‘We Are the Citizens of a Nation Called Lebanon’

Abstract

This article looks at how the confessional system of government in Lebanon creates limits in younger citizens’ professional opportunities. These limitations are not directly implemented by the government system, per se, as this article will show. Instead, it is through it that the sectarian identification amongst the older generations became what it is today, and how, in the case of Lebanon specifically, it indirectly led to the following of strict quotas that, instead of offering equal opportunities, created sectarian obstacles that could not be overcome. This article focuses on the youth of Lebanon, notably university students, portraying how in parallel to the limitations faced and frustrations expressed by the students, a new nationalistic identification is rising amongst them as they come to realisation with the issues of confessionalism as a political system.