
Considered to be highly exceptional based on a variety of factors the ex-
tremely high per capita earnings, deep rentier bargain arrangements, nonparticipatory
political systems, and increasingly high levels of temporary migration the Qatari
case is not presumed to illuminate a great deal beyond its own exceptionalism. In Qa-
tar, political rights and active civic participation (considered foundational to authentic
citizenship) are absent, thus restricting academic interest in examining how Qatari
citizenship is constructed and implemented. Additionally, the normative arguments
based on social justice for granting equal rights and protections to citizens and non-
citizens alike are assumed to be inapplicable.
If the assumption is that, in autocratically governed countries, citizenship laws
develop independently of external factors such as migration and are formed instead
solely on the regimes choices at hand, Qatars situation indicates the opposite. The
framing of citizenship in Qatar and its modications over time reect the ongoing
negotiation within the state to dene and rene the rights and benets for Qatars citi-
zenry, even in the absence of political rights. Recent efforts to reform citizenship laws
in Qatar, in particular the addition of clauses on naturalization, demonstrate that the
legislative environment around citizenship is in fact sensitive to the demands of hosting
migrant populations. Naturalization legislation has developed tiered access to citizen-
ship benets, so that naturalized citizens are not eligible for the same level of rights
as original citizens, a reection of the ways in which the state protects the domain of
citizenship against encroachment and negotiates around existing pressures.
While Qatar is not a liberal democracy and may not need to balance between the
states interests versus demands for social justice and equality in the same manner that
liberal democracies do, the country is also not ruled by a regime that is insensitive to
its role as a benevolent guardian of the well-being of its society. The Qatari monarchy
bases its legitimacy on a historical and traditional vision of itself as serving to protect
the interests of the people and ensuring a healthy, functioning society. While the primary
focus may be the protection of citizens well-being, certainly this self-conception en-
compasses notions of creating broader social justice for all residents of the state. Qatar
is also well aware of its role within the global community. Qatars active engagement in
many different spheres at the international level has brought it increasingly into the lime-
light. As the state pursues its global and strategic objectives, it is only natural that greater
scrutiny will be brought to its internal realm. This has recently been exemplied through
Qatars hosting of the 2022 World Cup, which has brought a great deal of international
attention regarding how Qatar manages the rights and protections of migrant workers
domestically. Within a globalized world, issues of social justice and equity are no longer
just the prerogative of liberal democracies. The State of Qatar sits at the juncture of a
major hub of global migration, and the story it has to tell about how a state negotiates
the management of international migration and national citizenship is an important one.
8. Graziella Bertocchi and Chiara Strozzi, Citizenship Laws and International Migration in His-
torical Perspective, FEEM Working Paper No. 71.05 (May 2005), p.28, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/
papers.cfm?abstract_id=603542.
CITIZENSHIP IN QATAR M 407
QATARI SOCIOPOLITICAL CONTEXT
Qatar is a small, wealthy Gulf state endowed with the third largest natural gas re-
serves in the world. The estimated population stood at 1.84 million people as of 2012,
9

of which the local citizen population constitutes approximately 225,000.
10
Close to
87% of the population are noncitizens, comprised of unskilled and skilled international
labor migrants.
11
The labor force is even more demographically dominated by non-
Qataris 94% of the national labor force is foreign: Out of 1.35 million people active
in the Qatari labor force in 2012, a mere 85,187 were nationals. While the private sec-
tor in Qatar is signicantly larger than the public sector, and employs 74% of all those
who are active in the labor market, Qataris continue to show a strong preference for
government employment.
12
According to the Ministry of Planning Development and
Statistics, in 2012, 84% of working Qataris were employed by the public sector. This
has been a persistent trend in the country over the course of the past decades. In 2011,
the vast majority of Qatari workers were also employed by the state: out of 952,653
people actively employed in the private sector, only 6,279, or less than one percent,
were nationals. The 2011 data also demonstrated that the Qatari state was the employer
of the bulk of its nationals who were engaged in the labor market, with 55,170 Qataris
working in the public sector.
13
The country boasts one of the highest per capita gross
domestic products (GDPs)
14
in the world, and over the past few decades has been en-
gaged in a rapid modernization program that affects all aspects of life in the country.
The state has undertaken massive investments, not only in general infrastructure for
economic development and diversication, but also by building social capital through
intensive investment in education, training, and human capacity development.
Qatar is a dynastic monarchy and is governed by a system of hereditary rule
under the Al Thani family. Power in Qatar is largely vested in the emir, the heir
apparent, and a few senior members of the princely family. Qatars current emir,
Shaykh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani is very new to his role, having assumed the
nations highest position of power only in June 2013. Qatars prior emir, Shaykh
Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, came to the throne in 1995 through a nonviolent coup,
and during the almost two decades of his rule had undertaken a host of progres-
sive measures towards modernization and national reform on many fronts. Among
Shaykh Hamads rst steps as Emir was the dismantling of the archaic ministry of
information, which previously was mandated to impose strict censorship and control
over public expression. An additional step forward was taken in 1998, when the emir
decreed that a new constitution was to be produced, and one of its aims would be to
9. Qatar Statistics Authority (QSA), Labor Force Sample Survey 2012 (Doha: QSA, 2012).
10. Hugh Eakin, The Strange Power of Qatar, The New York Review of Books, October 27, 2011,
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/oct/27/strange-power-qatar/.
11. Martin Baldwin-Edwards, Labour Immigration and Labour Markets in the GCC Countries:
National patterns and trends, LSE Kuwait Programme on Development, Governance and Globalis-
tion in the Gulf States Paper No.15 (March 2011), p. 11.
12. QSA, Labor Force Sample Survey 2012.
13. QSA, Labor Force Sample Survey 2011 (Doha: QSA, 2011).
14. Figures vary but Global Finance reports about US $106,394.Country Data: Qatar, Global
Finance, http://www.gfmag.com/gdp-data-country-reports/195-qatar-gdp-country-report.html.
