Agency of English-Speaking Migrant Women during the Pandemic in Israel

Abstract

This study is embedded within a distinct pro-migration incentivized ‘Law of Return’ migration policy in Israel, as it considers the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on migrant women, their agency, and proculturation. It features stories of migrant women during the COVID-19 pandemic, exploring their agency within the Individual-Socio-Ecological frame of reference of I-positions in the dialogical self theory. This qualitative study on English-speaking women in Israel (N = 39) is empirically grounded in lived experiences of meaning making, mothering, family dynamics, work, and access to healthcare under conditions of lockdown. The analysis of participants’ stories resulted in identifying six overarching themes relevant to migrant women: familial roles, mental labor, voicing resistance, mindfulness, intergenerational solidarity, and transnationalism. This study provides a construct clarification of agency, introducing three levels of agency: inward, social, and societal. In particular older migrant women may appeared to be losing agency during the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel, if the focus was solely on decision making and taking action. However, this study suggests that inward I-positions, in particular as related to mental labor, seemed to flourish during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many participants could engage in a more limited way on social and societal levels.

Keywords:

• I-positions
• mental labor
• social representations
• mindfulness
• transnationalism

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Kylie Hoke for the help in data categorization.

Author’s contributions

All authors contributed equally toward the study conception and design, data collection, analysis, and interpretation of data. The first author drafted the first version of the article and the other two authors revised it critically.

Compliance with ethical standards

The Research Ethics Committee of the University of Haifa has approved this study. The study was performed in accordance with the ethical standards as set forth in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual adult participants included in the study.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare they have no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to the fact that they contain personal information that could identify the women interviewed and compromise the anonymous character of their contributions. However, data are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The authors have no funding to disclose.