Dissertation Research: The Emergence of Latinos in Israel: Transnational Migration, Forms of Contact, and Discursive Transformation

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One of the most substantial changes to Israeli society in the last decade has been the surge in foreign workers who are now estimated to number between 150,000 and 200,000 and to comprise about 10% of the Israeli workforce. Compared to other industrialized, high per capita income countries, this is one of the highest proportions of foreign labor in the world. This enormous change has accompanied by large waves of Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia, which has greatly impacted the ethnic and linguistic spectrum of Israel. At the same time, Israeli policy-makers have been limiting work permits for Palestinian workers from the Occupied Territories, as part of Israeli government strategies to constitute the borders that separate the Israeli state and the as-yet-unrealized Palestinian state. These changes affect how the Israeli state attempts to constitute citizens as members of a Jewish nation, and how emerging ethnic groups respond.This dissertation research by a doctoral student of both sociocultural anthropology and linguistics studies how Latin American foreign workers, or Latinos, are transformed in terms of the ethnic and linguistic ideologies dominant in Israel. Generally, the cultural and linguistic production of migrant workers has been analyzed by social scientists as "hybrid," a term which privileges the perspective of nation-states which promote homogeneous citizenries. Instead of assuming such a perspective, this project considers how Latinos come to objectify and differentiate ethnic and linguistic varieties in Israel, and how they then come to understand themselves as different in terms of that variation. Crucially, the ethnolinguistic understanding of Latinos is mediated by emergent language ideologies, i.e., how actors conceive of the relation between language, social groups, and their social world. To chart these ideologies and language use among Latinos, research methods include participant observation and recording in homes, in Latino social organizations (like churches or soccer leagues), and in schools and after-school programs for Latino children. This study will contribute to theories of language acquisition and contact, language ideologies, ethnicity and nationhood, and migration and state. The broader impact of this study is that it will advance our understanding of transnational labor migration and its effect on workers, a topic of broad interest to policy makers in both receiving and sending countries.