408 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL
establish a parliament.
15
The new permanent constitution of the State of Qatar was
nally completed in 2003 and was put into effect the following year.
Political and civic rights for all Qataris remain limited despite provisions within
the new constitution that promised, among other political reforms, an elected parliament.
The new constitution laid the ground for the establishment of an advisory council
comprised of 45 members (both male and female Qataris are eligible to be members),
two thirds of whom would be elected and one third of whom would be appointed direct-
ly by the emir. The 2003 constitution also extended voting rights to women. For the past
decade, there has been no substantive move forward to implement these constitutional
provisions and hold elections for the advisory council. In 2012, public statements made
by the erstwhile emir, Shaykh Hamad, indicated that parliamentary elections would be
held in 2013, however, these elections never took place.
16
While Shaykh Hamad was
unable or unwilling to follow through on his commitments to implementing political
reform, it is still too early to state how his son, the new emir, will address this issue.
While provisions within the constitution enshrine the rights of freedoms of ex-
pression and assembly, these rights are in practice heavily restricted either through
self-censorship or through state intrusion. Despite the limitations on political rights,
the country is known for its abiding stability and its socioeconomic successes. While
several other states in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have been concerned over
the ongoing political tensions in the broader region since early 2011, there have been
no reverberations or direct spillover effects felt in Qatar itself.
17
Since the 1970s, Qatar has been actively engaged in not only a state-building
process, but also in crafting a successful national identity for its citizenry. The modern
nation-states of the greater Middle East have often struggled to develop a cohesive and
viable national identity for their citizens, and state-building processes have been chal-
lenged by the intrusion of competing ethnic, tribal, and sectarian identities.
18
While
tribal identities are certainly woven into the sociocultural self-identication of many
Gulf citizens and are accepted by the GCC states as such, each ruling regime has also
devoted considerable attention since the early 1970s to developing a unique national
identity.
19
Given the nature of tribal and kinship relationships historically present in the
Persian Gulf, and the uid, migratory nature of peoples movements over the terrain, at
their time of independence the new nations had to struggle to assert both an imagined
and practical rule over the people and territories under their dominion.
Qataris, like other peoples across the GCC, have strong historical links and family
ties that transcend national borders. Prior to the creation of an independent Qatar, people
moved freely across the region where delineated international boundaries did not exist,
15. Gianluca Paolo Parolin, Generations of Gulf Constitutions: Paths and Perspectives, Consti-
tutional Reform and Political Participation in the Gulf, eds. Abdulhadi Khalaf and Giacomo Luciani
(Dubai: Gulf Research Center, 2006), p. 70.
16. Habib Toumi, Qatar to Hold Parliamentary Elections in 2013, Gulf News, November 1, 2011,
http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/qatar/qatar-to-hold-parliamentary-elections-in-2013-1.921954.
17. For further explanation on this point, please see Mehran Kamrava, Qatar: Small State Big
Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Universirty Press, 2013), pp. 4145.
18. Roger Owen, State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East, third edition
(London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 5559.
19. Neil Partrick, Nationalism in the Gulf States, LSE Kuwait Programme on Development,
Governance and Globalisation in the Gulf States Research Paper No. 5 (October 2009), pp. 912.
CITIZENSHIP IN QATAR M 409
conceptually or practically, as they do today. The establishment of modern states in the
region and the subsequent introduction of border controls, passports, visas, citizenship
rules, and marriage regulations, have all been means by which states have imposed rigid
demarcations of separation between each sovereign territory in an attempt to levy order
on the uid familial and tribal ties between people in the Gulf. In each of these countries,
these assertions of the states territorial sovereignty have evolved alongside state-driven
normative practices to create a culture of nationality. These efforts at nationality devel-
opment have been embedded in historical depth, not only to bind citizens to their state,
but also to add legitimacy and authenticity to the ruling regimes.
While GCC states all exhibit different levels of classic rentier state-society con-
ditions, in Qatar this is particularly so.
20
In rentier economies, state-citizen relation-
ships are deeply affected by the fact that such regimes have an independent source of
wealth not derived from their own citizenry (in the form of taxation). In such polities,
rulers disburse funds in order to build a cohesive, stable state, and buy themselves the
political consent of their people.
States disburse their rent-based earnings to their citizenry through various mecha-
nisms, sometimes as direct transfers but more often through indirect benets. In Qatar,
citizens benet not only from occasional government stipends, but also from guaran-
teed employment in the public sector, free education, training, healthcare, land grants,
subsidized housing, free electricity and water, and a host of other benets.
21
Such lar-
gesse places continuous strain on the nancial capacity of the state. Across the GCC,
as populations have expanded and the number of citizens with heightened expectations
has grown, regimes have struggled to maintain such forms of nancial generosity.
22

Limiting state municence is considered anathema to the rulers, as they fear losing
their citizens support and compliance should they not uphold their end of the bargain.
Qatars ruling elite, with their immense access to external rents and a small citizen
population, has been better placed than many of their neighbors to engage extensively
in distributional politics. With burgeoning funds from recent investments in a host of
natural gasrelated enterprises, Qatar has increasingly spent on its own citizenry over
the past decade, thereby ensuring the regimes continued legitimacy, popularity, and
stability, and further consolidating the rentier bargain between state and citizen. In
rentier societies like Qatar, where citizenship comes with such nancial privilege, path-
ways to citizenship tend to become necessarily more exclusionary.
In addition to the particular circumstances of being a high rent-earning state, the
population of Qatar reects another mark of distinction that also impacts the construc-
tion of and access to citizenship rights. Qatar hosts an astonishingly high number of
foreign residents in proportion to its own citizens. As of 2011, almost 87% of the total
20. For further information on rentierism, please see H. Mahdavy, The Patterns and Problems of
Economic Development in Rentier States: The Case of Iran, in Studies in the Economic History of
the Middle East: From the Rise of Islam to the Present Day, ed. M.A Cook (London: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1970); and, Hazem Beblawi, The Rentier State in the Arab World, in The Arab State, ed.,
Giacomo Luciani (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990).
