Paradoxes of Migration Policy Rescaling-Local Migration Policies in Tel Aviv in Times of Restrictionism

Scholarship of local migration policies identifies a variegated landscape of convergence and divergence between governance scales in times of restrictionism but pays less attention to the simultaneous dynamics of convergence and divergence that policy rescaling takes within a single national-local space. Arguing that cross-scale compliance and challenge can coexist, I examine how Israeli restrictive policies affect the policy frames that local actors in Tel-Aviv mobilize for incorporating migrants and their institutional relations with national actors. Unbundling discursive and material dimensions of rescaling reveals unexpected combinations of convergence and divergence and its contradictions as a political process of contestation and negotiation.