Public Community Work in Neighborhoods with Both Citizen and Asylum-Seeking Residents: South Tel Aviv as a Study Case

Abstract

This study offers insight into the moral deliberations of public sector community workers (PCWs), who operate in the super-diverse neighborhoods of South Tel Aviv, which are home to similar numbers of citizen and asylum-seeker residents. Two questions were central to our examination: How do PCWs decide which populations and residents constitute the “local communities” that deserve their support; and how humanitarian considerations may intersect with contestation over “community” and “locality” in PCWs’ work. The study’s findings, based on interviews with PCWs, illustrate what happens when community work is positioned as a “public” service in a deeply divisive political context.

Keywords:

• Asylum-seekers
• community work
• humanitarianism
• Israel
• localness

Notes

1 As the designation refugee’ is used to describe people whose status as refugees has been officially recognized, and in order to emphasize the problematic handling of pleas for asylum, these communities will be referred to throughout this article as ‘asylum-seekers’. This term is also considered the most accurate when discussing Israeli national policy toward them, and is frequently cited by services aiding them (ASSAF, 2021) (https://assaf.org.il).

2 Research shows that many of them deal with long-term consequences of severe trauma (Nakash et al., 2017; Yuval et al., 2017). Also once in Israel, their hardships are apparent; among them are many women who raise their children with no partner or support systems, victims of domestic violence, people in deep poverty, chronically ill individuals, and people with unproperly healed injuries and physical disabilities (ASSAF, 2021).

3 Most of the African asylum-seekers in Israel are either Christian or Muslim (ASSAF, 2021).

4 Israel was one of the most avid and active states to take part in the consolidation of the UN International Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, becoming one of its first signatories in 1951. However, the guidelines of the convention have not been ratified by state legislation, and until 2011, Israel did not have an independent system of granting refuge subordinate to the Interior Ministry (Berman, 2012). In 2012, the 3rd Amendment to Israel’s Prevention of Infiltration Law-1954 was enacted, imposing severe punishments on Africans seeking asylum in Israel. After Israel’s Supreme Court deemed those sanctions disproportionate (Decision 7146/12), the legislation was replaced by practices of encouraging voluntary departure and limiting asylum-seekers’ earning capacity (Amir, 2015). Thus far, among thousands of applications submitted by Eritrean and Sudanese asylum-seekers, only a handful have been officially recognized as refugees by the State of Israel. To date, a staggering 15,000+ pleas for asylum made by Eritreans and Sudanese still await the state’s decision (ASSAF & PHRI, 2019).