Foreign Workers, the Impact of a Non-Jewish Migration on Israeli Citizenship (original) (raw)
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Making room at the table: Incorporation of foreign workers in Israel
Policy and Society, 2010
In this article, we explore how foreign workers’ presence is redefining the identity borders of Israeli society and the challenges posed to Israeliness by the inclusion of first, 1.5 and second generation foreign workers in the Israeli polity. We explore how these migrants perceive life in Israel, their own and their children‘s identities, prospects for incorporation and permanence and intersections between Israeliness and Jewishness. To inform our analysis, we conducted interviews in winter 2010 with 22 foreign workers who are first generation; about half are parents of children in Israel. Our analysis reveals that foreign workers seek acceptance into the Israeli polity, especially for their children who have been socialized into Israeli life and that their potential inclusion has real implications for the understanding of what it means to be Israeli.▶ Foreign workers in Israel are challenging the identity borders of Israeli society, as an ethnonational state in transition. ▶ Foreign workers experience extreme isolation/invisibility, suffer from arbitrary treatment and seek holiness in Israel. ▶ Temporary visas and mistreatment have not precluded attachment and “Israeli” identity development. ▶ The children of foreign workers in Israel create cleavage between Israeliness and Jewishness.
In or Out – Migrant Workers in Israel: Boundaries of Israeli Citizenship
‘Globalisation’ and ‘global village’ are common idioms in social science literature. However, feelings of belonging and exclusion are as important now as before the ‘global age’. One of the most important embodiments of belonging is citizenship. The discourse about citizenship, rights, and obligations has long reaching ramifications for individuals and societies. Citizenship has been, and still is, used to demarcate members and non-members from the citizenship collective. In the Israeli case - due to the fragmented nature of Israeli society - the issue of inclusion and exclusion is critical to understanding the modern Israeli state and society. In this paper, we explore the parameters of the citizenship discourse and engage them to understand the Israeli citizenship discourses and the complexity of the case of migrant workers. We illustrate the points of contention by analyzing the migrant worker experience and comparing it to other socio-political examples from contemporary Israel.
Foreign Workers in Israel. How Ethno-Nationalism prevents Structures of Representation
The main principle the Israeli state relies upon when dealing with documented and undocumented foreign workers is non-involvement. This course of action reflects the restrictive character of Israeli migration regime toward non-Jews. In the first place, the aim is to prevent permanent settlement of foreign workers and therefore , their gradual recognition as residents of Israel. Within the framework of Israeli ethno-nationalism and its immanent dynamic of segregation, foreign workers constitute one isolated group among others. So far the labor migration regime is following ethno-national rules, the labor market can be regularly supplied with workers without challenging the Jewish character of the state. One can observe that recent dynamics in recruitment, such as Asianization, feminization as well as non-recruitment from Arab countries, are not posing a threat to ethno-nationalism but rather consolidate it.
The Immigration of Foreign Workers: a Mirror of Israel's Changing Identity (2001)
in Cath Danks, Paul Kennedy, Globalization and Identities: Reconstructing the Local, London : Palgrave, pp.161-174. , 2001
Like 50 many people arriving from the Paris-Lod night-flight, 1 was patiently waiting in line 5 to give my tourist card to the border officer before taking a tlight to Jerusalem. As a Frequent visitor to Israel, 1 was used to queuing and drowsing in front of the counters. But this lime, two events attracted my attention. Firstly, as we were dropped by the bus at the entrance to the terminal an unusual scene was occurring in a corner of the custolm hall. A young police offin'r was insistently questioning a very elegant man holding an attaché case. So far, there was nothing really astonishing except the faet that the latter was wearing a lovely bille bubll braided with gold. A second, no less surprising event soon followed which helped me to recoyer From the languor of waiting. Despite the fact that the travellers seemed tired, 1 could feel a c1amour of excitment growing behind me. Glancing quickly, 1 saw six or maybe seven young men of Asian origin queuing up. They were hastily threading their way towards the counters much to the growing annoyance of the 'patient ones', like me. Nevertheless, as the police officer saw the group, and as one of them raised an envelope, apparently containing a range of passports and documents, everything returnecl to tranqllill.ity and order. They crossed the checkpoint and entered Isra el. Very qllickly, these two events which broke the monotony of my passage through customs, awoke me to the realization that a new phenomenon \Vas affecting Israel: the immigration of foreign workers.
Labor Migration in the Public Eye: Attitudes Towards Labor Migrants in Israel
ZA-Information, 2000
Die Schwerpunkte dieses Artikels sind Einstellungen, Normen und Wertschätzung gegenüber Wanderarbeitern von außerhalb Israels sowie (2) die Abhängigkeit der Einstellungen von demografischen wie sozioökonomischen Merkmalen israelischer Bürger. Die Daten weisen darauf hin, daß Israelis deutlich negative Einstellungen gegenüber Arbeitsmigranten äußern. Diese werden in kultureller, sozialer und politischer Hinsicht ausgegrenzt. Die soziale Ausgrenzung manifestiert sich in sozialer Distanz und der Unterstützung diskriminierenden Verhaltens (besonders wenn es zu einem Eindringen in die Privatsphäre kommt). Darüber hinaus werden die Gastarbeiter häufig nicht nur als Konkurrenten auf dem Arbeitsmarkt gesehen, sondern auch als eine Bedrohung in anderen sozialen Bereichen wie Wohlstand, Ausbildung, Gesundheit und Wohnen. Steigender Wettbewerb um knappe Ressourcen führt zu einer größeren Fremdenfeindlichkeit. Die meisten Israelis scheinen Einwanderern soziale und politische Rechte vorenthalten zu wollen. Ein Teil der verwendeten Items dieser Untersuchung wurde aus dem ALLBUS 1996 übernommen.
Citizenship at work in the Israeli periphery: the case of Peri Ha’Galil
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2014
In this paper we examine a struggle waged by production line workers at a formerly state-owned factory located in Israel's northern periphery. Intially an attempt to prevent the closure of the privatized factory, it soon became an all-out struggle through which production line workers deployed their peripheral location and ethnoclass identities to make claims for and enact their citizenship (at work). Drawing on two years of ethnographic research, we argue that despite—or perhaps because of—years of persistent labor market reforms traditional industrial factories remain critical spaces for the constitution of citizenship in Israel. In contrast to the past, in which state-sponsored industrial employment created a perfect congruence between labor market participation and citizenship (‘I work therefore I am a citizen’), recent processes aimed at enhancing labor market flexibility have fundamentally altered these relations. Under constant threats of downsizing, precariatized industr...
City and society, 2015
Advocating research of the "ethnographic present," the article portrays the recent evolvement of two constituencies in Israeli urban society conceived as new socioeconomic-cultural and spatial social "banks": Jewish immigrants from Ethiopia residing in ethnically segregated urban neighborhoods; the gradual concentration in Tel Aviv's downtown neighborhoods of authorized and undocumented labor migrants from Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa, as well as asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan. It reports on the growing protest by local Israeli residents, the government's efforts to limit the presence of "uninvited strangers," as well as the active response of the unwelcome aliens. I posit that the emergence of these new ethnic enclaves converges with other critical changes in Israeli institutional life. Major transformations in the texture and tenets of Israeli citizenry, its spatial construction and national identity are steadily progressing.