Relocated ethnicities: how do national-cultural repertoires shape the ethnicities of migrants? Evidence from Israeli Mizrahim in Israel, the United States, and Germany

ABSTRACT

This article examines how national-cultural repertoires influence ethnic identities. The study focuses on Mizrahim (Israeli Jews originating from Arab countries) who achieved class and geographic mobility (or relocation) in three countries: Israel, the United States, and Germany. The findings of our qualitative interview-based study show that all the mobile Mizrahim report dissociation from the Israeli Mizrahiness, considered stigmatic and damaging to opportunities for mobility. At the same time, mobility and relocation into new cultural-national narratives in the U.S. and Germany facilitate new phenomenological foundations for this dissociation and make new content and meaning available for Mizrahi ethnic identities. Several factors are discussed: cultural-state origins of these creative ethnic identities (termed relocated ethnicity); the relationships between ethnic and class identity in the context of migration; and the tension between agentic choices and cultural-structural demands.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural repertoires
• national narratives
• ethnicity
• migration
• relocation
• mobility

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Ayelet Banai http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0577-1838

Notes

1 “Relocated ethnicity” follows frequent references to relocation by our interviewees. They used the term “relocation” to describe moving to a new country following a job opportunity (see also Benson and O'Reilly 2009).

2 The gender distribution of Israeli professionals in relocation is unknown. Our qualitative research indicates that men are more likely to relocate, due to barriers that women face in attaining positions of seniority in the relevant industries. Moreover, geographical mobility is seen as incompatible with socially dominant constructions of femininity and motherhood.