Anthropologist Chronicles Israel's Deportation Campaign

Willen had already been working with migrant communities in Tel Aviv for two years on issues of women’s reproductive health. But once the deportation campaign was announced, she shifted her focus. She spent time speaking with people in their homes, at parties, and in church services; attended community gatherings; and volunteered regularly at three advocacy organizations.

“Much of what I write about in the book is how the possibility of arrest and deportation was ever-present, and how it led people to move differently through space, plan their time differently, and take on a deeply embodied sense of vigilance,” explains Willen.

A migrant who, for example, needed to take two different buses from her home to a neighborhood where she regularly cleaned houses, would steel herself against exposure on public transportation during rush hour. At first, says Willen, people could breathe a little easier on Fridays and Saturdays—the Israeli weekend. But then the police started arresting on weekends.

“After-school programs, churches, soccer leagues—community programs that had flourished just collapsed,” Willen says. “The strategy was: Let’s make things uncomfortable so that people will leave.”

Community leaders, including pastors, and men, were targeted for deportation, with the strategy of unraveling community networks and stranding women and children, she says, adding that about 40,000 people were deported, and 100,000 others left as a result of intimidation. During the deportation campaign, the immigration police even cultivated informants, who left marks in permanent marker on the doors of people’s apartments and homes.

Over time, not only did communities collapse, but many Israelis began to internalize and believe the government’s xenophobic messages, says Willen.

Since the Second Intifada, private companies have made billions of dollars charging recruitment fees—often illegally—to bring workers from China, the Philippines, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere, says Willen. But if their employers violate the contract, or a job falls through, the migrants are cast as “illegal,” not the recruitment agencies, she points out, likening the situation to the U.S. agricultural sector.

In 2007, another wave of migrants—this time asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea—began settling into the same Tel Aviv neighborhoods. Despite a short-lived moment of empathy for refugees from Darfur, the idea that the country should be for people who are Jewish persisted, she says.

“Today these neighborhoods are home to thousands of political refugees, who are more vulnerable and less capable of integrating because of the traumas from political conflict in their home countries and the harrowing journeys that followed,” Willen says.

Willen’s book points out that Israeli leaders seem to miss historical lessons from the discrimination, oppression, and genocide perpetrated against Jewish people.

But Willen says that increasing numbers of Israeli activists work in human rights groups to provide social welfare and medical services to migrants. Willen conducted fieldwork at three organizations, including a hotline for migrants, a clinic, and a municipal aid organization, to understand the activists’ motivations.

Willen points out that the Israeli shift to anti-migrant policies parallels current U.S. policies, the rise of nationalism and the criminalization of immigration. She proposes that people think more about how migrants are part of larger systems, like the caregiving industry in Israel and the agricultural industry in the U.S.

“Migrants are absolutely integral to the economy as we know it,” she notes. “They are woven into the social fabric of society as well.”

Most migrants do not cross borders because they have criminal tendencies, and treating them as criminals only serves to cripple their lives and their ability to contribute to society, says Willen.

“They seek opportunity, and often safety, elsewhere precisely because their deepest goals, values, and commitments are on the line,” she says. “Their commitments to family, to religious faith, to personal integrity, to living a flourishing life—a life of meaning and dignity.”