Paper short abstract:

As elsewhere in the diaspora, Filipino migrants recruited for domestic work in Israel have created a space of their own. My paper will describe their appropriation of the Tel Aviv central bus station – clearly a 'black' part in the so-called White City - on the background of their legal and economic exclusion.

Paper long abstract:

When thousands of Filipino domestic workers arrive at the Tel Aviv central bus station on Saturday nights, the beginning of their weekly day off from work, the neighbourhood resembles a Filipino barrio rather than a part of Israel's so-called White City. While inside the station, pawn shops, travel agencies and Karaoke bars cater to a large Filipino clientèle, street vendors sell home-made Filipino dishes, newspapers and Tagalog movies in front of it, an air of roasted pork in the air. Filipino domestic workers have clearly appropriated the Tel Aviv central bus station and its neighbourhood aesthetically, even though their own legal status in the country is fragile and ownership of shops and shared weekend apartments here remain in the hands of Israelis. Herein, the Tel Aviv bus station is similar to other public meeting places in the Filipino diaspora, such as in Hong Kong or Singapore. Within the social geography of the White City of Tel Aviv, the central bus station area is a socially segregated space, so to speak its black underside. In my paper, I will give an ethnographic description of Filipinos' appropriation of this 'Black Part' of the city. In narrating the neighbourhood as Little Manila it becomes clear that Filipinos relate to it similarly ambivalent as to the capital: positive in the sense that it evokes 'home' and negative in the sense that it is a space which signifies their social and economic exclusion from riches and the West which they hoped to reach by migrating.