21. Andrew Rathmell and Kirsten Schulze, Political Reform in the Gulf: The Case of Qatar,
Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 36, No. 4 (October 2000), p. 52.
22. F. Gregory Gause III, The Gulf Conundrum: Economic Change, Population Growth, and Po-
litical Stability in the GCC States, The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 1 (1997), p. 153.
410 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL
population of Qatar is made up of nonnationals, ranging from a comparatively smaller
number of highly skilled foreigners to very high numbers of migrant workers who
populate the lower skilled level jobs in construction and domestic work.
23
Most of the
migrant workers come to Qatar from developing countries in South Asia, Southeast
Asia, and Africa, and stay on short-term, employer-sponsored work contracts.
24
Over
the past decade, rising state revenues have led to ambitious development plans for the
country, all of which have been labor-intensive. This has resulted in a steady depen-
dence on inexpensive foreign labor, and despite policy makers continuously stating a
need to limit the number of foreigners present in the country, there is no sign of this
dependency abating. In addition, broader strategic development plans for the state
are embedded in the notion of creating a knowledge economy.
25
Efforts towards this
end have increased the need to bring in a range of skilled and highly skilled foreign
workers to populate jobs in higher education, scientic institutions, and the technol-
ogy sector. Hosting such a disproportionately large number of foreigners has certainly
impacted how the Qatari state and society view and guard their citizenship. There is a
great fear expressed by nationals that the presence of so many alien Others threatens
the cultural authenticity and social fabric of Qatar.
26
These fears have led to an across-
the-board agreement that migrants may only be allowed to spend limited periods of
time within the country, and the existing employee-sponsorship system is structured to
bind foreign workers to their employers for a predetermined contractual period. Even
those migrants who end up extending their contracts to work and live in Qatar for sev-
eral years have almost no pathways to citizenship available to them.
27
To simply divide peoples statuses in Qatar into citizen or noncitizen, or national
or temporary migrant, elides the fact that that there are many ways in which people take
up long-term residence within the state. In addition to citizens who enjoy access to rights
and privileges, and temporary migrants who reside within a realm of carefully balanced
exclusions or inclusions, are the people who fall into other categories of residence, and
whose experiences are less documented and whose status is less understood. There are
the categories of skilled and highly skilled migrants who populate a range of critical em-
ployment sectors in the country, many of whom remain within the state well beyond the
two-year limit, and whom the state has an active interest in retaining. Additionally, long-
term communities of Iranians, Pakistanis, Palestinians, Yemenis, and other Arabs have
inhabited the country for decades, and have served as the backbone in certain sectors of
public and private employment. While there is no ofcial or unofcial data available on
the number or composition of long-term residents, it is commonly understood that some
of these communities of migrants have resided in Qatar for several generations and can
23. Baldwin-Edwards, Labour Immigration and Labour Markets in the GCC Countries, p. 11.
24. Andrzej Kapiszewski, Arab Versus Asian Migrant Workers in the GCC Countries, United
Nations Expert Group Meeting on International Migration and Development in the Arab Region (May
2006); Steven D. Roper and Lilian A. Barria, Understanding Variations in Gulf Migration and Labor
Practices, Middle East Law and Governance, Vol. 6, No. 1 (March 2014), pp. 3252.
25. General Secretariat of Development Planning (GSDP), Qatar National Vision 2030
(Doha: GSDP, 2008).
26. Regan Doherty, Qatars Modern Future Rubs up against Conservative Traditions, Reuters, September
27, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/27/uk-qatar-modernism-idUSLNE88Q00D20120927.
27. Philippe Fargues, Immigration without Inclusion: Non-Nationals in Nation-Building in the
Gulf States, Asian and Pacic Migration Journal, Vol. 20, Nos. 3/4 (2011), p. 284.
CITIZENSHIP IN QATAR M 411
no longer be considered temporary. These communities may not be eligible under the
legal framework to press for citizenship, but they certainly can lay a moral claim to citi-
zenship. As scholars of citizenship have pointed out, the longer the period of residence,
the more legitimate become assertions of eligibility to some form of membership.
28
Qa-
tars citizenship laws have evolved in response to these long-standing communities, who
both ethnically and linguistically are closer to the native population, and who having
been in the country through second and third generations have placed legitimate pres-
sure on the state.
29
The addition of naturalization clauses reects the states awareness
not only of the presence of these communities, but also provides a pressure-valve to ease
potential censure for not allowing some pathways towards eventual citizenship.
CITIZENSHIP AS LEGAL STATUS IN QATAR
If all people have an equal right to participate in the communities where they live,
and have the same assured legal rights to obtain citizenship within the countries where
they reside, exclusion would not remain such a heavily debated area of citizenship stud-
ies. The legal and regulatory framework governing nationality access within a state can
either enable a greater number of people to become citizens, or strictly limit member-
ship through imposing stringent criteria of eligibility. To assess the conditions for inclu-
siveness or exclusiveness in Qatari citizenship, it is essential to rst look at the existing
nationality laws in order to understand how difcult or easy it is for people to become
citizens, and whether the state is working to limit or assist people in obtaining citizenship.
A host of different pieces of legislation governing nationality and citizenship have
been enacted in Qatar. At the broadest level, nationality law in Qatar is regulated by
Article 41 of the Constitution, which states the following: Qatari nationality and the
rules governing it shall be prescribed by law, and the same shall have the similar power
as that of the constitution.
30
This clause thus enables further specialized nationality
laws to be ratied, with the recognition that such laws are grounded in the Constitution.
Additional acts and laws on nationality have been instituted over time, including
Act 2 of 1961, which was amended by Act 19 of 1963 and further by Act 17 of 1966.
