![\"Cover](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Willen-book-cover.jpg\")
The book, titled Fighting for Dignity: Migrant Lives at Israel\u2019s Margins<\/a>, draws on Willen\u2019s ethnographic fieldwork and personal relationships with migrants in Tel Aviv, Israel. In it, she shares stories of people\u2019s lives: their migration experiences, and their daily struggles as migrants, but also as parents, friends, employees, parishioners, and community members.<\/p>\n\u201cBeyond just struggle or suffering, the book gives voice to the hopes, dreams, and desires of the people I came to know,\u201d she says. \u201cIt also explores how ideologies and government policies create dividing lines, and how they impose ideas of inclusion and exclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the Second <\/a>Intifada<\/a> in 2000, military closures on the West Bank meant that Palestinians, who were vital to the Israeli workforce, could no longer get to their jobs. So, the government granted companies permission to recruit migrant workers from Thailand to work in agriculture, and from Eastern Europe and China to work in construction.<\/p>\n Other major sources of migrants were Filipino in-home caregivers, recruited to care for Israel\u2019s aging population, and unauthorized migrants from Africa, South America, and elsewhere who came with Christian pilgrimage groups.<\/p>\n Between the mid-90s and early 2000s, Israel\u2014especially Tel Aviv\u2014changed because of these migrations. By 2002, unemployment was high. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon\u2019s government estimated that there were about 300,000 unemployed Israelis and about 300,000 migrant workers.<\/p>\n At that time, Sharon launched a mass deportation campaign, targeting city dwellers and those who looked visibly different, says Willen. The campaign began by casting unauthorized migrants as criminals in radio public service announcements, suggesting that migrants were destroying Israeli society.<\/p>\n \u201cThe announcements had sinister music and a voice that essentially said, \u2018These migrants are a problem and they need to go,\u2019\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Willen had already been working with migrant communities in Tel Aviv for two years on issues of women\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cMuch 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,\u201d explains Willen.<\/p>\n 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\u2014the Israeli weekend. But then the police started arresting on weekends.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter-school programs, churches, soccer leagues\u2014community programs that had flourished just collapsed,\u201d Willen says. \u201cThe strategy was: Let\u2019s make things uncomfortable so that people will leave.\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u2019s apartments and homes.<\/p>\n Over time, not only did communities collapse, but many Israelis began to internalize and believe the government\u2019s xenophobic messages, says Willen.<\/p>\n Since the Second Intifada, private companies have made billions of dollars charging recruitment fees\u2014often illegally\u2014to 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 \u201cillegal,\u201d not the recruitment agencies, she points out, likening the situation to the U.S. agricultural sector.<\/p>\n In 2007, another wave of migrants\u2014this time asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea\u2014began 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.<\/p>\n \u201cToday 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,\u201d Willen says.<\/p>\n Willen\u2019s book points out that Israeli leaders seem to miss historical lessons from the discrimination, oppression, and genocide perpetrated against Jewish people.<\/p>\n 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\u2019 motivations.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cMigrants are absolutely integral to the economy as we know it,\u201d she notes. \u201cThey are woven into the social fabric of society as well.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThey seek opportunity, and often safety, elsewhere precisely because their deepest goals, values, and commitments are on the line,\u201d she says. \u201cTheir commitments to family, to religious faith, to personal integrity, to living a flourishing life\u2014a life of meaning and dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In her new book, Sarah Willen examines Israel’s campaign against migrant communities, drawing parallels with the U.S. today. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":153394,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,2076,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1860],"class_list":["post-153392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-research","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-03 12:28:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153392"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":153509,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153392\/revisions\/153509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/153394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153392"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=153392"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=153392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}