In search of work: Palestinian women in Israel migrating to Beersheba

ABSTRACT

Internal migration among Palestinian citizens in Israel is limited by both internal and external obstacles. In recent years, however, it appears that numerous Palestinian women have migrated to Beersheba in search of work. This article is based on a qualitative research I conducted among Palestinian women in Israel who have moved south in an attempt to overcome economic and occupational hardship. Each found herself caring for her nuclear family in a place far from her extended family or that of her husband. These women confront and adapt to the experience of migration to a new environment, maintaining independent nuclear households despite separation from their family and community, and devoting themselves to building careers in new and unfamiliar surroundings. Such internal migration has implications affecting several aspects of life: It may lead to mobility that challenges Israel’s segregated and exclusionary spatial politics, while shaping new familial patterns and gender relations.

RÉSUMÉ

La migration interne des citoyens palestiniens en Israël est limitée par des obstacles internes et externes. Cependant, ces dernières années, il apparaît que de nombreuses femmes palestiniennes à la recherche d’un emploi, ont émigré à Beersheba. Cet article est basé sur une recherche qualitative que j'ai menée auprès de femmes palestiniennes en Israël, qui se sont déplacées vers le sud dans le but de surmonter leurs difficultés économiques et professionnelles. Ces femmes doivent s'occuper de leur famille nucléaire tout en étant éloignées géographiquement de leur famille élargie ou bien de celle de leur mari. Elles doivent s’adapter et faire face aux difficultés de la migration dans un nouvel environnement, maintenir la cellule familiale indépendante et ce malgré la séparation de leur famille et de leur communauté, tout en se consacrant parallèlement au développement de leur carrière dans un milieu nouveau et inconnu. Ces migrations internes ont des incidences sur plusieurs aspects de la vie : elles peuvent conduire à une mobilité remettant en question la politique d'exclusion et de ségrégation spatiale d'Israël tout en façonnant de nouveaux modèles familiaux et relations de genres.

KEYWORDS:

• Internal migration
• Palestinian women citizens of Israel
• Palestinian family
• family migration
• gender relations
• relocation

MOTS-CLÉS:

• migration interne
• Femmes Palestiniennes citoyennes d'Israël
• famille palestinienne
• migration familiale
• relations de genres
• déplacement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The percentage of Palestinians who are Israeli citizens and possess academic degrees rose from 7.2% in 2001 to 12.4% in 2011 (Liss-Ginsburg, 2013). In 2018, The percentage of Palestinians who are Israeli citizens and possess academic degrees rose to 17% (2019) (CfHE, 2019).

2 In 2012, the Arab population lived in 119 Arab localities and eight localities with mixed populations, while a few lived in Jewish localities (Gharrah, 2015).

3 The conventional definition of an urban locality in Israel is based solely on the population size criterion according to routine population estimators that the Central Bureau of Statistics drafts and updates from the Population Registry of the Israel Ministry of the Interior. The determining population size for transition from rural to urban locality is 2,000 persons (Cohen-Kastro, 2007). These definitions, however, do not take into account the complexity that transcends population size and do not differentiate between rural localities with urban features (e.g. population density, proximity to built-up areas, percentage of population engaged in non-agricultural occupations and the like) and urban localities with rural features in which the primary difference is population size only. Moreover, the definition of a locality as urban is likely to accord it certain benefits such that the decision to declare it so may be of a political nature. Consequently, in the case of Arab localities, such decisions overshadow population estimates. Indeed, claims Cohen-Kastro (2007), Arab localities in Israel have developed according to entirely different processes over the years that went by since the establishment of the State of Israel, in accordance with social, geographical, economic, and institutional limitations that are entirely different from those that shaped Jewish residential space.

4 The Triangle (Hebrew:המשולש, hameshulash; Arabic: المثلث , al-Muthallath), formerly referred to as the Little Triangle, is a concentration of Israeli Arab towns and villages adjacent to the Green Line, located in the eastern Sharon plain among the Samarian foothills. The term Triangle, originating during the British Mandate, is used to delineate the area populated by Palestinians bounded by Nablus, Jenin and Tulkarm.

5 Beersheba is a Jewish city located in the south of Israel (205,800 Jewish and Palestinian residents; NIIoI, 2018).

6 Numerous studies (Barakat, 1993; Layish, 1995) addressing the Palestinian family framework in Israel highlight the role of Arab-Muslim culture in preserving family patterns.

7 The term ‘patriarchy’ refers to different forms and sets of concrete constraints towards women. However, Kandiyoti (1988) emphasizes critically that it often evokes an overly monolithic conception of male dominance, which is treated at a level of abstraction that obfuscates rather than reveals the intimate inner workings of culturally and historically distinct arrangements between the genders. In any given society, it may exhibit variations according to class, caste, and ethnicity.

8 In 2015, the employment rate among PWCI aged 25–64 was 31%. This is still a very low rate compared with that of Jewish women (79.7%) and PCI men (74%). In that same year, the percentage of PWCI women employed involuntarily part-time out of all Arab women with part-time jobs was three times higher than the parallel rate among Jewish women (Mizrachi-Simon, 2016).

9 The cities are: Jerusalem, Akko, Haifa, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Ramla, Lod, Maalot-Tarshiha, and Nazareth Illit.

10 Among those with an academic education, almost half work in education, compared with 20% among Jews. About 61% (versus 37%) of those in the free or technical professions work in education (Mizrachi-Simon, 2016).

11 Different forms of patriarchy present women with distinct ‘rules of the game’. Women have to deal within a set of concrete constraints. The withdrawal of women from several expanses is institutionalized in various seclusion and exclusion practices (Kandiyoti, 1988). Despite the changes that Palestinian society in Israel has undergone in recent decades, the social order has remained patriarchal. Similarly, Kandiyoti (1988) claims that although domestication of women may be justified by the older forms of seclusion, it has definitely changed its character. In this context, based on my previous research, even though women are involved in the public sphere to gain higher education and earn money, they are still directed to prefer their place of residence or to stay around their community, their family, and their home in their leisure time.

12 The ‘gender contract’ is a cultural concept stipulating that normatively, women and men should live in joint family units, with pre-defined complementary roles. Within the couple unit, the man’s primary area of responsibility is creating income, whereas the woman’s is caring and emotional work. During the twentieth century, as women increasingly took on paid employment, the contract was amended and became more flexible, but still largely remained a concealed but powerful mediator in shaping women’s lives in the private and public spheres (Sa’ar, 2011).

13 In this research, I did not interview men, but from the women’s point of view, as it arose from the interviews I conducted, I did not hear about lack of cooperation between the spouses in relation to the relocation or to the family conduct later. However, during the research, I understood that there are families that split up: women who did not move with their families to the south but rather work there on a commuting basis, and others who live there for the duration of their workdays while their children and spouses remain in the north. The women explained it was due to the children’s education and their wish to keep them in the framework of Arab culture (language and tradition) and not due to changes in gender relations.

14 Only one participant was living in a Bedouin locality at the time of the interview because she had married a Bedouin man. Throughout the interview, however, she often mentioned that she planned to move to Beersheba soon.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tal Meler

Tal Meler is a senior lecturer in sociology and gender studies at the Zefat Academic College, Israel. Her PhD dissertation for the Program for Gender Studies at Bar-Ilan University deals with Palestinian single mothers in Israel. Her areas of specialization are the sociology of the family, Palestinian women in Israel and the Palestinian family in Israel, economic violence.