Fighting for dignity : migrant lives at Israel's margins /

Fighting for Dignity explores the conflicted experience of temporary labor migrants in Israel. Initially invited to fill labor market needs because of the state's shutting borders to Palestinian workers and radical demographic changes in Israel, such migrants have become uneasy co-residents in a country seeking ways to draw in labor without accommodating laborers. Using ethnographic methods and detailed description, Willen (Univ. of Connecticut) explores the effects of Israel's decision to invoke an aggressive anti-migrant policy, using mass detentions and deportations to force irregular and legal labor migrants to leave Israel. The book challenges how "legal nonexistence" is experienced by shifting focus from the standard examination of state policy goals to analysis of how policy carves itself into the bodies of those affected. Investigating the experience of being illegally present, the author inquires how being "othered" in physical, psychological, economic, social, temporal, and cultural terms feels. Willen asserts that searching and keeping one's dignity despite a barrage of assaults is a central human concern and critical for understanding labor migrants. Though she struggles with understanding wrongdoing by migrants themselves, her inquiry is thought provoking and intriguing. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Robin A. Harper, York College