From the "Fareej" to Metropolis" Qatar Social Capital Sirvey II

Abstract

Qatar faces a social and economic transformation today linked to its unique demographic composition. Understanding social interactions within and across its diverse subgroups is critical for understanding and managing this transformation. In its second wave of "From Fareej to Metropolis: A Social Capital Survey of Qatar II", we set out to describe those interactions and to compare them to the findings from the 2011 first wave survey. To achieve this goal, we draw on the concept of social capital, which refers to the sum of correlation indicators between the members of the same community, whether at the level of family and personal relationships, between different groups in the community, or the trust in institutions and public services. 2 Numerous studies support the hypothesis that there is a link between the increase of social capital in a certain community and its prosperity, including the work by Robert Putnam3 on Italian south and north provinces, in which he makes a link between the prosperity of the north and the increase of social capital indicators therein. This executive report presents a comparison between selected findings from the 2011 and 2015 waves of "From Fareej to Metropolis: A Social Capital Survey of Qatar.” The report is organized according to the various social capital literatures into bridging, bonding, and institutional social capital. 4 Bonding indicators examine the relationship between members of the same group and family and personal relationships, while bridging social capital indicators explore the relationship and communication between various groups. Finally, the third section presents the results of the institutional social capital indicators, which examine the attitudes of Qataris and white-collar expats towards government services, media sources, and their participation in charity and volunteer work. The report concludes that social capital in Qatar is still high in terms of within-group bonding relationships. It also indicates a significant increase in the indicators of trust among Qataris and white-collar workers in particular, while the percentage remained stable for the blue-collar workers as compared to the previous wave of the study. Last section of the study notes a rise in confidence among Qataris and white-collar workers in government agencies and services, and in unofficial sources of information such as majlis, the internet, and friends. It is also noted that there is no significant increase in the percentage of people participating in civil society institutions between the two waves of the study.