Gender, class, and network: social structure and migration patterns among transnational Israelis

A growing body of research and theorising explores the experience of groups who maintain ties to multiple nations. However, this research often overemphasises the fluidity and freedom available to migrants and neglects the differential access to networks available to co-nationals who vary in their class, ethnic, gender and affiliational characteristics. Drawing on fieldwork and in-depth interviews with Israeli migrants in the USA and Britain, and returnees in Israel, this study considers how social characteristics and settlement contexts shape access to the networks through which migrants acquire resources and information. Findings suggest that highly educated Israelis of European origins often maintain distinct social networks from their less educated and Middle Eastern or North African co-nationals. Further, middle-class Israelis have greater legal and economic access to migration and return than those with less human and financial capital. Israeli men and single women often prefer life abroad, while married women, especially those with children, wish to return. Finally, destinations influence migrants’ relations with the country of origin: Los Angeles fosters greater assimilation than London. In conclusion, because Israeli migrants are a diverse population, they maintain multiple networks and exhibit dissimilar patterns of connection to both the country of origin and places of destination. In recent years, an approach called transnationalism has been advanced by scholars to better comprehend contemporary migration. The approach conceives of migration as a multi-level process (demographic, political, economic, cultural, familial) that involves various links between two or more settings rather than a discrete event constituted by a permanent move from one nation to another. Transnationalism proposes that by retaining social, cultural and economic connections with many settings, people can surmount the impediments traditionally associated with long distances and international borders. At the same time, the concept reminds us that people often remain intensely involved in the life of their country of origin even though they no longer permanently reside there. Scholars in the social sciences and cultural studies have generated a significant body of work to explore and apply this concept to myriad settings and issues. While the Global Networks 1, 1 (2001) 19–40. ISSN 0020–5949 1