JEWS, ARABS, RUSSIANS AND FOREIGNERS IN AN ISRAELI CITY:
ETHNIC DIVISIONS AND THE RESTRUCTURING ECONOMY OF TEL-AVIV: 1983-1996

Dr. Gila Menahem
Public policy program
and Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Tel Aviv University
E mail:gilam@post.tau.ac.il;

Prepared for Third International Metropolis Conference
November 30 - December 3, 1998
Zichron Yaacov Israel

1. Introduction

The question of growing inequality and polarization in cities and of the emergence of deep division lines and their relationship with immigration on the one hand and with economic processes on the other hand have been at the focus of interest for a long time ((Mollenkopf and Castells 1991; Fainstein et. al 1992; Waldinger 1996b; Hamnett 1996, 1996; Bruegel 1996).

In the following I will present the major lines of the emerging new ethnic division of labor in Tel Aviv, in the context of large waves of migration to and from the city and urban economic restructuring. Similar to other urban metropolitan centers, Tel Aviv has experienced significant demographic changes in the recent decades. Between the years 1961 and 1988, the city lost approximately 18 percent of its population. The late-1980’s marked a reversal in the trend, with the city experiencing in-migration as well as a large influx of both new immigrants and foreign labor migrants, leading to an increase in population by approximately 20 percent. The growth in population is occurring at the same time that the city has been experiencing economic changes leading to the restructuring of its economy.

What follows falls into three parts: First, data on the demographic flows and economic restructuring in Tel Aviv will be outlined and analyzed. Then some data on the economic restructuring of the city will be presented Then an analysis of the new ethnic division of labor in the city that emerged during the 1990’s will be presented.

Ethnic Divisions in Israel and Tel-Aviv

Israel is considered to be a multi cleavage society on the basis of several lines of division. It is also a society of immigrants, with over half of the Jewish population born outside the country. The Jewish population is distinguished by two major categories, each one comprising about half of this population: Israelis of European descent, known as Ashkenazie, and the Israelis of Asian-African origin, referred to as the Mizrachim.

This geo-cultural division line has a clear stratification dimension, with the Ashkenazie Israelis enjoying an advantaged position in terms of jobs, education and income as compared to the Mizrachi Israelis. The question of the persistence of stratification gaps between these two large population groups has been the subject of extensive research in Israel (Semyonov 1997, Haberfeld 1993, Shavit 1984 ) The residential concentration of the Mizrachim in the periphery of the country is considered one of the factors contributing to the persistence of the ethnic gap. (Spilerman and Habib, 1976).

 Another major line of ethnic division in Israel exists between the Jewish population and the Israeli Arab population. About 83% of the population of Israel is Jewish and the rest are Arab Moslems and Christians. The line of division among Jews and Arabs has religious, citizenship status, stratificational and spatial dimensions (Semyonov and Lewin Epstein 1987; Smooha 1990; Herzog and Shamir 1996). In the 1990s, Israel experienced a large wave of migration, comprising of two groups: a large influx of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union and a large wave of foreign workers whose stay in Israel is considered temporary.

Research on Israeli society is cast in terms of these ethnic cleavages, and they provide the framework for the analysis of changes in the ethnic division of labor in Tel Aviv.

Before turning to this analysis some data regarding economic restructuring in Tel Aviv is presented.

Economic structure and economic restructuring in Tel Aviv

In recent decades the economy of Tel Aviv has undergone changes similar to those that have occurred in other cities experiencing occupational and spatial restructuring. Table 1 presents the distribution of employed in Tel Aviv by the economic sectors and tracks the changes in the city’s economy from the period 1975 to 1994 and highlights the trends discussed above

As it may be seen, between 1975 and 1989, the number of jobs in Tel Aviv rose from 244,000 to 259,600, representing an increase of 8.1%. After 1989, the job growth rate intensified and employment numbers grew by a much higher rate of 23.4%, from 259,600 jobs in 1989 to 320,500 by 1994. Thus the early 1990s are clearly an era of revival in the city.

