Minority youth acculturation in third spaces: an ethnography of Arab-Palestinian high school students visiting the Israeli innovation sector

ABSTRACT

Processes of acculturation occur when there is a need to reconcile minority identity with the hegemonic majority culture. What acculturation strategies do minority students adopt in social contexts that are not dominated by either the minority or majority cultures? In order to address this question, this paper offers an ethnographic account of three classes of Arab-Palestinian minority high school students aged 15–17 over the course of 21 months in Israel before, during and after participation in a programme designed to increase understanding of and exposure to the innovation sector. I argue that this curricular programming, which exposes students to internationalisation, globalisation and multinationalism, constitutes a ‘third space’ that is distinct from both the Arab-Palestinian home/family context and the hegemony of Jewish-majority society in Israel. Within this third space, some Arab-Palestinian students adopt strategies of acculturation that are distinct from their strategies in mainstream Israeli society. The opportunity to partially circumvent or leave the context of Israeli society within third spaces facilitates this distinction. The paper accordingly develops a schema that links theories of acculturation to third space theory, and provides empirical examples of how third spaces can facilitate unique strategies of acculturation.

KEYWORDS:

• acculturation
• secondary education
• minority students
• Israel
• third space

Acknowledgments and funding details

I would like to thank my doctoral advisor, Elyakim Kislev, and my committee members, Michal Frenkel and Limor Samimian-Darash, for their guidance in the planning of this research. I would also like to thank Ben Kasstan and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and invaluable feedback on earlier versions of this paper. Finally, I am grateful to the Israel Institute for the awarding of a Doctoral Fellowship (grant numbers GL20314 and GL20475), and to the Federmann School of Public Policy for a doctoral scholarship that facilitated the completion of this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Refers to the Arab-Palestinian minority in Israel. Minority communities in Israel self-define their nationality in different ways according to context as combinations of Arab, Arab-Palestinian, Palestinian, Arab-Israeli or Israeli, amongst others. I use the term Arab-Palestinian throughout the paper in order to encompass as wide a range of populations as possible whilst minimising the risk of identity erasure (Furani and Rabinowitz 2011).

2 Pseudonyms are given to all schools, companies and research participants.

3 The city is referred to as Yafo in Hebrew, and Yaffa in Arabic. Except for in quotes, I use the English vernacular ‘Jaffa’.

4 Ironi is Hebrew for ‘municipal’. Many high schools in the municipality are named after a Hebrew letter. Ironi Samekh can be roughly translated from Hebrew as ‘Municipal School “S.”’.

5 Usually referred to by Jews as Har HaBayit, or the Temple Mount in Hebrew. Entitlement to Haram Al-Sharif/Har HaBayit is, for many Israelis and Palestinians, a highly sensitive issue.

6 A popular Israeli peanut snack.

7 A predominantly Arab-Palestinian city in northern Israel.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Israel Institute [Grant Numbers GL20314, GL20475].