Emotional bureaucracies : sojourners and the politics of exclusion and inclusion in Israel
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Abstract This dissertation argues that the decisions of Israeli state bureaucracies and the bureaucrats who work for them, regarding the deportation and naturalization of non-citizens are predicated on emotions as they are based on rules and regulations. I examine the way different Israeli state bureaucrats cope with the new waves of Gentile migration and with the challenges they pose to Jewish hegemony and Israeli sovereignty. I refer to this category of legal and illegal migrants as sojourners. This dissertation documents how feelings of state bureaucrats contribute to the shaping of Israel's de facto immigration regime and affect the lives of disempowered sojourners, and is based on ethnographic research from 2006-2007 with Israeli state bureaucrats of the Enforcement Unit and Visa Section of the Interior Ministry, adjudicators of the Detention Review Tribunal of the Justice Ministry, teachers and educators from the Public School, Bialik-Rogozin, and Israeli activists in NGOs that help sojourners. I demonstrate how different arms of the state have different worldviews, agendas, and goals and, thus, act in different ways toward sojourners. Through detention and deportation of sojourners as well as the rejection of sojourners' requests to naturalize in Israel, practices of exclusion and coercion cause suffering to undocumented non-citizens. To fathom how these processes operate, I study how state bureaucrats utilize diverse techniques of the self that enable them to maintain a positive self-image. I identify how the Israeli state is attempting to preserve Jewish majority and dominance in the face of an influx of migration. Thus, although the state has been granting citizenship status on the basis of conversion, marriage, and, for certain minors, living in Israel, the fundamental logics and politics of belongings remain relatively unchanged. The politics of belonging in Israel continue to emphasize the Arab-Jewish dichotomy and enmity overlooking sojourners as a negligible category. While initially "migrant workers" and "refugees" were seen as benign because they replaced the threatening Palestinians, they have not been accepted as having a right to remain permanently in Israel. Consequently, only a small number of sojourners who are conceived of as Israelis have been permitted to naturalize.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2011 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Korczyn, Oded Menachem |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Anthropology |
| Primary advisor | Ferguson, James, 1959- |
| Primary advisor | Yanagisako, Sylvia Junko, 1945- |
| Thesis advisor | Ferguson, James, 1959- |
| Thesis advisor | Yanagisako, Sylvia Junko, 1945- |
| Thesis advisor | Beinin, Joel, 1948- |
| Advisor | Beinin, Joel, 1948- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Oded Menahem Korczyn. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Anthropology. |
| Thesis | Ph.D. Stanford University 2011 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2011 by Oded Menachem Korczyn
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...