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

在过去十年中，以色列社会最重大的变化之一是外国工人的激增，目前估计有15万至20万人，约占以色列劳动力的10%。 与其他高人均收入的工业化国家相比，这是世界上外国劳动力比例最高的国家之一。 这一巨大变化伴随着来自前苏联和埃塞俄比亚的大批犹太移民，这极大地影响了以色列的种族和语言谱。 与此同时，以色列政策制定者一直在限制来自被占领土的巴勒斯坦工人的工作许可证，这是以色列政府战略的一部分，以构成以色列国和尚未实现的巴勒斯坦国之间的边界。 这些变化影响以色列国家试图构成公民作为一个犹太民族的成员，以及如何新兴的民族群体responses.This论文研究由社会文化人类学和语言学的博士生研究如何拉丁美洲的外国工人，或拉丁美洲人，是在以色列占主导地位的民族和语言意识形态方面的转变。 一般来说，社会科学家将移民工人的文化和语言生产分析为“混合”，这一术语赋予了促进同质公民的民族国家的视角。 而不是假设这样一个角度来看，这个项目认为拉丁美洲人如何来客观化和区分种族和语言的品种在以色列，以及他们如何来理解自己作为不同的变化。 至关重要的是，拉丁美洲人的民族语言学理解是由新兴的语言意识形态介导的，即，行动者如何构想语言、社会群体和他们的社会世界之间的关系。 为了绘制这些意识形态和拉丁美洲人的语言使用，研究方法包括参与者观察和记录在家里，在拉丁美洲社会组织（如教堂或足球联赛），并在学校和课后计划拉丁美洲儿童。 这项研究将有助于语言习得和接触，语言意识形态，种族和民族，移民和国家的理论。这项研究的更广泛的影响是，它将促进我们对跨国劳动力迁移及其对工人的影响的理解，这是接收国和输出国政策制定者广泛关注的一个话题。

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.