The 1961 act instituted an infamously restrictive nationality law that limited Qatari
citizenship to only those who could prove they were direct descendants of people liv-
ing in Qatar before 1930. Act 38 of 2005 is the most recent legal instrument in place
overriding previous legislation, and provides for nullication of the 1961 act and its
amendments.
31
The 2005 act has been in effect since January 2006. This act and its
provisions along with Article 41 of the Constitution are the most pertinent pieces of
legislation used to determine nationality and citizenship rights in Qatar.
Under current Qatari nationality laws, citizenship is only automatic for a person
who resided in Qatar prior to 1930 and has proof thereof. Jus soli, or the right of birth
28. Aleinikoff and Klusmeyer, Citizenship Policies for an Age of Migration, pp. 13.
29. For further details on Qatars political history, see Kamrava, Qatar, pp. 10711.
30. Permanent Constitution of the State of Qatar, available in English translation on the website of
Hukoomi: Qatar e-Government, at http://portal.www.gov.qa/wps/wcm/connect/5a5512804665e3afa5
4fb5fd2b4ab27a/Constitution+of+Qatar+EN.pdf?MOD=AJPERES.
31. State of Qatar, Law No. 38 of 2005 on the Acquisition of Qatari Nationality.
412 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL
within Qatar,
32
does not by itself confer citizenship. Citizenship is conferred through
jus sanguinis, meaning by parentage or by descent. Citizenship accorded through jus
soli has historically been considered to be more inclusive towards migrants or potential
new members of the population, whereas jus sanguinis is deemed to be more exclusive
and less welcoming.
33
As scholars of citizenship have noted, jus sanguinis legislation
is more common in states that are concerned with building an ethnocentric, cohesive
national identity.
34
Moreover, young nations that are still engaged in state-building pro-
cesses, that have historically experienced unstable or irregular borders, that have had
a colonial past, and that are concerned with preserving the ethnic legitimacy of their
populations, tend to adopt jus sanguinis models of citizenship.
35
Article 1 of the 2005 act determines who may be an automatic recipient of Qa-
tari nationality, or be considered as an original or native Qatari. This article limits the
potential recipients to the categories of: those who were settled in Qatar before 1930,
who subsequently maintained uninterrupted residence in Qatar and maintained their
citizenship until 1961; those who have proven themselves to be assets to the country,
who may not meet the above mentioned conditions but have been granted national-
ity through princely decree; individuals who lost their Qatari nationality, but had it
restored pursuant to provisions of law; and those born to a natural-born Qatari father
within Qatar or abroad.
Articles 810 of the 2005 act address nationality and citizenship issues for wom-
en in Qatar. Provisions include the granting of citizenship to foreign women who marry
Qatari men, the safeguarding the nationality rights of a naturalized Qatari female citi-
zen, even if she divorces her native Qatari spouse, and that a Qatari native woman does
not lose her citizenship status upon marrying a non-Qatari man. The 2005 act permits a
foreign woman who marries a Qatari man to obtain Qatari citizenship, but only through
written notication to the ministry of interior, and after she has been married for ve
years. In contrast, the 2005 act does not allow for the same right to a non-Qatari man
who has married a Qatari woman. There are no provisions for a Qatari woman to assist
her non-Qatari spouse in obtaining nationality other than through the route of natural-
ization and meeting the mentioned conditions for naturalization.
The nationality law does not provide Qatari women with the same inherent rights
as Qatari men in terms of passing nationality on to their children. The original 1961 act
did not provide for the possibility of any kind of citizenship for the children of Qatari
mothers who had married non-Qatari men. The 2005 act signies a marginal improve-
ment over prior laws, as it allows for the children of a Qatari woman to apply for
naturalization. However, the act still continues to discriminate against Qatari women
by prohibiting their automatic right to transfer citizenship to their children and spouses
Article 2 of the 2005 act is the most signicant development for Qatari citizen-
ship law, as it provides a mechanism by which one may become a naturalized Qatari
citizen. Prior legislation in Qatar allowed for naturalized citizenship only at the emirs
discretion, and there were no proscribed guidelines for making oneself eligible for the
32. For further explanation of jus soli and jus sanguinis, see James Brown Scott, Nationality: Jus Soli
or Jus Sanguinis, The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 24, No. 1 (January 1930), pp. 5864.
33. Aleinikoff and Klusmeyer, Citizenship Policies for the Age of Migration, 12.
34. Bertocchi and Strozzi, Citizenship Laws and International Migration, p. 10
35. Bertocchi and Strozzi, Citizenship Laws and International Migration, p. 18.
CITIZENSHIP IN QATAR M 413
acquiring of Qatari nationality. While Article 2 continues to ensure that citizenship may
only be legally conferred to a non-Qatari national by a princely decree, it does provide
a process by which one might apply to the emir for naturalization. While this article
has been a great step towards opening up Qatari citizenship, there are numerous condi-
tions in place which must be met for an applicant to be considered for naturalization.
The applicant must have resided in Qatar for 25 successive years, and must have not
resided outside Qatar for more than two consecutive months during any one of those
25 years. The applicant must have been legally resident for the duration, must have a
sufcient means of income generation, must have maintained a good reputation, must
have demonstrated good behavior, must not have committed any criminal act or act of
moral turpitude, and must have a fair command of the Arabic language.
In addition, Article 2 states that, regarding granting naturalization, priority should
be given to those applicants who are foundlings, children of naturalized Qatari men,
and children of Qatari mothers. It is not claried what this prioritization means in prac-
tice, as there are no stipulations stating that certain conditions may be exempted for
these prioritized candidates for naturalization.
