Identity Patterns among Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Israel: Assimilation vs. Ethnic Formation

This paper deals with identity patterns among the 1990s immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU) in Israel. It presents the complex set of identity types among immigrants in the context of their cultural and socio-demographic characteristics and their dynamic relationships with the Israeli host society.
The findings show that immigrants from the FSU in Israel form a distinct ethnic group within the Israeli social and cultural fabric. This is reflected in their closed social networks, ethnic information sources, strong desire to maintain ethnic-cultural continuity, and the fact that the ethnic component (Jew from the FSU or immigrant from the FSU) is central for self-identification. However, ethnic formation among these immigrants is not a reactive-oriented identity, which is mainly generated by alienation from the host society, it is rather an instrumentalized ethnicity, which is the outcome of ethnic-cultural pride and pragmatic considerations.     

Sense of Belonging and Life Satisfaction among Post‐1990 Immigrants in Israel

In this paper we contribute to the study of immigrants’ integration into the host society by focusing on two subjective indicators of integration: life satisfaction and sense of belonging. The analysis is performed on post‐1990 immigrants in Israel with data obtained from the ‘Immigrant Survey’ conducted by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. The findings show that while life satisfaction is affected by all forms of incorporation (structural, acculturation, identificational), immigrants’ sense of belonging to Israeli society seems mainly related to processes of identity re‐definition in the host society, and mostly determined by strength of Jewish identity, ideological motives for going to Israel, and the ways by which immigrants perceive they are defined by Israelis (as a member of the majority group or as a member of an ethnic group). The results also reveal that when utilizing SEM procedure for estimating simultaneous effects of both subjective measures of assimilation, sense of belonging to the new society strongly affects immigrants’ life satisfaction but not the other way around. We discuss the findings and their meaning in light of theory and within the context of Israeli society.     

Estimating Self‐Selection of Immigrants: Comparing Earnings Differentials Between Natives and Immigrants in the US and Israel

Immigrants’ economic assimilation in host countries is determined by patterns of self‐selection on both – observed attributes (mainly human capital) and unobserved attributes of the immigrants from their source countries. In the present study immigrants’ economic assimilation in the United States and Israel are compared. More specifically, the study compares the impact of immigrants’ unobserved characteristics on their earnings in both countries by applying a model for decomposing difference in differentials. It makes use of United States and Israeli decennial census data for comparing self‐selection patterns on unobserved attributes of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU) who arrived in the United States and Israel during the 1970s. The results indicate that FSU immigrants who chose the United States have significantly higher levels of unobserved earnings determinants than those who chose Israel. These results are discussed in light of migration theories.     

Committed,Grateful, and Worthy of Acceptance: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Master Chef Israel</Emphasis> and the Social Construction of Immigration Narratives

The rhetoric of nations, such as Israel, often assigns immigrants social positions in nationalist reconstructions. Given the active role the media has taken in reconstructing the nation, this paper suggests looking at Master Chef Israel (MCI) as an arena in which immigrant contestants are staged as recruited to engage in the reconstruction and branding of Israel. A narrative analysis of five seasons of MCI and interviews with 15 contestants tracked three narratives, each of which reveals a different mode of branding Israel. The show branded Jewish immigrants as equipped with the necessary capital to become Israelis, while those who converted to Judaism and immigrated to Israel were expected to show commitment both to their new religion and to their new country. In the third narrative, MCI staged the patriotism of individuals who immigrated after marrying an Israeli citizen as a gradually emerging sentiment based on the extent to which their difference enabled the incorporation of an Israeli component into their overall identity.     

The Short Term Effects of Immigrant Students on the Educational Achievements of Native‐Born Students

Since 1989 nearly one million immigrants from the FSU have arrived in Israel. Although well‐educated on average, most of these immigrants lacked economic means. The purpose of the present study is to examine whether the presence of immigrants in schools affected the educational achievements of their Israeli‐born peers. We analyzed data pertaining to 8,288 Israeli tenth graders who attended 208 schools in 1994. Respondents' records were obtained from the Ministry of Education and the Bureau of the Census. Using hierarchical models we examined the effects of the proportion of immigrant students in a school and of their parents' education on the probability that Israeli‐born students in the school would earn matriculation certificates. Results did not yield evidence of any negative spillover effects on the educational achievements of the native students. Moreover, the presence of many immigrant students with high educational backgrounds increased the likelihood of Israeli‐born students earning matriculation certificates.     