The overall economic growth does conceal important differences between various sectors of the urban economy, for while some sectors have enjoyed uniform growth, other industries have suffered a decline. The financial and business services clearly represent a growing sector, for while in 1975, 38,000 were employed in the sector, by 1994, 75,900 were employed, representing an increase by 99.7 percent. Other growing sectors include the retail, hotel, and restaurant sector, which increased by 51 percent from 1975 to 1994, and the personal services sector, which has increased by 64% over the same period. The number of those employed in manufacturing, on the other hand, declined from 1975 to 1991, by 29.1 percent. Coinciding with the arrival of many immigrants who found employment in manufacturing such as garment factories, the number of manufacturing jobs increased again from the years 1991 to 1994 by 14.9 percent.

The combination of the above factors indicate that Tel Aviv is going through an economic restructuring process since the mid 1980s, thereby enabling the application of the restructuring hypotheses in the further analysis of the city.

Population flows and the changing ethnic composition of Tel Aviv 1972-1994

In 1948, after the state of Israel was established, Tel Aviv’s Jewish population numbered 248,000. Growing throughout the 1950’s Tel Aviv reached a peak of 386,000 residents in 1961. The next two decades were then characterized by a negative immigration balance and the city experienced a dwindling of its population by 18 percent. In 1988 the city numbered 317,000 inhabitants.

The migration flows and other demographic processes that took place altered the structure of the labor force in Tel Aviv in terms of ethnic group representation. Table 2 presents changes in the ethnic composition according to the geocultural group and citizenship status.

Jewish veteran immigrants

Until 1988 one major ethnic division line in the city was that within the Jewish population, between the Jews who arrived from European countries and those who arrived from Asian and African countries (Ashkenazie and Mizrachim in the city).

The proportion of those of European-American origin in the labor force decreased from 54 percent in 1983 to 42 percent in 1994.

Regarding the geocultural split among the Jewish population the questions arise:

A. How do the gaps between the Ashkenazie and Mizrachim in the city change?

B. How do the gaps between the groups within the city compare to the gaps between Ashkenazie and Mizrachim in the country as a whole?

The Arab Minority

A second major division line was that between the Jewish population and the Arab population in the city. The Arab population numbered about 3,000 residents in 1948, as most of the 70,000 Arabs who resided in Jaffa sought refuge in neighboring Arab countries during the 1948 war. The Arab population reached the size of about 15,000 in the 1990s. It is a small ethnic minority consisting in 1994 approximately 4.6% of the total city population. The interesting question is what changes occurred in the socioeconomic status of the urban Arab minority as compared to its situation all over the country? The restructuring approach predicts that native minorities may face a decline of opportunities in urban restructuring economies (Waldinger 1992).

The New Immigrants of the 1990s’

The year 1989 marked the beginning of a new phase in the demographic transformation of the city. Between 1989 and 1994, the city experienced a large influx of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union who received citizenship upon arrival. This was part of large wave of immigration to Israel starting in 1989 which by 1994 added about 548,000 new citizens to the country. About 35,000 of them turned to the city of Tel Aviv, adding approximately 10% to the city population within a period of five years.

Upon arrithese immigrants were characterized with outstanding high human capital, with approximately two thirds of them holding academic degrees, mainly in scientific and technical areas (Israel, 1997). The two largest groups of occupations among them were engineering and medicine. It was a major government priority to ensure the successful occupational integration of these immigrants. Generous governmental support was provided for job retraining and government-funded incentives were offered to employers to hire immigrants. Local municipal governments, competing to attract these highly educated immigrants, made efforts to help integrate immigrants into their local economies and lead them to choose its location for permanent residence.

The question then arises: how did the immigrants that chose to reside in Tel Aviv do with regard to occupational and economic achievements when compared to those in other locations? The occupational integration of this highly qualified flow of immigrants into the urban restructuring economy in Tel Aviv is of much interest and may shed light on the theoretical controversies regarding the questions of the fit of immigrants and restructuring urban economies (Kasarda 1983; Sassen 1991; Waldinger 1992).

Foreign Workers in the 1990s

The city also experienced a large influx of foreign workers who began arriving to Tel Aviv in the mid 1990s. Foreign workers began coming in large numbers to Israel since the early 1990s. Legal foreign workers numbered in 1996 about 103,000 persons and they constituted 5.1 percent of the total population employed in Israel. (Kondor 1997; Bartram 1998). In addition it is estimated that a similar number of foreign workers stay in Israel on illegal terms, having outstayed their permits. Those labor migrants who are illegal or undocumented, face daily fears of being expelled from the country. As a result of poor governmental control, labor migrants do not benefit any of the social security rights that are guaranteed to non citizens (Kondor 1997). Due to the nature of their status, labor migrants represent a new vulnerable minority in Israel.