36
The act, as such, does not specically
state that the children of a naturalized Qatari male citizen will automatically acquire
native nationality, even if those children are born in Qatar. Given that the children of
naturalized Qatari men are listed as being a prioritized category, the implication is that
these children will still have to apply for citizenship. The act also does not recognize
a Qatari womans children as being automatically entitled to Qatari citizenship. While
a child born to a Qatari father is legally entitled to citizenship upon birth, regardless
of his or her country of birth, this is not true for children born to a Qatari mother. If
a Qatari woman marries a non-Qatari her children are not automatically entitled to
nationality, but will still be required to meet the conditions set out in Article 2 (i.e.,
a 25-successive-year stay in Qatar, a legal means of livelihood, good reputation and
behavior, and good command of Arabic). There are no provisions within the act for
children born out of wedlock. Article 3 provides a mechanism for widows or children
of Qatari male nationals to apply for citizenship, if such nationality was not conferred
before his death. Further articles under this act provide for various means by which the
emir may confer citizenship directly.
Further articles in the act relate to the grounds on which nationality can be re-
voked. Articles 1214 provide justications for the withdrawal of nationality from
naturalized citizens. Some of the conditions listed for nationality withdrawal are: if
a naturalized citizen was granted citizenship based on false statements or fraud; if a
naturalized citizen is convicted of a crime, felony, or an act of moral turpitude; if a
naturalized citizen is removed from his occupation and accused of fraud; and if a natu-
ralized citizen is not resident in Qatar for longer than a year. Additionally, Article 15 of
the 2005 act states that naturalized Qataris may not hold any legislative position until
ten years have passed since they became citizens. Article 16 states that naturalized Qa-
taris may not work for the public sector for the rst ve years after becoming citizens.
Finally, Act 38 allows a maximum of 50 noncitizen residents per year to be granted
citizenship through the naturalization process.
36. The assumption is that this prioritization is related only to the quota of a maximum of 50 non-
citizens a year who can be naturalized under the 2005 act.
414 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL
FRAMING EXCLUSION
A review of existing laws in Qatar shows that rights to nationality are heavily
guarded, and the stringent conditions that frame Qatari citizenship are highly exclusive.
The very rst article of Act 38, concerning determination of original Qatari national-
ity, requires almost-unattainable criteria. Requiring proof of continuous settlement in
Qatar from 1930 to 1961 is problematic, as Qatar had no border controls for overseeing
admittance and residence until the early 1970s. Proving ones Qatari origins in the rst
instance is thus an ambiguous matter, and places a great deal of power and leverage in
the hands of those administering and implementing nationality laws.
Qatari nationality law currently draws distinctions between different tiers of citi-
zenship, so that those members who are original or native Qataris are entitled to more
rights of citizenship than are those who acquire citizenship through naturalization.
There is a difference between original citizens and naturalized citizens both in terms of
how they are allowed to participate in the state, and also in terms of their right to access
a host of state benets. Articles within the Act state that naturalized Qataris do not have
the right to serve in public ofce until ten years have passed since their naturalization,
and are not permitted to work in the public sector until ve years have passed since
naturalization. In addition, naturalized citizens do not have the right to vote and to
stand for elections (though they can hold appointed positions), and have limitations on
their access to social and economic benets. The 2005 act regards the child of a Qatari-
naturalized man to be Qatari-naturalized, instead of native Qatari, even if the child is
born after the parent was naturalized. Furthermore, Article 12 of the 2005 act provides
for the means by which naturalized Qataris may have their nationality revoked. Natu-
ralized Qatari citizens are, both in essence and in law, second-class citizens who do
not enjoy full political rights and have limited socioeconomic rights. Additionally, this
second-class citizenship is actually inherited by the children of naturalized citizens and
passed down generationally.
Distinguishing between the political rights accorded to original citizens and natu-
ralized citizens, such as limitations on the right to vote and hold high ofce, is nor-
matively acceptable, and such limitations are imposed in many other countries.
37
Cur-
tailing economic and social rights and opportunities for naturalized citizens, however,
is considered more problematic and contravenes the global norms of naturalization.
Although patterns of discrimination in terms of access to economic and social rights in
Qatar may diverge from international models, the benets accrued through citizenship
within Qatar also diverge from the global norm. In Qatar, citizenship is embedded in
a host of social and economic rights as opposed to political ones, and from the states
perspective, imposing limitations on those rights may make most political sense.
Qatar is not unique in imposing stringent conditions on citizenship acquisition,
nor is it exceptional that some of the eligibility criteria present biases based on gender,
heritage, or linguistic and ethnic afliation. Citizenship in different countries has de-
37. Examples include the United States, which limits the presidency to natural-born citizens (Constitu-
tion of the United States, Article 2, Section 2; Amendment XII); and Taiwan, which imposes a ten-year
probationary period on naturalized citizens from mainland China becoming civil service employees. For
more details, see Sara L. Friedman, Marital Immigration and Graduated Citizenship: Post-Naturalization
Restrictions on Mainland Chinese Spouses in Taiwan, Pacic Affairs, Vol. 83, No. 1 (2010), pp. 7393.
CITIZENSHIP IN QATAR M 415
veloped within particular historical and social contexts, and discriminatory nationality
laws have reected the concerns or pressures faced by states and societies at different
junctures.
38
Different segments of populations have not all been situated in the same po-
sition vis--vis the state, and the creation of legal instruments differentiating between
categories of citizens is part of our historical past. Over time the normative concepts
of citizenship have evolved to challenge the idea that a nation-state has the right to
legislate particular sets of entitlements or rights for different categories of nationals.
Thus, for example, clear discrimination on the basis of gender or race is now largely
considered to be unacceptable in most countries.
While in Qatar, these exclusive notions of citizenship originate from historical
challenges of managing porous borders and nomadic movements, the continuation of
exclusiveness several decades on reects more contemporary concerns. Qatars most
recent experiences of managing peoples movements are visible in the large ows of
labor migrants to the country. With a development boom that has brought an additional
million nonnationals into the country over the past eight years, the State of Qatars in-
terest in guarding citizenship as an exclusive domain is hardly surprising. In addition,
over time Qatari citizenship rights have translated into ever-increasing nancial and
economic rights, which makes citizenship highly costly to the state.
