Arab integration in Jewish-Israeli social space: Does commuting make a difference?

Urban research on segregation and integration has been dominated by an obsessive focus on ethno-racial residential patterns, obscuring the multidimensional facets of separation versus encounter that define contemporary urban experience. In this study, we develop an explicitly multidimensional theoretical perspective that relates segregation/integration not only to residential location, but also to daily activity spaces, social networks, transnational media and communications environments, and aspects of identity and sense of place. To disentangle residential location from other facets of segregation/integration, we use GPS and interview data to analyze the socio-spatial experiences of 60 Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel who live in ethnically homogenous Arab towns - divided equally between "localists" versus "commuters" who spend most of their daytime hours working in Jewish-Israeli spaces. While results highlight many important consequences of commuters long hours of daily exposure to Jewish urban mileux, daily activity spaces are only marginally associated with other dimensions of socio-spatial integration. Our analysis reveals evidence of complex relations amongst the multiple dimensions of segregation and integration. Partial integration on a few of these dimensions is insufficient to overcome the structural stratification of Arabs in contemporary Israeli society.