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Immigration and the city: between state planning and residents’ practices and representations

The case of Kiryat Shmona in Israel

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Abstract

This paper proposes to explore the role of immigration in the making of places. Departing from the assumption that “[…] the reconstruction of spaces and places within the City [i]s an active part of the reordering of the wider relations within which the City is set […]” (Massey et al. in City worlds. Routledge in association with the Open University, London, p 107, 1999), it addresses the relations between place, placemaking and immigration. The article draws on an empirical study carried out in an Israeli town located at the border of Lebanon, which was established in the 1950s with the purpose of settling new Jewish immigrants. It stages the life stories of various informants to the research, and the embodied character of these experiences, which all contribute to the production of the place under scrutiny. This micro-history of a place enables to identify the current immigration policy in place, and the motives which underlie it. As the article demonstrates, the narratives of each informant, inscribed in collective patterns, show the extent to which immigration is a crucial issue through which the city repositions itself within national narratives of nationbuilding. Additionally, they inform the transformations of power relations both in and out of the city, and the way the ‘imaginaries of place’ (Walker and Leitner in Urban Geogr 32(2):156–178, 2011) have shifted.

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Notes

  1. https://www.coe.int/en/web/interculturalcities/-/study-finds-that-intercultural-cities-have-higher-well-being-and-citizen-satisfaction.

  2. A Hebrew term meaning Easterner and associated with the ethnic ascendency of African and Asian immigrants who constitute the core of the movements.

  3. Hananel estimates that 52% of public housing is in development towns. Israel holds 60,500 public-housing units in total (representing 2.5% of the total housing stock), and Kiryat Shmona concentrates 1322 public housing units. This concentration of public housing in peripheral areas has meant that beneficiaries of public housing tend to settle in areas that are already depressed (Aymard and Benko 1998).

  4. A similar exercise was conducted by Rogaly and Qureshi (2013) in their study of a small English town.

  5. The historical accounts in this section are drawn from the interview with A. Goldstein as well as the article quoted here.

  6. In reference to the Israeli movie Turn left at the end of the world (2004). The film features a small development town in the Negev desert in 1968, when new immigrants from India join the established Moroccan community, struggling to survive.

  7. Sallah Shabati (1964) is an Israeli comedy film directed by Ephraim Kishon, featuring a new immigrant from Iraq, and his first months in the maabara he and his family were settled in. Shabati and his friends try to make believe they do not want to be resettled to permanent housing, hoping the contrary will occur.

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Funding

I have received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° 316796, which I have declared during the submission process.

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  1. Migrinter - UMR 7301, University of Poitiers, Bat. A5 - TSA 21103, 5, rue Théodore Lefebvre, 86073, Poitiers Cedex 9, France

    Amandine Desille

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Correspondence to Amandine Desille.

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Human and animal rights

The research leading to this paper involves human participants. Each of the four participants has been informed orally of the research, and has given his consent to participate (consent which has been recorded during the interview). Names have been made anonymous, except from interview 1, Amir Goldstein, who is a well-know historian and who has published articles. His research work is quoted in the article. Pictures are credited along the text. Each source is cited. When there is no credit, the author is indicated between brackets.

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Desille, A. Immigration and the city: between state planning and residents’ practices and representations. GeoJournal 84, 437–457 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-018-9869-0

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