Newcomers at the Israeli National Table: Transforming Urban Landscapes and the Texture of Citizenship (original) (raw)
Related papers
World Development, 2011
Ethnic relations between the Palestinian and Jewish communities in ethnically mixed towns in Israel are marked by class divides, political fragmentation, and perception of alienation vis-a-vis place and other. Analyzing patterns of communal identity politics, this article revisits the spatial history of Jaffa since 1948. Against theories of urban ethnocracy predicated on the convergence of state policies and capitalist accumulation, which in turn engender longstanding spatial segregation between Jews and Arabs and between new and old residents, I argue that it is precisely the indeterminate “contact zones” between communities and spaces that constitute the political and cultural realities in these cities. Proposing a relational reading of these spatial dynamics, this article shows that in contradistinction to the basic premise of the nation-state, in Jaffa as well as other mixed towns, the coupling between space and identity collapses. The concepts of “spatial heteronomy” and “stranger relations” are proposed to characterize the challenge raised by ethnically mixed towns to the Jewish state and to the ethnonational logic that guides it.
MULTICULTURALISM, NATIONALISM, AND THE POLITICS OF THE ISRAELI CITY
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2009
This article deals with the way in which Russian immigrants identify with the Israeli national project, highlighting the process through which this identification occurs and its effect on the urban context. Our main argument is that this identification has arisen through interrelated processes including the ideology of the Israeli state and the history of settlement, the Russian social constructs of ethnicity and power, and local policies through which the state and the private sector produce neighborhood space. More specifically, the article focuses on the ethnic relations and urban politics among Russian immigrants in the Jewish-Arab "mixed" city of Lod in Israel. Through critical examination of political declarations, media sources, and urban policy documents, it examines the processes of de-Arabization and Judaization and the culturalpolitical values that Russian immigrants hold in relation to nationalism, minority-majority relations, and civil rights as they knew in their homeland. It also explores the nationalist-economic conditions that shape the nexus between public policy and free market actors and advance the national project of "demographic engineering." [Key words: ethnic conflicts, identification, Russian immigrants, mixed cities.] IDENTITY, MIGRATION, AND THE CITY 437 punitive action against the illegal construction created a security threat in the heart of the state. 2 Although the court rejected the petition on the grounds of a technicality, we suggest that several sociospatial elements make this petition significant: the petitioners were Russian immigrants who have lived in Israel for less than a decade, and the neighborhood in which they reside, Ganey-Aviv, is built on land that up until recent years was agricultural land outside the municipal borders of Lod. In addition, Ganey-Aviv borders the Arab neighborhood of Pardes-Sanir, Lod's "dual city" , where there are hundreds of illegal housing units. These elements were the trigger for us to explore the way in which identification with the national project among immigrants is constructed in the urban arena. This notwithstanding, it should be noted that the Russian immigrants are seen as outsiders-insiders to the mainstream new society: 3 they are regarded as part of the dominant Jewish ethno-national group and in this sense serve demographic and national goals , but at the same time they face social and geographical exclusion ) that triggers the creation of Russian cultural enclaves .
Local immigrant policies in Israel: the paradox of autonomy
Territory, Politics and Governance, 2022
This article unpacks the making of immigrant policies in ordinary cities from the point of view of the various actors involved in it. Based on ethnographic work conducted in Israeli cities located away from the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem axis, yet involved since the establishment of the State of Israel in the welcoming of Jewish immigrants, it focuses on the actors' intentions and actions producing new scalar arrangements for the purpose of newcomers' settlement. Data gathered during observations, participation in activities and encounters with key actors were mobilized to produce abstract visualization of social networks. These visuals and their analysis inform the rescaling of immigrant policies, and of statehood: far from gaining autonomy and forming policies that are disengaging from national policies, actors in these peripheral cities are still dependent on the central administration to carry out their activities, limiting the possibility to produce alternative immigrant integration paths.
