'Let me go to the city': African asylum seekers, racialization and the politics of space in Israel

Since 2005, asylum seekers from Africa have begun arriving in Israel at irregular intervals. This paper suggests that this phenomenon, which lies in contradiction to the policies of the Israeli ethnocratic regime, is tied both to the geopolitics of the region and to a discursive process of the racialization of space. Specifically, this paper offers a critical analysis of discourses and regimes of mobility in Israel and maps the changing discursive and institutional practices regarding the ongoing inflow of African asylum seekers. Framing the analysis within the growing body of knowledge of critical geopolitics facilitates conceptualization of this migration as a 'threat' that leads to the racialization of space.