The city of Tel Aviv houses a very high share of these workers both in relative and absolute terms. In fact large areas in the city are known as foreign workers’ neighborhoods (Bartram 1998: 311). While no systematic survey of these worker has been taken yet in the city, officials estimate that at least 30,000 foreign workers currently reside within the municipal boundaries of the city and they add about 9 percent to the city’s population (Municipal report 1997). The labor migrants in the city represent a variety of nationalities and religions, including Eastern European countries, such as Rumania, Asian countries such as the Philippines, Latin America , and African countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. The analysis of this group of migrants will enable us to deal with the theoretical issue of the possible emergence of an urban underclass.

Taking place in an era of urban economic restructuring, the demographic compositional changes in the city have the potential to produce a new ethnic division of labor. The major theoretical questions that will lead the examination of the changes in the occupational opportunities of the ethnic groups in Tel Aviv are:

1. To what extent does the occupational and income polarization characterize Tel Aviv in comparison to the rest of the country?
2. How does the restructuring process affect veteran Jewish population, the Arab local population, and the recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union?
3. Does the pattern of the occupational integration of the recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union fit the predictions of the urban economic restructuring approach?
4. Does the arrival of the foreign workers to Tel Aviv mark the emergence of an urban underclass ?

The analysis is based on the census of 1983 and labor force surveys.

Polarization in a restructuring urban economy

First the data regarding whole city population is displayed.

Income gaps are a major aspect of the polarization process. The lowest average incomes were found in personal services, both in the city and the country as a whole. The gaps between the highest income occupational category (managerial jobs) and the lowest one (services) were lower in 1983 in the whole country than in 1994. But the gaps in Tel -Aviv became more pronounced in 1994 (5.9) compared to the national figure (4.6) The ratio of gaps between 1983 and 1994 all over the country was 1.26 while in Tel Aviv it amounted to 1.50. (See figure 1)

Table 3 presents the changes that occurred in the occupational distributions in Tel Aviv and the country as whole during the period 1983-1994. As it may seen both on the city level and the national level the midlevel occupations categories declined between 1983 and 1994. However the decline in the midlevel occupational categories in Tel Aviv is much more pronounced than on the national level. Within the span of 11 years, midlevel occupational among the veteran population in the city decreased in 10.3 percent whereas on the national level it declined in 5.3 percent. Thus is may be said that occupational polarization in the city is more intensive than in the country as a whole. It is also apparent that the influx of immigrants in the 1990s’ (not including migrant workers) still increased occupational polarization in the city as compared to the country as a whole. This issue will be discussed in more details below.

Table 3: Proportion of occupational change and polarization measure in Israel and in Tel Aviv 1983-1994

x2=555.6 Sig= .0000

Ethnic division of labor in Tel-Aviv: 1983-1994

Ethnic differences among the Jewish population: Ashkenazie and Mizrachim

As aforementioned, the geocultural split among the Jewish population Ashkenazie (European-American origin) and Mizrachim (Asian-African origin) is of major importance in Israel. The population of European-American origin (EA) and Asian-African origin (ASAF) groups in the city are compared over the period of three decades, and these results are then compared to the ethnic gaps among the Jewish population in Israel during the same period. Three dimensions of the socioeconomic realms will be compared: representation in occupations, economic sectors and income gaps.

Table 4 shows the representation of the geo-cultural groups in Israel and Tel Aviv in the three upper levels of the occupational scale: academic, professional and managerial jobs.

 

Table 4: Percent in Academic, professional and managerial occupations by geo-cultural origin of those residing and working in Israel and Tel Aviv 1983,1989,1994.