Institutional Structure and Immigrant Integration: A Comparative Study of Immigrants' Labor Market Attainment in Canada and Israel1

The present study focuses on the incorporation of immigrants from the former Soviet Union in two receiving societies, Israel and Canada, during the first half of the 1990s. Both countries conducted national censuses in 1995 (Israel) and 1996 (Canada), making it possible to identify a large enough sample of immigrants and provide information on their demographic characteristics and their labor market activity. While both Canada and Israel are immigrant societies, their institutional contexts of immigrant reception differ considerably. Israel maintains no economic selection of the Jewish immigrants and provides substantial support for newcomers, who are viewed as a returning Diaspora. Canada employs multiple criteria for selecting immigrants, and the immigrants' social and economic incorporation is patterned primarily by market forces. The analysis first examines the characteristics of immigrants who arrived in the two countries and evaluates the extent of selectivity. Consistent with our hypotheses, Russian immigrants to Canada were more immediately suitable for the labor market, but experienced greater difficulty finding and maintaining employment. Nevertheless, immigrants to Canada attained higher‐status occupations and higher earnings than their compatriots in Israel did, although the Israeli labor market was more likely to reward their investments in education.     

The transnational effect of multicultural policies on migrants' identification: the case of the Israeli diaspora in the USA

While it is difficult to gauge the effect of multicultural policies within countries, it is even more difficult to measure them across countries. In this article, I use fundamental multicultural changes that have occurred in Israeli society in recent decades as a case study, and track their effect on how Israelis who reside in the USA identify with Israel. Analysing the US census and the American Community Survey, I have focused my research on three groups of Israeli‐born migrants in the USA – Israeli Arabs, ultra‐Orthodox Jews and the Jewish majority. Findings indicate that originating from a minority community in the homeland predicts not only a different rate, but also different longitudinal trends of Israeli identification. I offer several possible explanations for these variations, but an in‐depth analysis of the Israeli case indicates that the transnational effect of the changing multicultural agenda in Israel is the leading mechanism at play.     

National Minority, National Mentality, and Communal Ethnicity: Changes in Ethnic Identity of Former Soviet Union Jewish Emigrants on the Israeli Kibbutz

In this paper we examine and compare the ethnic identity of the Jews in the former Soviet Union (FSU) and the process of change in ethnic identity among the new immigrants from the FSU. This analysis considers the role of the kibbutz as the first experience of Jewish community in their lives, as well as the location of the first phase of their process of absorption and resocialization into new and unfamiliar surroundings. The data are drawn through a longitudinal research design, with a pre‐ and post‐analysis of changes in the ethnicity of migrants studied from their arrival on the Israeli kibbutz until the completion of the five‐month kibbutz programme. We found that pre‐migration Soviet Jews defined their ethnicity as a discriminated national minority with a weak symbolic ethnicity content. The ambivalent nature of the ethnicity of Jews while in the FSU was expressed in the fact that although a majority were deculturized from traditional dimensions of Jewish life, they nevertheless felt they belonged to a specific ethnic group. Post‐migration ethnicity was found to be remarkably altered; the former ambivalence was dissolved. On the macro‐level, membership in the economically and politically successful Russian‐speaking group of Israeli society is a source of self esteem, rather than a sign of shameful otherness. On the micro‐level of ethnicity, the encounter in the initial phase of absorption in Israel, within the kibbutz Jewish community, often demands a re‐examination of their private concept of Jewishness, serving as a first step in resolving their ambivalent ethnic identity. Consequently, their new ethnic identity may now well have weaker boundaries, but a more positive (non‐alienating) content than that left behind.     

