Globally Themed Organizations as Labor Market Intermediaries: The Rise of Israeli-Palestinian Women’s Employment in Retail

This paper examines the labor-market incorporation of minority women. Industrial transformations and the expansion of service and retail have increased women’s labor-market participation, but there remains a large variation between minority women groups, where multiple boundaries may hinder labor-market integration. Past research has explored the role of formal labor-market intermediates in overcoming social boundaries. But a precondition for labor-market intermediation is that majority employers perceive minorities as potential workers and minorities perceive the majority as potential employers. In this paper, we expand the concept of labor-market intermediation to include the social construction of groups as legitimate economic actors, and examine the role of organizational structures in this social construction. Using a comparative analysis of two Jewish malls and nearby shopping streets, and based on 190 interviews with various actors, we show that while supply of workers and demand for work are necessary factors, they are not sufficient for explaining the incorporation of Palestinian women into retail labor markets. Instead, we point to the unintended effect of the globally themed organization of the shopping malls on the erosion of social boundaries and the formation of consumption relations between Israeli-Palestinian women and Jewish employers, which turned into employment relations.