	Israel			Tel Aviv
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)
% in Acad., prof. And mangl. Occup	AsAf	EA	Gaps ( 2-1) (1\2)	AsAf	EA	Gap (5-4) (4\5)
1983	19.2	42.6	23.4 (0.45)	15.0	42.3	27.3 (0.35)
1989	20.8	46.6	25.8 (0.45)	17.4	46.2	28.8 (0.37)
1994	23.6	48.8	25.3 (0.48)	20.8	50.5	29.7 (0.41)

 

Table 4a:
Average monthly income in selected economic sectors and occupations in Israel and
Tel Aviv among veterans and immigrants 1983,1989,1994

period of immigration: before 1989 after 1989
	Israel	Tel Aviv	Israel	Tel Aviv	Israel	Tel Aviv	Israel	Tel Aviv
Year	1983**	1983**	1989*	1989*	1994*	1994*	1994*	1994*
Panel A
Sector
Manufa.	28,025	29,351	1,918	2,059	3,612	3,052	2,090.	1,512
Indus.	39,756	36,177	2,593	2,521	5,430	5,914	2,465	2,090
Constr	29,407	37,816	2,153	1,747	4,531	3,256	3,033	3,600
Commer&Rest&Hotels.	27,915	32,529	1,900	2,012	3,925	5,647	1,928	2,177
Trans.	37,879	38,721	2,418	2,075	5,096	4,552	2,906	--
Financ & Bus. Serv.	38,822	42,540	2,503	2,709	5,172	5,136	2,589	2,925
Public Sev.	31,381	36,262	1,893	2,009	3,917	3,579	2,964	2,224
Person.Ser.	22,287	26,294	1,233	1,292	2,352	2,791	1,381	1,453
Panel B
Occupation
Acad,	52,453	55,187	2,967	3,049	6,124	5,711	3,917	2,001
Prof, Tech	3,522	40,806	2,127	>2,263	4,371	4,303	3,355	6,563
Manag.	63,792	72,225	4,157	4,513	9,196	11,240	6,716	-
Cler.	28,139	28,461	1,873	1,838	3,762	3,639	2,228	2,543
Sales	27,606	31,527	1,776	1,825	4,200	5,280	1,676	1,415
Services	18,710	19,961	1,119	1,008	2,159	1,973	1,355	1,742
Skilled Wo	30,595	31,247	2,025	1,652	3,992	3,202	2,354	2,027
Semi skilled	29,470	33,406	2,002	1,962	3,813	2,940	2,184	1,963
Un skilled	21,673	18,395	1,625	1,208	2,221	1,308	2,086	2,990
Total	32,690	39,037	2,082	2,171	4,301	4,450	2,357	2,087
N	158,108	31,093	5149	512	4605	445	848	61

* New Israeli Shekel
**Old Shekel .
The New Israeli Shekel (NIS) was intrduced in 1985 in the value of 1\1000 of the Old Shekel

As it may be readily noted the gap between the representation of the population of European-American origin and those of Asian-African origin in academic, scientific, professional and managerial occupations is larger in Tel Aviv than in the rest of the country in the three points of comparison: 1983, 1989 and 1994. This results from both a lower representation of those of Asian-African origin in Tel Aviv than in other parts of the country in the high levels of the occupational scale, and a larger representation of those of European-American origin in Tel Aviv than in Israel in those occupations. Table 5 presents the distribution among high mid and low occupations and figure 2 presents the relevant graph

 

Figure 2:  Ratio of Incomes of Geo-Cultural Groups in Tel-Aviv and Israel

			Israel - gap between AsAf and EuAm     Tel Aviv - gap between AsAf and EuAm
1983 (Old shekel)	1989 (NIS)	1994 (NIS)

  

Table 5

Occupational Polarization by Geocultural origin and locality -1994

	Jewish Veteran	Asia- African origin	Europe- American Origin	Israeli Arabs	Russian Immigrants
Israel	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)
	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0
High level occups	33.6	23.6	48.6	37.1	24.5
Mid level occups	39.2	44.6	36.2	25.5	32.1
Low level occups	27.2	31.8	15.2	37.4	43.4
N	32,555	15,801	14,110	342	3318
Tel Aviv
	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0
High level occups	35.7	20.2	50.8	24.2	29.3
Mid level occups	42.3	44.7	34.9	22.9	25.2
Low level occups	22.0	35.1	14.3	52.9	45.5
N	2269	882	1,158	70	335

The analysis of income further established the contention of higher gaps in the city than at the national level among the geo cultural categories. As Table 6 and figure 3 shows the gaps in Tel Aviv of 1994 are considerably larger than all over the country, compared to 1989 when those gaps equaled. The larger gap in the city results from the considerably higher incomes of those of European-American origin who reside and work in Tel Aviv compared to their incomes in the country all over. This may reflect the observation that they are much more represented in the expanding and lucrative sectors of the city such as finance, banking and business and in managerial occupations.

