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Paper short abstract:

The talk analyzes the immigrants' categorization in Israel and how it affects both the state immigration policy and immigrants. In addition, it presents the complexity of the categorization, which depends on how foreigners the immigrants are perceived.

Paper long abstract:

State immigration policy is derived, among others, from the state's categorization of foreigners. While one could imagine that this categorization is twofold - a person is either an immigrant or not - the reality is different: The more the immigrants are perceived by the state as foreigners, the more the state handles them as a collective rather than individuals. Moreover, this phenomenon is true also on the immigrants' side - the more they are perceived as foreigners, the more they operate as a collective.

The Israeli population has been created mainly by different groups of immigrants. Jewish immigrants (Olim) are treated different than non-Jewish ones. While Olim are eligible for citizenship upon their arrival, others are categorized by various criteria, which shapes their immigration experience. In this talk, I will discuss the main categories, including Olim, asylum-seekers and infiltrators, focusing on the State's utilization of these definitions and foreigners-based categorization, to create boundaries of movement, accessibility to services (health and education), exclusion and inclusion. I will present the differences between Eastern European and African immigrants based on this categorization. The talk moves along the axis between the private life story of individual immigrants and the collective story of immigrants and the state. The talk is based on an anthropological study focusing on Israeli policies toward non-Jewish immigrants, which includes the analysis of life stories of 20 non-Jewish immigrants from different categories and study of the main social and political events in Israel since 2007.