Paradoxes of Migration Policy Rescaling-Local Migration Policies in Tel Aviv in Times of Restrictionism

Abstract

Scholarship of local migration policies identifies a variegated landscape of convergence and divergence between governance scales in times of restrictionism but pays less attention to the simultaneous dynamics of convergence and divergence that policy rescaling takes within a single national-local space. Arguing that cross-scale compliance and challenge can coexist, I examine how Israeli restrictive policies affect the policy frames that local actors in Tel-Aviv mobilize for incorporating migrants and their institutional relations with national actors. Unbundling discursive and material dimensions of rescaling reveals unexpected combinations of convergence and divergence and its contradictions as a political process of contestation and negotiation.

Keywords:

• Local migration policies
• rescaling
• precarious migrants
• emergency
• restrictionism
• Tel Aviv

Notes

1 In April 2020, the Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional (Haaretz, April 23, 2020).

2 I conducted interviews with representatives from the following areas: in/formal education (12); social services (5); legal aid, health and migrant advocacy NGOs (6); and community organizations (3).

3 Unitaf provides professional training and supervision to migrant women who run day-cares for migrant toddlers in free-rent municipal facilities.

4 On the multiple uses and meanings of emergency frames, see Anderson and Adey (2012); Fassin and Pandolfi (2010).

5 Until its expansion, Unitaf served 350 of the estimated 2,500 migrant infants aged 0-3 in Tel-Aviv. Unitaf currently serves 1,500 children and has expanded to other localities.