 

Figure 3. Changes in proportion of high mid and low level occupations in Israel and Tel Aviv 1983-1994

 

Table 6:
Income differences among geocultural groups in Israel and Tel Aviv in 1983,1989 and 1994

	Israel		Tel Aviv
	AsAf	EuAm	AsAf	EuAm
1983 (Old Shekel)
Monthly Income	28,895.29 (26,404.62)	38,752.10 (40673.10)	27,955 (29,696)	41,537 (51,201)
Ratio AsAf\EuAm	74.5		67.3
1989 (NIS)
Monthly Income	1832.96 (1347.26)	2415.8 (1935.4)	1865.59 (1449.4)	2458.2 (2121.3)
Ratio AsAf\EuAm	74.3		76.1
1994 (NIS)
Monthly Income	3745.2 (3637.8)	4258.3 (4242.5)	3637.9 (3816.7)	4521.2 (5668.1)
Ratio AsAf\EuAm	87.9		80.4

 

 

Furthermore, as it may be seen below in Table 7 which presents incomes by branches and occupations of the geocultural groups, the lower incomes of those of Asian and African origin result not only from them being concentrated more heavily icertain branches and occupation, but also from the fact that in each sector or occupation they earn less than the Europeans. The gaps with this respect are larger in Tel Aviv than in the country as a whole.

 

 

Table 7:
Average incomes by economic sectors and occupational categories by geocultural origin and place of residence -1994 (in NIS)

	AsAf		EuAm			AsAf		EuAm
	Israel	Tel Aviv	Israel	Tel Aviv		Israel	Tel Aviv	Israel	Tel Aviv
Year
Sector					occup
Manufa.	3,416	2.669	4,383	4,870	Acad,	4,687	3,734	6,696	5,995
Indus.	4,657	5,259	6,315	6,607	Prof, Tech	4,127	4,322	4,495	4,996
Constr	4,450	3,427	5,829	2,163	Manag.	8,542	9,928	9,718	12,158
Commer & Rest & Hotels.	3,316	4,063	4,869	7,078	Cler.	3,584	3,402	3,937	3,847
Trans.	4,696	4,514	5,867	4,776	Sales	3,875	4,569	4,760	5,548
7Financ&Bus. Serv.	4,368	4,092	5,974	6,627	Services	2,123	1,916	2,159	1,975
Public Sev.	3,452	2,775	4,498	4,050	Skiled Wo	3,845	3,098	4,532	3,965
Person.Ser.	2,337	2,846	2,391	2,953	Semi skil	3,717	2,982	4,301	2,441
					Un skil	2,126	1,173	2,874	1,913

 

Ethnic minority in a restructuring urban economy: the Arab residents in Tel Aviv

As aforementioned, studies on the Arab citizens in Israel attest to their subordinate socioeconomic status. The situation of the Arab residents of the city of Tel Aviv is not significantly different.

Compared to the Jewish residents, Arab citizens of Tel Aviv have lower education, occupational status and income, thereby constituting the veteran group with the lowest social standing in the city. Yet, at the same time, until the mid 1980s’, the Arab residents of Tel Aviv enjoyed a advantaged status compared to Arab residents in other cities in Israel, in terms of occupational status and incomes. However, since the early 1990s, an analysis of Labor Force Surveys of 1991,1992 and 1993 (Semyonov et al 1997) shows that, as opposed to in the past, the local Arab population, as compared to Arabs residing in other Israeli cities, has both lower representation in academic occupations, and lower income returns on education and occupation. A sharp decline in the percentage of local Arab employed in public services and governmental jobs, the authors claim, may be one of the reasons for this deterioration of status.

The data regarding 1994 examined in the present research shows the continuation of the trend described above. The degree of occupational polarization for the year 1994 (see table 7 column 4) shows that among the Arab residents of the city occupational polarization is wider as compared to that of Israeli Arab citizens in other Israeli cities in 1994.

