Labour migration and racialisation: Labour market mechanisms and labour migration control policies in Israel

This article deals with the modes through which labour migration recruitment and control policies have enacted the racialisation of a new category of migrants previously unknown in Israeli society: that of non-Jewish and non-Palestinian labour migrants, adding a new stratum of disenfranchised people into an already complex and tension ridden society. Drawing on the work of Robert Miles, I see the racialisation of migrant workers in Israel as the result of political and social regulation forces conducted first and foremost by the state as a means of 'crisis management' in times of social and political unrest. Two regulatory sites have been central in the politics of racialisation of labour migrants in Israel: the binding system and deportation policy. My main argument is that while the labour market mechanism has drawn on the de-politicisation of the role of the state in controlling labour migration through the privatisation of its regulatory functions into the hands of non-state intermediaries and employers, the deportation policy has engaged in a continuous politicisation of the phenomenon premised on the representation of labour migrants as an offence to state sovereignty and law and as a threat to the demographic balance of the Jewish nation-state. Both state mechanisms have operated in a complementary way and have not only aimed to maximise profits from and control over labour migrants, but have also served as a central means to actively prevent them from becoming rights-bearing residents. Moreover, the apparent contradiction between state and market logics that underlies the labour migrant system combines a function of misrecognition that is crucial in reinforcing the legitimacy of state induced racialisation.