THE HIGH COST OF QATARI CITIZENSHIP
The Qatari state spends extensively and deliberately on its own citizens. From
providing nationals with lucrative public sector jobs, to providing multiple housing
benets, to ensuring access to a full range of social sector benets in education and
health care, to generous pension and unemployment allowances, the Qatari government
spends a great deal of money to ensure that its people feel well taken care of. Regard-
less of whether these are strategic, politically motivated expenditures on the part of a
regime seeking to buy loyalty from its citizens, or whether such decisions arise more
out of a push for modernization and a desire to ensure a measure of greater equity and
economic success for all Qataris, the increasing economic cost of citizenship has cer-
tainly placed a heavy nancial burden upon the state.
The highest nancial costs placed upon the state most likely result from the high
cost of providing public sector employment for nationals. Despite the increasing policy
statements from Qatari government ofcials stressing that a greater number of Qataris
need to be employed in the private sector, currently by far the largest numbers of na-
tionals are working for the state. Out of the 85,187 Qataris economically active and en-
gaged in the labor market, 55,170 work directly for the government, while an additional
9,017 work for a government-sponsored company or corporation. A mere 6,279 Qatari
citizens are identied as working in the private sector.
39
The Qatar Human Resources Law Number 8 of 2009 provides detailed stipula-
tions for hiring practices for the public sector, sets a structure for salaries and assorted
benets to be accrued through public sector employment, and designates the categories
38. Linda K. Kerber, The Meanings of Citizenship, The Journal of American History, Vol. 84,
No. 3 (December 1997), p. 839.
39. QSA, Labor Force Sample Survey 2011.
416 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL
of employees that are to be prioritized in the hiring process. Priority for hiring purposes
must be given to Qataris, followed by the children of a Qatari married to a non-Qatari,
followed by citizens of other GCC countries, then by citizens of non-GCC Arab states,
and nally by other nationalities.
40
The Human Resources Law delineates a salary structure in accordance with
13 different grades of public sector employment, and also sets allowances and ben-
ets in accordance with the same grades. For the lowest-grade jobs the monthly
salary band ranges from QAR (Qatari riyals) 2,2003,000 (US $604824), for the
mid-level grades the monthly salary band ranges from QAR 8,00010,000 (US
$2,1982,747), and for the high-level grades, the monthly salary band ranges from
QAR 17,00025,000 (US $4,6706,868). In addition, for those employed above
the highest graded category, such as in the positions of undersecretary or assistant
undersecretary at a ministry, the monthly salary is set to a maximum of QAR 37,000
(US $10,164) and QAR 28,000 (US $7,692), respectively.
41
Salaries for nationals
employed at the ministerial level are not provided in the law. While corroborative
data is absent, the assumption is that Qataris do not populate the lowest three or
four tiers of public sector employment. In addition to setting the monthly salary
levels, the human resources law species a number of nancial allowances for all
government employees. Article 26 provides a monthly social increment (ilawa
ijtimaiyya shahriyya) that ranges from QAR 1,500 to 2,500 (US $412687) for
single employees and from QAR 3,000 to 4,000 (US $8241,099) for married em-
ployees. Article 27 provides a monthly housing allowance, which ranges from QAR
1,500 to 3,500 (US $412962) for unmarried employees and from QAR 3,000 to
6,000 (US $8241,648) for married employees. Article 27 claries that that does
not preclude employees from beneting from the separate Qatari laws on housing.
Article 29 provides for a transportation allowance, Article 45 provides for a commu-
nications allowance, and Article 31 even provides for a furniture allowance, a lump-
sum payment provided to a public sector employee only once, which can amount to
as much as QAR 50,000 (US $13,736).
42
Central to the structure of social welfare benets provided to Qatari citizens is the
system of housing allotments. Governed principally through the Housing System Law
2 of 2007 and a number of additional pieces of legislation, primarily a host of Coun-
cil of Ministers resolutions, all Qataris have rights to government-sponsored housing.
These housing laws specically provide all eligible Qataris with a plot of land at no
personal cost and with assistance in obtaining a loan for building a home on that land.
All Qatari male citizens above the age of 22 are eligible to benet from the housing
system.
43
If eligible beneciaries wish to not receive the housing allotment in the shape
of a plot of land, they can instead receive a cash amount and use it to directly purchase
a home. In this case a beneciary will receive QAR 800,000 (US $219,780) for the
purpose of purchasing a home.
44
40. State of Qatar, Law No. 8 of Year 2009 on the Promulgation of the Human Resources
Management Law.
41. State of Qatar, Law No. 8 of 2009, Schedule 1.
42. State of Qatar, Law No. 8 of 2009.
43. State of Qatar, Housing System Law No. 2 of 2007, Article 6.
44. State of Qatar, Council of Ministers Resolution No. 14 of 2008, Article 1.
CITIZENSHIP IN QATAR M 417
The Qatari state has also, in recent years, substantially increased its spending
on social services, to ensure broad improvements in the standards of health care and
education available to the public. In 2011, Qatar spent over US $2.6 billion on health
care, 77.5% of which was funded by the Qatari government, primarily through its Su-
preme Council of Health.
45
In ten years, Qatars annual expenditure on health care has
increased vefold, and in the coming years it is expected that Qatar will continue to in-
vest heavily in the health-care sector, both through investment in infrastructural devel-
opments and service delivery.
46
According to the World Health Organization (WHO),
Qatar is at the top of the list of GCC states for per capita health expenditure.
47
These
investments are in line with the policy articulated in Qatars National Development
Strategy, which stresses the governments commitment to improving education, health
care, and social protection for all Qatari citizens.
