https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1813-8521
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ABSTRACT
This article unpacks the making of immigrant policies in ordinary cities from the point of view of the various actors involved in it. Based on ethnographic work conducted in Israeli cities located away from the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem axis, yet involved since the establishment of the State of Israel in the welcoming of Jewish immigrants, it focuses on the actors’ intentions and actions producing new scalar arrangements for the purpose of newcomers’ settlement. Data gathered during observations, participation in activities and encounters with key actors were mobilized to produce abstract visualization of social networks. These visuals and their analysis inform the rescaling of immigrant policies, and of statehood: far from gaining autonomy and forming policies that are disengaging from national policies, actors in these peripheral cities are still dependent on the central administration to carry out their activities, limiting the possibility to produce alternative immigrant integration paths.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Fieldwork was carried out during my PhD programme. For a more extensive analysis of the data, see my doctoral dissertation (Desille, Citation2017), archived at the University of Poitiers, France, or online at https://theses.fr. I am also grateful to my colleagues Franz Buhr, Jean-Charles Khalifa, Thomas Lacroix, Charlotte Räuchle and Ilona Van Breugel, as well as the anonymous reviewers, for their careful readings and comments.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Aliyah (pl. Aliyot) is the Hebrew term meaning ‘ascent’, which refers to Jewish immigration to Israel.
2 ‘The term used to designate immigrant incorporation policies.’
3 The 1950 Sharon Plan was not a statutory plan since at the time of the establishment of the state, there was no Israeli Planning Law. Moreover, it was exempt from the British-inherited 1936 Town Planning Ordinance since the British legal principles regarding planning and building activities assumed that the central state would not undergo large-scale public housing, such as the new settlements built to effectively receive new immigrants in Israel. This changed only in 1965 with the passage of the Planning and Building Law (Razin, Citation2015).
4 Based on the recommendations of economist Milton Friedmann, and following increased pressure from the United States, Israel adopted this plan to mitigate spiralling inflation, reduce public expenses and, in general, shift to a free-market economy (Kay, Citation2012). Even though the 1985 stabilization plan announced the intention of Israel to forgo its socialist, centralized past, it is still in a process of disengagement today.
5 NOP31 is the plan following the arrivals of immigrants from the former Soviet Union (850,000 between 1989 and 2000). It has led a metropolitan approach to development. The metropolitan approach has effectively sanctioned midsized cities in the periphery as residential areas, and emphasized the need to improve communication with the closest metropolitan areas: Tel Aviv, Jerusalem Beer Sheva or Haifa.
6 Group Aliyah is a programme in cooperation with MOIA, the Jewish Agency and municipalities. It implies that municipalities should send a plan, including projections. Cities that can show a steady flow of immigrants, as well as provide incentives, have a better chance of benefitting from the programme. In that sense, for a city such as Kiryat Shmona, it is almost impossible to obtain it, since the immigration flow has subsided a lot, and the local government does not have the funds to support part of the costs. Main beneficiaries are cities in the periphery and mixed cities.
7 Within the municipal organization, a municipal department (machlaka in Hebrew) benefits from a greater authority than a municipal unit (yechida in Hebrew).
8 Both the head of the Youth Center and the strategic planner have strongly supported candidate Avihai Shtern, a young lawyer born in Kiryat Shmona, who was elected in 2018.
9 Shavei Israel is a small organization working towards, according to their website (https://shavei.org/about-us/our-goals/), ‘actively reaching out to “lost Jews” in an effort to facilitate their return’.
10 Garin is the Hebrew term for ‘nucleus’. It refers to religious, messianic communities, which, subsequent to their mission to alleviate poverty and encourage community economic and social development in distressed towns, also engage in immigration issues.
11 The mayor and his two deputies belonged to an independent list. However, in the past, the mayor integrated the Likud party for national elections.
12 The Jewish Agency was founded in 1922. Through an expanded network of representatives, it used to reach out to Jewish communities and organize their immigration to Israel. Nowadays, it deals with processing immigration applications of Jewish candidates to immigration.
13 Equalization grants are transferred by the Ministry of Interior to cities where local taxes and subsidies are not sufficient to execute the ordinary budget.
14 When it comes to immigration-related activities at least, if anything, the involvement of the municipality has even lowered. The only mention on the official webpage is the existence of a committee, which has only two members: one council member in charge of social affairs and the former director of the youth centre.