New Article: Willen, Debating Unauthorized Migrants’ Deservingness in Israel

Willen, Sarah S. “Lightning Rods in the Local Moral Economy: Debating Unauthorized Migrants’ Deservingness in Israel.” International Migration (early view).

 

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/imig.12173/abstract

 

 

Abstract

Localized debates about who unauthorized migrants are and what they do, or do not, deserve unfold in a culturally specific register that is deeply charged with emotion and moral valuation. Structuring such debates are vernacular discursive frames that emerge from, and reflect, a common “local moral economy.” Taking Israel as case study, this article examines six elements of the country’s local moral economy – biopolitical logic, historical memory, political emotion, popularized religion, an ideology of “fruitful multiplication,” and hasbara (“public diplomacy”/propaganda) – and explores their impact on public debates about unauthorized and irregular forms of migration. Here, as elsewhere, conventionalized distinctions that frame much migration scholarship – e.g. “economic” vs. “political” migrants, “migrant workers” vs. “refugees,” even the terms “authorized” and “unauthorized” themselves – bear but limited salience. Migration researchers who hope to influence local policy debates must recognize the weight and influence of local moral economies, and the chasms that divide vernacular from conventionalized frames. Achieving this sort of nuanced understanding is, at root, an ethnographic challenge.

 

 

New Article: Kemp and Raijman, A Meso-Level Analysis of Labor Trafficking in Israel

Kemp, Adriana and Rebeca Raijman. “Bringing in State Regulations, Private Brokers, and Local Employers: A Meso-Level Analysis of Labor Trafficking in Israel.” International Migration Review (early view).

 

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/imre.12109/abstract

 

Abstract

This article examines the intersection of state policies, private brokers and local employers that fuels trafficking practices and forced labor of legal labor migrants. Focusing on the Israeli case of labor migration, we offer a meso-level institutional analysis of the modes by which private brokers’s actions combine with state regulations and policies in creating labor trafficking. More specifically, we stress the active role official labor migration schemes play in the growth of a private brokerage sector driven by profit considerations and in the privatization of state capacities regarding migration control and management. Our analysis demonstrates how systemic features – and not necessarily or solely criminal activities – catalyze trafficking practices taking place first and foremost within the realm of legal migration.

Cite: Liebelt, Filipina Care Workers’ Aesthetic Formations in Israel

Liebelt, Claudia. "Consuming Pork, Parading the Virgin and Crafting Origami in Tel Aviv: Filipina Care Workers’ Aesthetic Formations in Israel." Ethnos – Online first, 25 pp.

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URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00141844.2012.655302

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Abstract

This article investigates the sensual participation of Filipina care workers in Israel, more specifically in the urban space of Tel Aviv. By creating a rich communal life, by parading icons of the Virgin Mary through the streets, and by crafting Origami paper swans that have conquered urban spaces in all sizes, shapes and colours, migrants have fashioned modes of aesthetic and sensual belonging in the city. Their popular aesthetics, I argue, is intricately linked to the ironic Americanisation of a post-colonial nation, as well as the gendered niche of care, which Filipinos in the global economy have come to occupy. Drawing on the concept of ‘aesthetic formation’, this article foregrounds the performative aspects and centrality of objects, appearances and the senses in migrants’ making of community. Filipinos’ aesthetic formations in diaspora speak of collective struggles as well as of the emergence of new subjectivities beyond ethnic or cultural identities.

Cite: Raijman, Exclusionist Attitudes towards Labour Migrants in Israel

Raijman, Rebeca. “Foreigners and Outsiders: Exclusionist Attitudes towards Labour Migrants in Israel.” International Migration. Early View (first published online: March 15, 2012). Details to follow.

 

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2435.2011.00719.x/abstract

 

Abstract

This paper examines theoretical propositions regarding the social mechanisms that produce hostility and discriminatory attitudes towards out-group populations. Specifically, we compare the effect of perceptions of socio-economic and national threats, social contact and prejudice on social distance expressed towards labour migrants. To do so, we examine exclusionary views held by majority and minority groups (Jews and Arabs) towards non-Jewish labour migrants in Israel. Data analysis is based on a survey of the adult Israeli population based on a stratified sample of 1,342 respondents, conducted in Israel in 2007. Altogether, our results show that Israelis (both Jews and Arabs) are resistant to accepting and integrating foreigners into Israeli society. Among Jews, this is because the incorporation of non-Jews challenges the definition of Israel as a Jewish state and poses a threat to the homogeneity of the nation. Among Arabs, this is probably due to threat and competition over resources. The meanings of the findings are discussed within the unique ethno-national context of Israeli society and in light of sociological theories on ethnic exclusionism.

Cite: Elias and Kemp, Non-Jewish Olim, Black Jews and Children of Migrant Workers in Israel

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Elias, Nelly and Adriana Kemp. "The New Second Generation: Non-Jewish Olim, Black Jews and Children of Migrant Workers in Israel." Israel Studies 15,1 (2010): 73-94.

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Abstract

This article offers an overview of the empirical research on the new second generations in the Israeli setting, while highlighting the sociological problématique emerging from the data. It summarizes key empirical findings on the second generation of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union, Ethiopia, and children of migrant workers, and it introduces new variables and theoretical angles that have recently emerged within the Israeli context of immigration, such as transnationalism and inequalities based on race, nationality, religion, and citizenship. We argue that by introducing these analytic parameters, the Israeli research agenda on immigrants’ second generation should expand beyond replication of the questions applied toward the massive immigration waves of the 1950s.

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URL: http://inscribe.iupress.org/doi/abs/10.2979/ISR.2010.15.1.73

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Keywords: Labor Migrants / Ovdim Zarim, Aliyah / Immigration to Israel, Racism, Law of Return / חוק השבות, Russian Immigrants / FSU Immigrants, Ethiopian Immigrants, Ethnic Divide, Jewish Identity, Israel: Religion, Who is a Jew / מיהו יהודי

Cite: Cohen, Migration Patterns to and from Israel

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Cohen, Yinon. "Migration Patterns to and from Israel." Contemporary Jewry 29,2 (2009): 115-125.

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Abstract:  Israel’s migration patterns have been conducive in several ways to the demographic success of Zionism and Israel since 1947. In addition to the decisive success with respect to the growth in the number of Jews in Israel, their proportion in the Israeli population, and the proportion of world Jewry residing in Israel, following the 1967 war Israel attracted immigrants of higher educational level than those arriving during the 1950s and 1960s. In addition, Israel has been successful in keeping emigration rates of Jews relatively low during most years, including the last decade. Moreover, the rate of return migration among Israeli-born Jewish emigrants has been relatively high and the returnees highly educated compared to non-returning emigrants. Finally, it seems that Israel has been quite successful in integrating into Israeli society non-Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Republics. However, this cannot be said about the non-Jewish labor migrants who arrived in Israel since the early 1990.

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URL: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1741573x0qt7qu24/

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Keywords:  Aliyah / Immigration to Israel, Emigration from Israel, Israel: Society, Russian Immigrants, Labor Migrants / Ovdim Zarim,  Immigrants’ skills, ינון כהן