 

The immigrants from the former Soviet Union in Tel Aviv

This section analyzes patterns of occupational integration of new immigrants of the 1990s’ from the former USSR, residing and employed in Tel Aviv and in other part of Israel in comparison to the veteran population in Israel and in Tel Aviv. As it can readily be observed in Table 8, the occupational distribution of the immigrants in Tel Aviv is strikingly different from the general Tel Aviv labor force, and also differs substantially from immigrants from the former Soviet Union in other parts of the country. The most pronounced difference is the high concentration of Tel Aviv immigrant’s concentration in low status service jobs. This is expressed in the comparison of the immigrants both to the general Tel Aviv labor force and to immigrants all over Israel. Among the Tel Aviv immigrants, we find that more than forty percent were employed in 1994 in service works, most of them as janitors, institutional and home nursing and domestic aid.

 

Table 8:
Occupation in Israel of Russian new immigrants and veteran Israelis, age 25-65
1992, 1994, total population and Tel Aviv residents (percentage)

 

	Veteran Population				Russian Immigrants
	Tel Aviv		Israel		Tel-Aviv		Israel
	1992	1994	1992	1994	1992	1994	1992	1994
Occupation
Academic	11.6	14.4	10.4	10.4	5.7	7.3	9.6	10.8
Professional	18.6	18.9	19.6	19.3	12.5	11.4	10.2	13.2
Manager	6.2	7.2	6.1	6.2	??	0.4	0.1	0.5
Clerical	19.1	18.5	16.0	18.1	5.7	4.6	3.4	5.3
Sales	11.5	12.2	8.3	9.5	4.7	5.0	2.7	4.2
Services	13.7	12.1	13.0	12.5	35.9	43.1	24.5	22.2
Agriculture	0.5	0.8	3.0	2.9	??	1.5	2.8	2.1
Skilled workers	7.4	7.4	11.8	10.1	15.6	11.8	22.2	20.9
Semi-skilled	8.8	7.3	9.4	9.0	14.6	11.1	12.2	9.7
Unskilled	2.5	1.4	2.4	2.1	5.2	4.2	11.3	11.2
TOTAL	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0
	Tel Aviv		Israel		Tel Aviv		Israel
Economic Sector	1992	1994	1992	1994	1992	1994	1992	1994
Manufc	8.8	7.9	8.5	7.8	14.4	17.4	17.5	17.6
Industry	7.5	8.6	13.2	12.7	14.4	8.7	20.9	19.8
Electricity & Agriculture	1.3	1.6	5.4	5.9	??	??	0.6	1.0
Construction	4.0	3.2	4.7	4.5	7.5	4.0	9.0	6.3
Commerce, Restaurants & Hotels	16.3	16.9	12.2	13.4	17.2	18.6	10.2	11.7
Transportation	8.2	6.8	6.2	6.0	2.7	3.6	2.5	2.8
Finance & Business Services	19.5	21.0	8.3	8.7	7.8	9.9	6.7	8.2
Public Services	24.9	25.2	34.7	34.9	25.7	22.9	22.4	22.5
Personal Services	9.5	8.9	6.9	7.1	10.7	14.6	10.4	9.4
N =	2,754	3,919	25,363	26,080	310	331	2,353	3,318

 

Of no lesser interest is the comparison of the immigrants from the former Soviet Union residing in Tel Aviv with those immigrants living in other parts of the country. The proportion of these immigrants occupied in low status service jobs in Tel Aviv is double the proportion of immigrants from the former Soviet Union occupied in those jobs in Israel (43.1% compared to 22.1%), while the proportion of skilled laborers in industry, as well as in professional and technical occupations, is considerably lower. These observations have a double significance in the context of this study. First, they lend support to the restructuring hypothesis, demonstrating that opportunities in the service industry are much more prevalent in Tel Aviv than in other parts of the country. In spite of the high human capital that characterized the immigrants upon arrival, they found employment mainly in low status service jobs, which flourish in the restructuring economy. The large proportion of these immigrants in the lower echelons of the occupational ladder is part of the process of polarization the city.

Turning back to table 5 (column 5) which presents measures for assessing occupational polarization it may be readily seen the immigrants residing in Tel Aviv demonstrated higher proportions in the low and mid level occupations.

