Paper short abstract:

My presentation will focus on the role of 'ethnicity' in the context of immigration policy, and the bureaucratic establishment in Israel. I shall argue that while using the rhetoric of 'helping the needy immigrants to integrate' the governmental bureaucracy has created the 'Mizrachi' ethnic category to serve its needs. Thus, indirectly, it has endorsed the identification between itself and 'Ashkenazi hegemony'.

Paper long abstract:

My presentation will focus on the concept of "Ashkenazi hegemony", and will elaborate on how it is connected to the bureaucratic establishment in Israel. I shall argue that while using the rhetoric of "helping the needy immigrants to integrate" the governmental (and semi-governmental) bureaucracy has created the "Mizrachi" ethnic category to serve its own needs. Thus, indirectly, it has endorsed the identification between itself and "Ashkenazi hegemony."

The category of "ethnicity" produced a manipulative dichotomy between "Mizrachim", "North African Jews" etc. vs. "Ashkenazim" "European-American Jews" and the like, and between the "helped" vs. the "helpers". This construction entailed the identification between the "Ashkenazi" category and the bureaucratic patronage and control over the most disadvantaged groups in society. Unavoidably, The bureaucratic system has become identified with processes of exclusion and the construction of categories in control of officials.

The "ethnic" criterion was created by endorsing definitions like "father's origin", "country of origin" etc., into policy-making processes as well as into the public discourse. However, it was not only the Central Bureau of Statistics that played a significant role in providing the "neutral" data for socio-economic policy makers. The social sciences research and institutions had, too, an important role in constructing the image of the ethnic category as self-evident. This widely rooted concept has become a major means for interpreting, and justifying, social problems and phenomena. Thus, social justice has become a synonym for ethnic policy and consequently "primitivism" was implied in the context of social deprivation, unemployment, poverty etc., while bureaucratic-paternalistic practices were introduced.

In demonstrating the role of the "helping" bureaucracy in the emergence of the Ashkenazi hegemony I shall refer to two contexts: the absorption of immigrants from Muslim countries in the 50's and then of the immigrants from Ethiopia in the 80's. My analysis will be based on CBS documents and on my fieldwork in an absorption center inhabited by Ethiopian immigrants. (Hertzog 1999).