Labor Migration, Citizenship and Minorities in Non-Liberal Democracies: The Case of Israel

Over the past three decades, Israel has experienced a large labor migration, introducing non-Jewish migrants into Israeli society for the first time. Given the nature of the political regime, a non-liberal democracy defined as an ethnic Jewish state, this has had very meaningful consequences not only for the economy of the state, but for its identity as well. We argue in this paper that the gradual changes incurred in the nature of the political regime have far reaching consequences not merely for the political horizon of the new labor migrants, but for the entire community of citizens and most specifically for already marginalized citizen minorities. It is the purpose of this paper to disaggregate the debate regarding the relationship between migration and citizenship by examining the impact of migration on polities or regimes whose citizenship structures are non-liberal, often highly ethnicized and hence with significant marginal veteran minorities. Empirically we focus on the case of Israel, and the impact of its recent labor migration on the patterns of citizenship belonging and membership towards its most significant civic minority, the Arab Palestinians.