Transnational Migration to Israel in Global Comparative Context

Transnational Migration to Israel in Global Comparative Context explores both how and why the recent influx of approximately 200,000 non-Jewish migrants from dozens of countries across the globe has led state officials to declare in definitive terms that Israel "is not an immigration country" despite its unwavering commitment to welcoming unlimited numbers of "homeward-bound" Jewish immigrants. As this innovative volume illustrates, the arrival of these economically motivated migrants, about half of whom are defined by the state as "legal" and half as "illegal," has dramatically transformed the local labor economy of Israel/Palestine. Moreover, the presence of labor migrants, along with smaller groups of asylum seekers and victims of trafficking in women, has also generated a wide array of complicated legal, policy-related, cultural, and ideological questions and dilemmas for the Israeli state, local municipalities, and civil society.Taking both the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Israel's newfound embeddedness in globalizing labor markets as backdrop, this multidisciplinary collection investigates the causes as well as the consequences of these new waves of transnational migration to Israel both in comparison to other world regions and in terms of three interrelated levels of analysis: first, the micro-level of migrants' everyday experience; second, the meso-level of state and institutional policies and practices; and finally, the macro-level of global political economic trends and processes. Bringing together a dynamic array of pioneering senior researchers along with more junior scholars, the volume is distinctive not only in its incisive comparisons between Israel and other "destination countries," but also in its multifaceted analysis of how the Israeli migration regime has shaped, constrained, and on occasion been challenged by the arrival of these largely unanticipated migrants. Among the themes analyzed are the relationship between transnational migration processes and the simmering Israeli

Sarah Willen is a research rellow in the NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) Postdoctoral Training Program in Culture and Mental Health Services, Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School.