Rujan, Anca; (2024) “All They See Is Black”: The Experiences, Mutual Interactions, and Identities of Ethiopian Jews and African Asylum Seekers in Contemporary Israel. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Given the saliency of the increasingly violent Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the ever-growing number of Palestinian refugees, little attention is given to other issues that are of great importance for understanding Israeli society and politics. This research fills a gap in the academic literature on Israel by focusing on the experiences, mutual interactions, and identity formation processes of Ethiopian Jews and African asylum seekers in the unique socio-ethnic and political climate of contemporary Israel. Despite not having anything in common religiously or politically and despite having immigrated to the Jewish State in the past four decades for different reasons, these two studied communities have been experiencing similar policies, societal attitudes, and socio-economic challenges in Israel. By employing an original qualitative methodology, combining semi-structured interviews with Ethiopian Jews, African asylum seekers, and other Israeli key actors, participant observation in Tel Aviv, and archival and secondary research, this thesis will shed light on how these similar treatments and policies have influenced the lives, interactions, and identities of the two studied groups. Moreover, this study aims at answering the following research questions – is there any affinity among Ethiopian Jews and African asylum seekers in Israel, irrespective of their religion?; are Israel’s social policies and Israelis’ attitudes towards these communities influencing their modes of self-identifying and seeing each other?; and, finally, are there any pre-existing social mechanisms fostering feelings of kinship between the studied communities? To answer these questions, this research will draw on elements of history, politics, international human and refugee rights law, anthropology, psychology, sociology, and philosophy. As will be revealed, the findings of this cross-sectional project with case-study elements have both theoretical and practical implications for the multi-disciplinary and ever evolving fields of Israeli Studies and Migration Studies.

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