Transnational lifestyles among Russian Israelis: a follow‐up study

Despite the expanding use of the transnational perspective, grounded qualitative research on everyday expressions of transnationalism has been scant. In this article, I explore the economic and social ties with former homelands among three categories of former Soviet immigrants of the 1990s in Israel, namely ethnically mixed families split by emigration; young professionals and entrepreneurs; and retirees who keep two homes – one in Israel and the other in Russia or Ukraine. To follow temporal changes in transnational lifestyles, I interviewed the same informants twice, in 2000 and 2010. The findings suggest that transnational activities reflect life‐course changes and can evolve in several possible directions. These are (1) an attrition of ties with former homelands with increasing integration in the host country; (2) a steady or ascending pace of transnational activities eventually leading to return migration; and (3) permanent low‐grade ties with former homelands and networking with co‐ethnics in other countries of the post‐Soviet diaspora. I conclude that relatively few migrants can sustain intense transnational lifestyle over many years; there are several critical life‐course points when most transnational migrants have to decide where their home is.     

The Renewal of an Ethnic Tradition and Its Role in Shaping the Kurds Immigrants’ Identity

The article discusses the Seharane celebrations of the Jews of Kurdistan whose immigration to Israel is a case of ‘ethno-national homecoming’. The immigrants from Kurdistan express an Israeli identity in the public renewal of these celebrations. Their leaders demanded a right to ethnic otherness that is included in Israeli society, and attempted to position themselves anew within the national space. The syncretic dynamics that were created indicate that ethnic traditions continue to serve as a resource for minority groups of immigrants and their offspring, and that a liberal state must afford their customs public legitimisation and must recognise their leaders.     

Juggling Models of Masculinity: Russian-Jewish Immigrants in the Israeli Army

The present study addresses the question “What is masculinity?” by exploring how male immigrants interpret local masculinity and the models of masculinity they portray while situating themselves in the male hierarchy of the new society. The study is based on “immigration stories” elicited by in‐depth interviews conducted with 43 university students who immigrated to Israel at the beginning of the 1990s from the former Soviet Union. The analysis of the stories reveals that the immigrants employ four major practices (avoidance, mockery, maneuvering, and provocation) that unfasten the takenfor‐granted link between masculinity and army service in the Israeli society, thereby resisting the hegemonic, military model of masculinity in Israel. The immigrants render meaning to their resistance of the indigenous model (“The Warrior”) via the harnessing of cultural models that they carry with them from their native home—“The Russian Soldier” and “The Jewish Man”—without seeking to alter gender power relations as such. They discursively juggle between the three contesting and competing models of masculinity that together constitute a fluid and elusive “interpretative field” of masculinity. Via their interpretative work, the Russian male immigrants reconstitute their masculine identity, seeking to assert their distinctiveness and to receive social legitimation for their different conception of masculinity.     

Translating Spirituality: Universalism and Particularism in the Diffusion of Spiritual Care from the United States to Israel

Research on the transnational diffusion of ideas and practices shows how cultural objects go through translation, adaptation, and vernacularization when implemented in new localities. Less attention is given to the translators themselves and their heterogeneous and often conflicting visions. Drawing on the notion of transnational social fields (TSF s), this article investigates how cultural objects get vernacularized differently in different parts of the TSF , demonstrating how processes of translation reflect larger social and political struggles over questions of identity. As a case study, we focus on the attempt of actors from Israel and the United States to institutionalize spiritual care in Israeli health‐care organizations. The analysis reveals how spiritual care functioned as a porous cultural object, open to a wide range of interpretations and debates. While actors in New York saw in spiritual care the opportunity to bridge to Israeli Jews and create a global Jewish identity, Israeli actors split between using spiritual care as a vehicle for creating a local Israeli Jewish identity and seeing in spiritual care the opportunity to establish universal identities, broader than the Jewish one. The disagreement and conflicts between the groups influenced the translation process, turning it into a contentious struggle that involved different positions on the continuum between particularism and universalism.     

