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

在过去十年中，以色列社会发生的最重大变化之一是外国工人激增，目前估计人数在150,000至200,000之间，约占以色列劳动力的10%。与其他工业化的高人均收入国家相比，这是世界上外国劳动力比例最高的国家之一。伴随着这一巨大变化的是来自前苏联和埃塞俄比亚的大量犹太移民，这对以色列的种族和语言范围产生了极大的影响。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，这是以色列政府战略的一部分，目的是建立将以色列国和尚未实现的巴勒斯坦国分开的边界。这些变化影响了以色列政府试图将公民构成犹太国家的成员的方式，以及新兴种族群体的反应。这篇论文由一名社会文化人类学和语言学的博士生研究，研究拉美外籍工人或拉丁裔如何在以色列占主导地位的种族和语言意识形态方面发生转变。一般来说，社会科学家将农民工的文化和语言生产分析为“混合体”，这个术语优先考虑促进同质公民的民族国家的视角。这个项目没有假设这样的观点，而是考虑拉美裔人如何对象化和区分以色列的种族和语言差异，以及他们如何认识到自己在这种差异方面是不同的。至关重要的是，对拉美裔人的民族语言理解是由新兴的语言意识形态所中介的，即演员如何构思语言、社会群体和他们的社会世界之间的关系。为了将这些意识形态和拉丁裔的语言使用情况绘制成图表，研究方法包括在家里、在拉丁裔社会组织(如教堂或足球联盟)、在学校和拉丁裔儿童的课外项目中进行参与者观察和记录。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移民及其对工人的影响的理解，这是接收国和输出国的政策制定者都广泛感兴趣的话题。

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.