Latinos in Israel: Language and Unexpected Citizenship [Hardcover]

Latinos in Israelcharts the unexpected ways that non-citizen immigrants become potential citizens. In the late 1980s Latin Americans of Christian background started arriving in Israel as labor migrants. Alejandro Paz examines the ways they perceived themselves and were perceived as potential citizens during an unexpected campaign for citizenship in the mid-2000s. This ethnographic account describes the problem of citizenship as it unfolds through language and language use among these Latinos both at home and in public life, and considers the different ways by which Latinos were recognized as having some of the qualities of citizens. Paz explains how unauthorized labor migrants quickly gained certain limited rights, such as the right to attend public schools or the right to work. Ultimately engaging Israelis across many such contexts, Latinos, especially youth, gained recognition as citizens to Israeli public opinion and governing politics. Paz illustrates how language use and mediatized interaction are under-appreciated aspects of the politics of immigration, citizenship, and national belonging.

Alejandro Paz is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto, Scarborough.

Alejandro Paz demonstrates the processes by which margins of identity are constructed or challenged. Israeli identity is routinely imagined in relation to Arab, particularly Palestinian, identity. The fact that the space occupied by undocumented Latino youths in Israel is negotiable shows the complexity and contingency of national identity, raising interesting points about how it actually works.

Latinos quest for recognition as citizens is publicly grounded in their ability to convey their similarity to Israelis and their difference from Palestinians. Thus, speaking like a citizen is much more than a surface performance, as Alejandro Paz convincingly shows, and Latinos themselves are transformed in the process.

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