Public policy and identity

The debate over identity in general, and national identity specifically, has become the cornerstone of Qatar’s private and public debates recently.Identity is a topic that pertains to culture, economics, politics, language, education, and many other civic and official and unofficial domains. Most discussion, whether private or public, refers to the Qatari national identity as a fixed form of reference that supersedes spatial and temporal changes.It is represented as a homogenous construction, one that reflects a social and cultural cohesion and a unified society, upon which the stability and continuity of the society is dependent. Several factors considered threats to this “imagined” form of identity are identified; these include globalization and multiculturalism that entail a degree of openness to world cultures and, possibly, adaptation to and appropriation of new/foreign values and ways of living, as well as increasing numbers of immigrants, mixed marriages, and Western education, amongst other factors.