Conflated Fantasies, Collapsing Fantasies: On the Symbolic Capital of Israeli Jewish Migrants to Germany
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Abstract
The number of Israelis in Germany is rather small, with about 20,000 total (Rebhun/Kranz/Sünker 2022: 65), and an additional 5,000 to 10,000 individuals who have a statistically inferred relationship to Israel. Most of this current volume owes to movements to Germany between the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s (ibid.); migration has plateaued since. Drawing on socio-demographic research conducted within the framework of “The Migration of Israeli Jews to Germany since 1990” (GIF 1186), and amending it by on-going, multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork carried out amongst Israelis and Jews in Germany since 2002, this paper seeks to address the institutional infrastructures of migration and of social class. While ‘creative class’ (Florida 2002) Israelis migrate to and live in Berlin (Cohen/Gold 2022), they tend to be over-reported in the media, thanks to specific German and Israeli identity investments (Kranz 2022). These Israelis, or more precisely, Israeli Jews, are a smoke screen; they are interpreted as the replacements for the displaced and murdered Jews with the ‘add on’ of Israeliness. They make for a fine case study of understanding German/Jewish/Israeli relations, and unpicking the symbolic Israeli and Jewish capital in combination with the concept of ‘creative class’ (Florida 2002) in situ in Berlin and across Germany.
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Volume/Issue
30
Page Number / Article Number
51-56
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PDF (via academia.edu), Conflated Fantasies, Collapsing Fantasies: On the Symbolic Capital of Israeli Jewish Migrants to Germany
Bibliographic Information
Conflated Fantasies, Collapsing Fantasies: On the Symbolic Capital of Israeli Jewish Migrants to Germany. 2023: 51-56. https://archive.jpr.org.uk/object-3952
