Latino Migrants in the Jewish State: Undocumented Lives in Israel (review)

The scholarship on undocumented migrants from countries of lower socioeconomic levels to countries of higher ones is extensive. So far, however, only a few studies have focused on the flow of undocumented migrants to the State of Israel. Barak Kalir's ethnographic study Latino Migrants in the Jewish State: Undocumented Lives in Israel provides a rare glance at the lives of labor migrants who reached Israel from different Latin American countries, mainly from Ecuador, Columbia, Chile, Peru, and Bolivia. Based on fieldwork among Latinos in Israel, as well as among returnees, deportees and potential migrants in Ecuador, Kalir recreates in this book the full circle of migration flow from the decision making start point to the process of settling down, establishing social networks and integrating socially and culturally into the receiving society.

Kalir opens his analysis by relating his field work to previous studies from Israel and around the globe on different communities of undocumented migrants. Additionally, he provides a clear historical introduction that explains Israel's decision to import labor workers at the beginning of the 1990's. Among the factors that impacted this decision are: the drastic change of Israel's demographic arena due to the arrival of more than one million Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, the aftermath of the first intifada, which led to the reduction of Palestinian workers in Israeli economy, and the reluctance of Jewish immigrants to take on their jobs. The acute labor shortage in both the agricultural and construction sectors led to the creation of strong lobbies of organized Israeli employers who sought to maximize their own interests by pressuring the government with demands for labor migrants. The Israeli government's hesitation to import labor arose mainly from their concern about the Jewish character of the state. Kalir emphasizes Israel's ethno-religious ethos as the main factor that impacted state decisions and impeded official recognition of undocumented migrants.

As explored in the book's first and second parts, the estimated 12,000 Latinos who arrived in Israel were part of a larger flow of undocumented migrants, who reached Israel from more than ninety countries from 1993 on. Several dynamics in Israel facilitated their settlement, among them consecutive Israeli governments' willingness to adopt an unofficial blind-eye policy with respect to undocumented migrants. The migrants provided the Israeli economy with cheap, flexible labor, and as deportable undocumented migrants, they were less likely to demand formal recognition from the state. At the same time, the democratic characteristics of Israel allowed civil society actors to subvert repressive state policies against non-Jewish migrants that became particularly aggressive after 2001. NGO's, local media actors, and members of the academia were often supportive of undocumented migrants, and offered them practical and legal assistance. In Tel-Aviv, where the majority of labor migrants settled, the municipality created a special framework to establish communication lines as part of its attempt to improve migrants' lives. As Kalir's study shows, this type of civil interaction between Israeli citizens and undocumented migrants undermined attempts by the state to prevent the social integration of labor migrants in Israel.

As a result, a kind of de facto nationality began to evolve among Latinos in Israel, who worked mostly as domestic servants and office cleaners in the Tel-Aviv metropolitan area. Since the state's immigration policies condemned undocumented migrants to illegal status, they often strived more intensely than legal migrants to accumulate practical nationality (belonging), both because of and despite their illegal status. This type of cultural assimilation promoted a daily socio-emotional acceptance by Israelis. In the case of Latinos, and unlike other groups of undocumented migrants (mainly from Africa and Asia), this cultural assimilation was possible also due to the Latinos' social "invisibility" as an ethnic group among the general Israeli society.

This point is crucial for the analysis of the de facto integration of undocumented migrants within the general national society. According...