Immigrants and bureaucrats

by Esther Hertzog

As Israel is primarily a country of immigrants, the state has taken on the responsibility of the settlement and integration of each new group, viewing its role as both benevolent and indispensable to the welfare of migrants. Although these efforts may work to some extent, the author makes clear in this study of Ethiopian immigrants that the overwhelming effect is exactly the opposite: the absorption centers, which are central to Israeli immigration policy, reduce the migrants to the helpless charges of officials who seem more concerned with expanding and perpetuating their respective organizations, and securing their own positions within them. Thus, rather than furthering integration, these centers create dependence on state control and encourage social segregation between the varying immigrant groups - whose lives and social structures are constantly interfered with and who are cast as weak, defenseless, and needy. This unusual ethnography is a rich example of state politics, bureaucr