Sarah S. Willen

Transnational Migration to Israel in Global Comparative Context explores both how and why the recent influx of approximately 200,000 non-Jewish migrants from dozens of countries across the globe has led state officials to declare in definitive terms that Israel "is not an immigration country" despite its unwavering commitment to welcoming unlimited numbers of "homeward-bound" Jewish immigrants. As this innovative volume illustrates, the arrival of these economically motivated migrants, about half of whom are defined by the state as "legal" and half as "illegal," has dramatically transformed the local labor economy of Israel/Palestine. Moreover, the presence of labor migrants, along with smaller groups of asylum seekers and victims of trafficking in women, has also generated a wide array of complicated legal, policy-related, cultural, and ideological questions and dilemmas for the Israeli state, local municipalities, and civil society.Taking both the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Israel's newfound embeddedness in globalizing labor markets as backdrop, this multidisciplinary collection investigates the causes as well as the consequences of these new waves of transnational migration to Israel both in comparison to other world regions and in terms of three interrelated levels of analysis: first, the micro-level of migrants' everyday experience; second, the meso-level of state and institutional policies and practices; and finally, the macro-level of global political economic trends and processes. Bringing together a dynamic array of pioneering senior researchers along with more junior scholars, the volume is distinctive not only in its incisive comparisons between Israel and other "destination countries," but also in its multifaceted analysis of how the Israeli migration regime has shaped, constrained, and on occasion been challenged by the arrival of these largely unanticipated migrants. Among the themes analyzed are the relationship between transnational migration processes and the simmering Israeli

Transnational Migration to Israel in Global Comparative Context

Michael M. J. Fischer

Byron J. Good

Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good

A Reader in Medical Anthropology: Theoretical Trajectories, Emergent Realities brings together articles from the key theoretical approaches in the field of medical anthropology as well as related science and technology studies. The editors’ comprehensive introductions evaluate the historical lineages of these approaches and their value in addressing critical problems associated with contemporary forms of illness experience and health care. Presents a key selection of both classic and new agenda-setting articles in medical anthropology Provides analytic and historical contextual introductions by leading figures in medical anthropology, medical sociology, and science and technology studies Critically reviews the contribution of medical anthropology to a new global health movement that is reshaping international health agendas

Theoretical Trajectories, Emergent Realities

A Reader in Medical Anthropology

Fighting for Dignity explores the impact of a mass deportation campaign on African and Asian migrant workers in Tel Aviv and their Israeli-born children. In this vivid ethnography, Sarah Willen shows how undocumented migrants struggle to craft meaningful, flourishing lives despite the exclusion and vulnerability they endure.

Migrant Lives at Israel's Margins

Fighting for Dignity

In Fighting for Dignity, Sarah S. Willen explores what happened when the Israeli government launched an aggressive deportation campaign targeting newly arrived migrants from countries as varied as Ghana and the Philippines, Nigeria, Colombia, and Ukraine. Although the campaign was billed as a solution to high unemployment, it had another goal as well: to promote an exclusionary vision of Israel as a Jewish state in which non-Jews have no place. The deportation campaign quickly devastated Tel Aviv's migrant communities and set the stage for even more aggressive antimigrant and antirefugee policies in the years to come. Fighting for Dignity traces the roots of this deportation campaign in Israeli history and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and shows how policies that illegalize and criminalize migrants wreak havoc in their lives, endanger their health, and curtail the human capacity to flourish. Children born to migrant parents are especially vulnerable to developmental and psychosocial risks. Drawing on nearly two decades of ethnographic engagement in homes and in churches, medical offices, advocacy organizations, and public spaces, Willen shows how migrants struggle to craft meaningful, flourishing lives despite the exclusions and vulnerabilities they endure. To complement their perspectives, she introduces Israeli activists who reject their government's exclusionary agenda and strive to build bridges across difference, repair violations of migrants' dignity, and resist policies that violate their own moral convictions. Willen's vivid and unflinching ethnography challenges us to reconsider our understandings of global migration, human rights, the Middle East— and even dignity itself.

Sarah S. Willen

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