48
The Qatari public health service
provides free or highly subsidized healthcare to both citizen and noncitizen residents
of the state. In addition to access to free health care within Qatar, citizens may also opt
for medical treatment abroad that will be fully paid for by the government. Not only
will the state pay for the costs of medical care for citizens seeking overseas treatment,
but it will also cover the costs of travel and accommodation for the patients and their
families while they are receiving medical care overseas.
49
According to the National
Health Strategy of Qatar, treatment abroad is considered an intrinsic component of the
full health-care system available to all citizens.
50
Each year, an increasing number of
patients are being referred for treatment outside the country. Seeking treatment abroad
is not reserved for special cases that require medical services not available locally. In
fact, many of the cases are for nonemergency elective treatments.
51
For example, in
2011 the state spent over $328 million on overseas medical care for an undisclosed
number of citizens.
52
In the past, though, these overseas medical treatments have cost
the state as much as $144,000 per person on average.
Enhancing the populations access to high quality education, from the primary to
the tertiary level, has been one of Qatars key objectives over the last decade.
53
As part of
this effort, the state has invested heavily in the education system and in establishing insti-
45. Qatar Releases Health Spending Report, Qatar is Booming, June 22, 2011, http://www.
qatarisbooming.com/2011/06/22/qatar-releases-health-spending-report/, accessed October 25, 2012.
46. Marius, Qatars National Health Strategy, International Insurance News, April 13, 2011,
http://www.globalsurance.org/blog/qatar_25e2_2580_2599s-national-health-strategy-339720.html/.
47. World Health Organization (WHO), World Health Statistics 2011 (Geneva: WHO Press, 2011),
pp. 12837. General Secretariat, Supreme Council of Health (SCH), Qatar National Health Accounts
Report 2011: A Trend in New Classication (Doha: SCH, 2012), pp. 910.
48. General Secretariat for Development Planning (GSDP), Qatar National Development Strategy,
20112016: Toward Qatar National Vision 2030 (Doha: GSDP, 2011), p iii.
49. Habib Toumi, Qatar Spends 500m Qatari Riyals on Overseas Health Care, Gulf News, April 5, 2011,
http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/qatar/qatar-spent-500m-qatari-riyals-on-overseas-health-care-1.787714.
50. National Health Strategy (Qatar) ofcial website, http://www.nhsq.info.
51. Toumi, Qatar Spends 500m Qatari Riyals on Overseas Health Care.
52. Concern over Huge Overseas Health Bill, The Peninsula (Qatar), December 11, 2012, http://
thepeninsulaqatar.com/news/qatar/217591/concern-over-huge-overseas-health-bill.
53. Dominic J. Brewer et al., Education for a New Era: Design and Implementation of K12 Edu-
cation Reform in Qatar, (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2007).
418 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL
tutions for supporting human capacity development.
54
Expenditure on education has been
increasing every year, and currently stands at ve percent of GDP.
55
Improving opportu-
nities for tertiary education have included expanding the Qatar Foundations Education
City campus and reforming Qatar University (QU). Much of Qatars expenditure has re-
cently been on capital investment due to the increasing population and the need for more
schools. Excluding the costs of infrastructure, in 2009/10, the Qatari government spent
QAR 24,500 (US $6,731) per student in primary school, QAR 30,500 (US $8,379) per
student enrolled in lower secondary/preparatory school, and QAR 39,000 (US $10,714)
per student enrolled in secondary school.
56
For domestic tertiary education, Qatar pro-
vides its citizens with either the opportunity to study at QU or at one of the eight branch
campuses of international universities located at Qatar Foundations Education City. Qa-
taris enrolled at QU are exempted from all tuition fees, while those opting for academic
programs at the Education City campuses have their tuition paid for by the state.
Through the Supreme Council of Education (SEC), the state organization respon-
sible for spearheading and administering all aspects of the Qatari educational system,
citizens who wish to complete undergraduate or graduate programs overseas have ac-
cess to full government scholarships which cover their tuition and living costs at any
one of the 675 universities approved by the SEC. In addition, special scholarship re-
cipients attending one of 30 select universities may be eligible for a nancial bonus.
Those who demonstrate high academic performance are rewarded in the form of annual
bonuses, which can amount to as much as QAR 50,000 (US $13,736) for undergradu-
ate students, QAR 200,000 (US $54,945) for masters students, and QAR 250,000 (US
$68,681) per year for PhD candidates.
57
The SEC documents do not stipulate exactly
what the student is expected to score to receive this bonus. The annual bonus is set
against generalized categories of academics grades of good, very good, and excellent.
While the Supreme Council of Education does not provide data or information on the
topic, there is anecdotal evidence that Qatari citizens also receive monthly allowances
while they are at university. These student salaries range from around US $1,000 per
month for students enrolled at universities within the state, to as much as three times
that for students who are studying overseas.
In addition to the benets of public sector salaries and allowances, as well as
social sector benets, citizens are also eligible for retirement income and generous
redundancy packages. Law 24 of 2003 governs the provision of social protection to re-
tired nationals and their families, with pension amounts determined on the basis of last
received salary. If a citizen working for the public sector is made redundant before re-
tirement age, he/she continues to be eligible for a substantial portion of his/her salary.
58
54. For further critical analysis of education in Qatar, see Brewer et al., Education for a New Era;
Cathleen Stasz, Eric R. Eide, and Francisco Martorell et al., Post-Secondary Education in Qatar:
Employer Demand, Student Choice, and Options for Policy (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2007); and ,
Joy S. Moiniet al., The Reform of Qatar University, (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2009).
55. Qatar National Development Strategy, 20112016, p. 50.
56. GSDP, Qatars Third Human Development Report: Expanding the Capacities of Qatari Youth;
Mainstreaming Young People in Development (Doha: GSDP, 2012), p. 32.
57. Scholarship Programs, Supreme Education Council ofcial website, http://www.sec.gov.qa/
en/secinstitutes/highereducationinstitute/ofces/pages/missionsandscholarships.aspxQatar 2012.
