Orientalization, or sidewards assimilation of second-generation Russian-speaking migrants in Israel’s urban periphery

ABSTRACT

This article explores the assimilation of second-generation migrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) who grew up in Israel’s social and geographic urban periphery. Their upbringing in peripheral towns and neighborhoods exposed them almost exclusively to Mizrahim (Oriental Jews), a stigmatized minority group whose members make up the overwhelming majority in those locations. We argue that their interaction with members of this group resulted in an alternative process of assimilation, which we term Hitmazrehut (Orientalization). Children of migrants, who were unaware of the historical stigmatization of Mizrahim and their culture, conceived of Hitmazrehut as their only viable trajectory of assimilation into what they erroneously perceived as the Israeli mainstream. However, embracing Mizrahi socio-cultural practices, including consumption and production of ethnic culture, religious traditions and romantic partnerships, did not lead to their downward assimilation, as the model predicts. Rather, it allowed second-generation Russian-speaking migrants to fit in and attain social and economic mobility by assimilating sidewards, into the growing Mizrahi middle-class.

KEYWORDS:

• Israel
• urban periphery
• sidewards assimilation
• second-generation
• Russian-speaking migrants

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Children of migrants are those who migrated to Israel before the age of 12 (1.5 generation), and those born in Israel to immigrant parents (second-generation). For the sake of brevity, we use the term second-generation migrants for both groups.

2 Israel’s socio-geographic urban periphery is populated primarily by low-middle class minorities, including Mizrahi, Russian and Ethiopian Jews, as well as Arabs. While not an underclass per se, these communities constitute distinct ethno-class enclaves, in which migrant assimilation could be examined using the segmented assimilation model.

3 Idzinski (2014), who examined 1.5 generation Russian-speaking migrants in the Israeli periphery, argued that because of their upbringing in Mizrahi-dominated communities, they typically experienced downward assimilation.

4 She distinguishes between individual Ashkenazim, Jews whose families originated in Europe, and Ashkenaziness, which in contemporary Israel is a ‘[S]ocial category associated with Western culture and an elite social status’ (Sasson-Levy 2013:400).

5 A quarter of migrants settled in development towns because of their cheaper public housing stock (Gonen 1998). Development towns are small urban settlements founded by the state between 1951 and 1964 in the geographical periphery – mostly Negev and Galilee – and populated primarily by low-class Mizrahi migrants. Their channeling to isolated settlements, with limited socioeconomic opportunities, further impoverished the new residents, exacerbating inequalities with the more established, Ashkenazi population in Israel’s geographic core (Yiftachel 2000).

6 One interviewee was born in Israel to immigrant parents.

7 Traditionalists (Masortim) is a term describing Israeli Jews who self-identify as neither ‘Religious’ nor ‘Secular’.

8 The practices were often interwoven, but we disentangled them for analytical purposes.

9 Falafel and Hummus are widely considered Israel’s national dishes

10 A famous Israeli singer of Ashkenazi descent

11 According to Jewish Religious Laws (Halacha), only those born to Jewish mothers are considered Jews