Towards an Emerging Distinction between State and People: Return Migration Programs, Diaspora Management and Agentic Migrants

Dani Kranz

doi:10.59670/ml.v17i1.770

Authors

Dani Kranz Two Foxes Consulting, Germany Bergische University Wuppertal, Germany Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59670/ml.v17i1.770

Keywords:

Family-related migration, civic stratification, social reproduction, citizenship, Hong Kong

Abstract

While Jewish immigration to the State of Israel is a key component of Zionist ideology, emigration has been discouraged and vilified. Yet, Israeli Jewish citizens have been leaving throughout. This paper chronicles the approaches of the State of Israel towards its citizen diaspora, which shifted from rejection to the realisation of Israelis abroad as a fait accompli, and a resource for the state. At the same time, it depicts the self-organisation of Israeli citizens abroad, and their on-going ties to the State of Israel, even if they are highly critical of it. To elaborate on this dialectic, the paper zooms in on Israeli citizens in Germany. In consequence, I argue that the secularised notion of the ‘love for the Jewish people’ (ahavat yisrael) can be extended to ahava be’ad ha’medinat yisrael (love for the State of Israel) in the present to conceptualise the on-going relationship of Israeli citizens abroad to Israel, and its implementation by the state.

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Author Biography

Dani Kranz, Two Foxes Consulting, Germany Bergische University Wuppertal, Germany Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

Dani Kranz is the director of Two Foxes Consulting, senior research fellow at Bergische University Wuppertal, Germany, and an external research affiliate of the Zelikovitz Center for Jewish Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.Trained in anthropology, social psychology and history, her thematic expertise covers migration, ethnicity, law, state/stateliness, political life, organisations as well as memory politics. She has been conducting long-term fieldwork in Europe and the Middle East. Her current work concerns the genesis of moral economies in Germany as well as the perceptions of Israeli Jewish and Palestinian/Arab Muslims migrants against the backdrop of German history, and the Middle East conflict.

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