Renegotiating religious transnationalism: fractures in transnational Chinese evangelicalism

In this article, I question to what extent future generations of immigrants will engage in practices of religious transnationalism through their ethnic institutions. I examine how leaders of the next generation of English‐speaking Chinese Canadian evangelicals made sense of their participation in the Chinese Coordination Centre of World Evangelism, a movement that rallies behind both a pan‐Chinese identity and the belief that the Chinese have a special role in evangelizing the world. I argue that the call to religious mobilization grounded in Chinese ethnicity stands on tenuous ground and propose that linguistic, geographical, generational and ideological fractures may diminish the participation of future generations of the Chinese diaspora in ethnically‐based transnational religious organizations. I conclude that these developments would push ‘negotiated transnational religious networks’ into a state of ‘renegotiation'.     

Self‐Selection and Economic Assimilation of Immigrants: The Case of Iranian Immigrants Arriving to Three Countries During 1979–1985

The study is designed to evaluate the impact of the interaction between patterns of immigrants' self‐selection and the context of reception at destinations on economic assimilation of Iranian immigrants who came to three countries during 1979–1985. For that purpose, we studied immigrants at the age of 22 or higher upon arrival by utilizing the 5 percent 1990 and 2000 Public Use Microdata files (PUMS) of the United States census, the 20 percent demographic samples of the 1983 and 1995 Israeli censuses of population, and the 1990 and 2000 Swedish registers. The results indicate that the “most qualified” immigrants – both on observed and unobserved variables – who left Iran right after the Islamic revolution, arrived in the US Their positive self‐selection led them to reach complete earnings assimilation with natives there. Iranian immigrants who arrived in Israel and Sweden did not achieve full earnings assimilation with natives. Of these two groups, a smaller immigrant‐to‐native gap in average earnings was found in Sweden, but in the same time Iranian immigrants in Israel were more positively self‐selected and showed better assimilation than their counterparts in Sweden. Market structure played a certain role in immigrants' earnings assimilation mainly in Sweden.     

The multiplicity of citizenship: transnational and local practices and identifications of middle‐class migrants

In this article we focus on local and transnational forms of active citizenship, understood as the sum of all political practices and processes of identification. Our study, conducted among middle‐class immigrants in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, indicates that the importance of active transnational citizenship should not be overstated. Among these immigrants, political practices are primarily focused on the local level; political practices directed to the home country appear to be quite rare. However, although transnational activities in the public sphere are rather exceptional, many immigrants do participate in homeland‐directed activities in the private sphere. If we look at processes of identification, we see that a majority of the middle‐class immigrants have a strong local identity. Many of them combine this local identification with feelings of belonging to people in their home country.     

The living arrangements of older immigrants from the former Soviet Union: A comparison of Israel and the United States

With the unprecedented emigration from the former Soviet Union (FSU) during the 1990s as context, this study described the living arrangements of older FSU immigrants living in Israel and the US. Living arrangement choices represented an important strategy for coping with the migration process. Census data from Israel and the US were employed to examine the relationships among living arrangements (independent households, multigenerational households, and extended households) and personal characteristics, including duration of residence, Jewish identity, education, and home ownership. Results showed that the less time older immigrants lived in the host country, the more likely they lived in a multigenerational or extended household. The residency length and household relationship was stronger in Israel than in the US. Also, older FSU immigrants who owned their own home and who lived in a metropolitan area were more likely to live in a complex household than in an independent household. We discussed how the economic and social environments in each country contributed to the variability in living arrangement options among these older immigrants.     