2007
One of the central issues in the study of urban politics today is the fact that many cities have become multicultural arenas. 1 The liberal viewpoint stresses the potential of the city-unlike other spaces-to offer many and equal opportunities for all residents regardless of religion, gender, or ethnic affiliation, 2 but the critical body of knowledge highlights the ways in which the city, although apparently released from the shackles of nation-and state-building projects, continues to reproduce existing power structures and is a stratifying place, maintaining patterns of discrimination, exclusion, and segregation. 3 This tension between the city as an enabling space versus the city as a reinforcer of socionational stratification is at the center of this article. We question the possibility of creating a multicultural urban space in societies that are based on strong national logic, as in the Israeli ethnocentric context. 4 Our focus on Israel is not an arbitrary decision. The study of cities in relation to multiculturalism has focused on global cities with a deep liberal legacy, overlooking the politics of cities in "peripheral" regions in which ethnonationalism forms social and spatial processes. The contribution of this article is to link the study of cities, both theoretically and methodologically, to the study of three disciplines that are often examined separately, namely, identity politics, ethnonational studies, and spatial planning. The article specifically discusses Ashdod, the fifth largest city in Israel, located thirtyfive kilometers south of Tel Aviv. Ashdod can be used as a discursive and tangible site that encapsulates many of the issues discussed in relation to multicultural cities, on one hand, and to many debates linked to ethnonational politics, on the other. Let us start the discussion with a manifesto from a municipal official that refers to Ashdod as a place where multiculturalism has been realized: [A]ny person in Israel can feel at home in the city-with his/her culture from the country of origin, mother tongue, and special community customs and lifestyle. Simultaneously, Ashdod is characterized by being a tolerant and open society, with harmony and good relations among of all its communities. 5 This description of ethnic relations in Ashdod suggests a situation in which "differentiated citizenship" 6 allows acceptance of "the other" as a participant in democratic society.
Identity, Migration, and the City: Russian Immigrants in Contested Urban Space in Israel
Urban Geography, 2007
This article deals with the way in which Russian immigrants identify with the Israeli national project, highlighting the process through which this identification occurs and its effect on the urban context. Our main argument is that this identification has arisen through interrelated processes including the ideology of the Israeli state and the history of settlement, the Russian social constructs of ethnicity and power, and local policies through which the state and the private sector produce neighborhood space. More specifically, the article focuses on the ethnic relations and urban politics among Russian immigrants in the Jewish-Arab "mixed" city of Lod in Israel. Through critical examination of political declarations, media sources, and urban policy documents, it examines the processes of de-Arabization and Judaization and the culturalpolitical values that Russian immigrants hold in relation to nationalism, minority-majority relations, and civil rights as they knew in their homeland. It also explores the nationalist-economic conditions that shape the nexus between public policy and free market actors and advance the national project of "demographic engineering." [Key words: ethnic conflicts, identification, Russian immigrants, mixed cities.] IDENTITY, MIGRATION, AND THE CITY 437 punitive action against the illegal construction created a security threat in the heart of the state. 2 Although the court rejected the petition on the grounds of a technicality, we suggest that several sociospatial elements make this petition significant: the petitioners were Russian immigrants who have lived in Israel for less than a decade, and the neighborhood in which they reside, Ganey-Aviv, is built on land that up until recent years was agricultural land outside the municipal borders of Lod. In addition, Ganey-Aviv borders the Arab neighborhood of Pardes-Sanir, Lod's "dual city" , where there are hundreds of illegal housing units. These elements were the trigger for us to explore the way in which identification with the national project among immigrants is constructed in the urban arena. This notwithstanding, it should be noted that the Russian immigrants are seen as outsiders-insiders to the mainstream new society: 3 they are regarded as part of the dominant Jewish ethno-national group and in this sense serve demographic and national goals , but at the same time they face social and geographical exclusion ) that triggers the creation of Russian cultural enclaves .
Immigration to Israel by Jews from Western countries has been growing over recent years. Jerusalem attracts more of these mainly religious immigrants than any other city in Israel, and many of them find their way to the Baka neighbourhood. These lifestyle/return migrants come to Israel for religious and ideological reasons, as well as their desire to finally belong to a place. Paradoxically, such belonging is only found, I shall claim, when living in a community of expatriates who share similar culture, background, beliefs and lifestyle. I shall focus on the aspects in which sociabilities of Anglos and French are being formed in Baka, through either real-life or virtual means. The Anglo and French ‘bubbles’ in Baka, although separate from each other, are both locally and spatially based. They are formed through people’s daily routes and fulfilling of needs and desires. People meet and communicate in synagogues, parks, shops, educational institutes, cultural events, Facebook contacts and more. I shall claim that these ‘bubbles’ are both functional and limiting. On the one hand they enable immigrants to find support in dealing with the difficulties of immigration and enjoy the unique lifestyle that a community of similar people together with the great benefits life in Israel has to offer them. On the other hand, these ‘bubbles’ keep intact the hybrid identity of migrants and make it harder for them to assimilate, they cause a complicated relationship between the Western immigrants and the wider Israeli community and they mark a border between belonging and being a stranger. While migrants gain a sense of belonging and become locals, they do so within the ‘bubble’. At the same time they remain strangers outside of it. Their relationships with Israelis and with the neighbourhood are determined by the ‘bubble’ from which they both see and are seen.