58. Claude Berrebi, Francisco Martorell, and Jeffery C. Tanner, Qatars Labor Markets at a Cru-
cial Crossroad, The Middle East Journal, Vol. 63, No. 3 (Autumn 2009), p. 438.
CITIZENSHIP IN QATAR M 419
CONCLUSION
For decades, both government authorities and the people of Qatar have main-
tained that their state is not a destination of immigration or a permanent settlement,
despite the fact that the bulk of the population has been and for the foreseeable future
will continue to be foreign. Qatari citizenship law has mirrored this fact, serving the
purpose of creating a protected domain for citizenship by injecting stringent criteria
of eligibility to ensure citizenship remains off-limits to foreign interlopers. The bulk
of migrants present in Qatar have come legally, not as asylum seekers or political or
economic refugees, but specically to meet the states development needs. Their pres-
ence is a factual and composite manifestation of the socioeconomic landscape, and no
matter how many restrictions or boundaries exist to limit their impact on the state it is
undeniable that impact it they do.
The predicament in which Qatar currently nds itself is that it recognizes that this
dependency on foreign labor will continue well into the future. Over the course of the
past eight years, the population has grown from 700,000 to over 1.8 million, and the
expectation is that, by 2017, the population will need to grow to 2.4 million in order to
meet projected labor market needs.
59
Anticipated development needs combined with a
segmentation of the labor market which places nationals in public sector jobs and non-
nationals in the private sector, means that for the foreseeable future Qatar will continue
to rely on importing labor regardless of the demographic imbalance this creates. Mul-
tiple cross-sectoral strategic policy and planning documents reect the awareness that
this demographic trend cannot be radically altered in the short term, and that in fact it
is to be anticipated and planned for.
60
While much ofcial commentary suggests that over time the Qatari labor mar-
ket will evolve towards a higher proportion of skilled workers and fewer low-skilled
workers (as it transitions to the knowledge economy), a number of policy documents
acknowledge that in the short term there will still be a need for many foreign workers
to occupy positions in construction and associated infrastructural development sectors.
The longer-term goal presented through the Qatar National Vision 2030 guiding policy
document seeks to change the qualitative nature of the foreign work force in Qatar, to
make it more appealing and attractive to the highly skilled, to perhaps seek ways of
retaining them for longer durations within the national labor market.
Currently in Qatar we see the migrant community characterized by persistent
disadvantages when compared with citizenry. A review of various policy statements
coming out of different sections of the Qatari government seems to present a consis-
tent message. Regarding the situation for the many unskilled, lower-income, foreign
workers present in the country, the articulated policy is to examine their conditions in
relation to labor law, rights protection, work environment, and living standards, and
seek ways of improving their work and living conditions and ensuring their rights.
61

59. The Demographic Prole of Qatar, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for
Western Asia ofcial website, http://www.escwa.un.org/popin/members/qatar.pdf.
60. GSDP, Qatars Third National Human Development Report; GSDP, Qatar National Develop-
ment Strategy, 20112016; and, Permanent Population Committee (PPC), Integrating Foreign Work-
ers Issues into Qatar Strategies and Policies, Population Studies Series No. 14 (December 2011).
61. PPC, Integrating Foreign Workers Issues into Qatar Strategies and Policies, pp. 3335.
420 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL
Region-wide, there has been acknowledgement that the sponsorship system and the
two-year contracts that bind workers need to be recongured, as they place too much
power directly in the hands of employers, and create a grave potential for the abuse
of workers rights. Processes and plans on how the kafala system is to be dismantled
are still evolving,
62
but it is quite clear that there is little inclination to provide low-
skill workers with opportunities to extend their period of residency for longer term
settlement. There is certainly no inclination to push the direction of the conversation
to include discussion on options for greater social integration or potential citizenship
for migrant workers. The lack of citizenship access and rights for temporary migrants
is defensible in principle, if it is accompanied by a greater provision of protection to
safeguard their legal status, secure their human rights, and ensure their greater mobility
within the labor market. The case for long-standing migrant communities is different,
and the opening of citizenship through naturalization clauses implies that the State of
Qatar also considers that some form of limited access must be considered.
While refraining from any discussion of possible pathways to long term resi-
dency for low skill migrants, these same policy documents raise the need to implement
changes for recruiting and retaining highly skilled foreign workers, especially if the
country is committed to building a knowledge based, diversied economy. The Perma-
nent Population Councils document released in 2011 states that in order to recruit and
preserve highly skilled foreign workers, the government must implement a program
that grants permanent residence to the highly skilled.
63
This strategic goal would have
to be aligned with serious considerations on what entitlements permanent residency, or
perhaps even citizenship access, would provide to new entrants.
The greater the redistributive structures within a welfare state, the less likely are
the chances for openings in citizenship laws for the inclusion of greater numbers of
migrants through naturalization. The existing nancial privileges of Qatari citizenship
combined with the existence of a dominant nonnational population have placed pres-
sure on the state and regime. In Qatar, citizenship has become the means by which the
state reserves valuable public goods for a select class of resident, conferring a range of
nancial benets only to its citizenry. This translates into a legal structure and frame-
work which places rigid controls over the rights to citizenship, and where openings are
made (such as through naturalization) they are done so cautiously. In its current shape,
expanding Qatari citizenship would be a drain on public resources and threaten the
existing social contract. Unless the economic benets of citizenship are vastly reduced,
it is likely that further efforts to broaden citizenship in Qatar will continue to produce
tiered and differentiated classes of citizens.
62. For more information on the kafala system which requires migrant laborers in Qatar and
other Gulf states to have an in-country sponsor (kal) see, Mehran Kamrava and Zahra Babar, eds.,
Migrant Labor in the Persian Gulf (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012).
63. PPC, Integrating Foreign Workers Issues into Qatar Strategies and Policies, pp. 3335.