Being Young, Male and Saudi: Identity and Politics in a Globalised Kingdom

"While Menoret focuses on the subculture of relatively deprived young men who use joyriding as a way of resistance, Thompson focuses on high achievers. Thompson works at one of the élite universities in Saudi Arabia, the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals. He has access to a lot of men in his classes­—no women because there’s segregation in the universities—and he was able to conduct research by doing focus groups all over Saudi Arabia. His conclusions are about this youth cohort who have become important in the political rhetoric of the leadership. When Mohammed bin Salman came to power in 2017, he immediately addressed the youth and depicted himself as young like them, determined to help them achieve their potential, to create an entrepreneurial culture, to help turn them into active workers and offer them jobs. Thompson looks at this cohort that has been highlighted as the future of Saudi Arabia after oil—the human resource—and he tries to explain their views on a range of issues. For example, what they think about national identity and what it means to be a Saudi. The project gave a lot of young people the freedom to express their opinions and publicly doubt whether there really is a Saudi nationality or a Saudi nation. And they’re absolutely right. I see that linking up with the work I have done, in which I looked at three attempts at creating a nation, all completely different. At the beginning, with the establishment of the state, there was the religious nationalism of the Wahhabi movement, which was regarded as a homogenizing nationalism that would turn everybody into one pious nation. But that one pious nation is a very divisive ideology because it excludes the Shia and it excludes the Sunni Muslims in Hejaz because they are Sufi or have certain rituals that don’t conform to the Wahhabi tradition. That was the religious nationalism of the first phase. Then we come to the 1960s and we have pan-Islamism. The government deliberately promoted pan-Islamic sentiments and solidarity for specific political and diplomatic reasons and Saudis were told that they were Muslims and they should help Muslims everywhere and they should support Muslim causes. Then we come to the beginning of the 21st century and Mohammed bin Salman who wants to create a ‘Saudi Nation’. He is responding to or trying to engage with populist nationalism. Like ‘America First,’ we now have ‘Saudi Arabia First’. Thompson shows that people are ambivalent about this Saudi nationalism. They don’t know what it is. They have strong regional identities. They have strong tribal identities. Although now everybody lives in cities, which look homogeneous, in fact, they are very segmented. People live in pockets in the city. In Britain, where you live is determined by your income and by what you can afford. In Saudi Arabia you have, on top of that, tribal neighbourhoods. Thompson is very clear in his view that without the Crown Prince’s Vision 2030 succeeding, which means that they have to provide jobs for this cohort of young men—and women now—the future is going to be bleak. “ Girls of Riyadh seemed to provoke the realisation that Muslim women actually have a sexual life and they talk about it in very open ways among themselves.” One thing Thompson doesn’t explain is why so many young Saudi men are actually leaving the country and applying for asylum abroad. He doesn’t talk about that and how, since Muhammad bin Salman came to power, there has been a 380 per cent increase in the number of asylumseekers and refugees leaving the country. On the basis of freedom of speech and as a result of repression, which has increased incredibly since Salman became king in 2015. Some of these young asylumseekers had been on government scholarships to study abroad in Canada, the US or Britain, but they move from being students to asking for asylum simply because they have engaged with what was going on in the Arab world in 2011 or they have encouraged protests or supported protests in Saudi Arabia and outside."