Voting here and there: political integration and transnational political engagement among immigrants in Europe

In this article, I examine voting patterns in origin and receiving country national elections among immigrants in Europe. The existing scholarship on transnational political engagement offers two competing interpretations of the relationship between immigrant integration and transnational engagement, which I classify as the resocialization and complementarity perspectives. The resocialization perspective assumes that transnational political engagement gradually declines as immigrants become socialized into the new receiving society. Conversely, the complementarity perspective assumes that immigrant integration increases transnational political engagement. I test these competing perspectives with survey data collected between 2004 and 2008 for 12 different immigrant groups residing in seven European cities. The analysis examines how immigrant political and civic participation in receiving countries affect their proclivities to vote in homeland elections. I also analyse the effects of receiving and origin country contexts on immigrant voting behaviour in homeland elections. While my findings support both the resocialization and complementarity perspectives, they also highlight the ways in which a set of origin‐country contexts shape immigrant propensities to engage in transnational electoral politics. I observe a degree of complementarity among immigrants with resources who are motivated and eligible to participate in both receiving and origin‐country elections.     

Language Acquisition,Employment Status,and the Earnings of Jewish and Non-Jewish Immigrants in Israel

This article analyses the Hebrew language proficiency, probability of employment, and labour market earnings of immigrants in Israel. It uses the 2010/11 Immigrant Absorption Survey conducted by the Israeli CBS. In addition to standard immigration, demographic, and human capital variables, the analysis includes unique features: the study of long-duration immigrants, analyses of males’ and females’ primary reasons for immigration, the subsidized intensive Hebrew language training programme, Ethiopian Jews, and Jewish and non-Jewish immigrants from the Former Soviet Union. Results from multivariate analyses largely accord with the “standard theoretical model” of language proficiency regarding the mechanisms of “exposure”, “efficiency”, and “economic incentives”. Acquaintance with the local language increases the likelihood of being employed and has positive earnings outcomes. We discuss implications of the findings for public policy which can improve the adjustment of these new immigrants to their new society, hence also moderate inter-group tensions.     

Immigrants in Azerbaijan: Current Situation and Prospects of (Re)integration Policy

“Our identity is at once plural and partial.Sometimes we feel that we straddle two cultures;At other times, that we fall between two stools.” Salman Rushdie

The integration problems of immigrants in the post‐Soviet Azerbaijan have not been the focus of researchers' attention. The present article fills this gap. I classify immigrants into three groups: 1) natives of Azerbaijan (re‐emigrants) and their family members; 2) ethnics from Georgia; 3) labour immigrants from different countries, who arrive to Azerbaijan to look for a job or to open their own business. I examine the social resources and practices used by immigrants to support their integration, in the absence of state integration policy. I conclude that the main resource is each immigrant's personal social capital, based on networks. These networks are transnational in their nature. Immigrants build up and integrate in this kind of transnational network, as well as in the transnational spaces of the capital of Azerbaijan (Baku), where the vast majority of them reside after they move to the country.     

Metropolitan Labour Markets, Peripheral Labour Markets and Socio-economic Outcomes among Immigrants to Israel

This article focuses on the impact of the local opportunity structure on socio‐economic outcomes of recent immigrants to Israel. Specifically, it examines the extent to which metropolitan labour markets versus peripheral labour markets differentially affect socio‐economic incorporation of recent “Russian” immigrants who arrived in Israel after the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1989. Using the 1995 Israeli Census of Population, the analyses address the following questions: (1) were recent immigrants differentially sorted to local labour markets; (2) do local labour markets differentially affect socio‐economic attainment; and (3) do modes of socio‐economic attainment and patterns of ethnic inequality differ across metropolitan and peripheral labour markets? The analyses reveal that immigrants from the European republics and of lower education are more likely to settle in peripheral labour markets than in metropolitan labour markets. Peripheral labour markets, compared with metropolitan labour markets, have detrimental consequences for the socio‐economic outcomes of immigrants. The data do not provide strong support for the thesis that patterns of socio‐economic attainment and inequality differ much across labour markets. The rules according to which socio‐economic attainment of immigrants is determined are, for the most part, similar across labour markets. In general, occupational status and earnings of immigrants are likely to increase with the passage of time, education, European origin; and to decline with age regardless of type of the local labour market. However, the socio‐economic outcomes of immigrants are considerably higher in the metropolis than in the periphery. The findings suggest that the local labour market plays a major role in the determination of immigrants' socio‐economic rewards and outcomes.