Table 9 shows the difference in incomes between immigrants in Tel Aviv and immigrants in Israel and compares them to the figures of the veteran population in the city and all over the country in 1992 and 1994. As it may be readily seen incomes of immigrants in Tel Aviv lag behind those of immigrants all over the country considerably. In 1992 immigrants in Israel earned on average 17% more than those in the city, and in 1994, this gap somewhat decreased to 14%. Moreover, the direction of the gaps among the immigrants is in opposite to that among the veteran population. Among the veteran population we observe higher incomes among the city’s population than the national average. Furthermore, when we compare the gaps among the veteran and immigrant population in Israel, with gaps among the city immigrants and veteran population, we observe that the gaps within the city both in 1992 and 1994 are larger than those on the national level. In 1994 the average income of the immigrants in the city was 0.46 of that of the veteran population, while on the national level it reached 0.55 of the average income of veterans.

 

Table 9:
Monthly incomes of veterans and immigrants in Israel and Tel Aviv in 1994(NIS)

 

	Veterans	Immigrants	Immigrant income as % of veteran inc,	Veterans	Immigrants	Immigrant income as % of veteran inc
	Israel	Israel		Tel Aviv	Tel Aviv
1994 N	4295.8 (4183)	2378.2 (788)	55%	4455.4 (448)	2087.6 (61)	47%

To summarize this section: the findings regarding the new immigrants show that, in general, immigrants in Israel have made it better and are better off than those residing in the restructuring urban center of Tel Aviv. This conclusion is reached when we compare immigrants in the city with immigrants in Israel, and find the latter have higher incomes. But one comes to grasp the full meaning of these findings with regard to social divisions in the city when one remembers that not only is the local immigrants' income lower than their counterparts in other localities, but also at the same time the income of the local veteran population is higher than in other localities. This points to a more distinct and clear line of division within the restructuring city among veterans and immigrants.

 

Labor Migrants in Tel Aviv

Starting to arrive not more than a decade ago, by the mid-1990s labor migrants have already added between 10-12% to the city's population at the mid 1990s. Labor migrants are becoming an important element in the new ethnic division of labor in Tel Aviv, with implications on the urban labor market. In terms of the occupational categories that have previously been discussed, labor migrants are employed mainly in lowest service jobs such as domestic cleaning or nursing, institutional janitors, and construction.

While foreign workers are found all over the country, the formation of labor migrants community in the city of Tel Aviv takes a specific form, typical of large urban centers. Tel Aviv houses the majority of labor migrants from central Africa and East Asia who work as domestic help in the entire metropolitan area. Among these migrants compared to those that arrive from Eastern Europe a larger proportion tend to stay after their permits have expired thus becoming illegal on the one hand, and a much larger proportion have established families and have children on the other hand. In fact, most of the foreign workers in Israel who have children reside in Tel Aviv (HaAretz, July 20 1998 b-6). In some areas of the city those children constitute more than half of the age group of 0-6 years. A major reason that attracts the large share of these migrants to the city is the large stock of deteriorated housing in rundown areas, many of them partly abandoned due to the massive outmigration from the city in the 1970s’ and 1980s. In these areas, police raids to trace illegal immigrants has become a daily practice.

Labor migrants in Tel Aviv may thus easily be defined as comprising a new underclass in the city in the terms defined by Fainstein and Harloe (1992). They have very few legal rights to protect them from employers` exploitation and in the constant menace of being expelled by the state. Both legal and illegal foreign workers are denied any possibility of entering the avenues of social mobility in Israel. This resufrom legal limitations on the areas of occupation of labor migrants in Israel on the one hand, and the absence of avenues to attain citizenship.

Located at the southern most deteriorated areas of the city, where their concentration has created new segregated public spaces, this new urban underclass in Tel Aviv forms a spatial community. Comprising about 10 percent the local population these new strata is bound to have yet unexamined impacts on the urban social structure and labor market.

However, the above suggests that a main factor in the formation of the new underclass in Tel Aviv is to be found in the incorporation regime of the state of Israel with regard to labor migrants. In contrast to some European states which have implemented some measures of incorporation of such workers (Soysal 1994) such measures have not been taken yet in Israel.

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