Linguistic Assimilation of First-Generation Jewish South African Immigrants in Israel
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Int. Migration & Integration DOI 10.1007/s12134-012-0257-1 Linguistic Assimilation of First-Generation Jewish South African Immigrants in Israel Rebeca Raijman # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012 Abstract We contribute to scholarship on the linguistic assimilation of migrants by focusing on the special case of Jewish South African migrants in Israel. English as an international language is widely used in the Israeli society, so immigrants whose mother tongue is English are a very interesting case because they might experience much less social pressure to improve their Hebrew skills than other immigrant groups who speak other languages. The study reveals that, although most first-generation immigrants participated in state-sponsored Hebrew classes and reported relatively moderate levels of language proficiency, it has not become their primary language. Hebrew proficiency proved conditional on age at arrival and rise sharply with tenure in the country and exposure to Hebrew (at origin or at destination). Hebrew profi- ciency is higher for migrants with more extensive contacts with Israelis and with higher education. Positive synergism emerged between language acquisition and reasons for migrating and attachment to the country. Keywords Language proficiency. Israel . South Africans . Assimilation Introduction This paper focuses on the process of linguistic assimilation of Jewish South African immigrants in Israel. Language has been considered a critical domain for assessing immigrants’ economic and social adjustment in host countries, and substantial re- search supports this view (Espenshade and Fu 1997; Espinosa and Massey 1997; Chiswick 1998; Chiswick and Miller 1998; Van Tubergen and Kalmijn 2009;Van Tubergen and Wierenga 2011). In Israel, many studies have documented immigrants’ patterns of language proficiency, focusing on specific groups, especially those from the former Soviet Union (see, e.g., Ben-Rafael et al. 1998, 2006; Mesch 2003; R. Raijman (*) Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel e-mail: [email protected] R. Raijman Remennick 2003a, 2004), or on several groups for a comparative perspective (Beenstock 1996; Chiswick 1998).1 Still, we know relatively little about the process of linguistic assimilation in English-speaking immigrant groups in Israel. Given that English is an international language and widely used in the Israeli society, immigrants whose mother tongue is English are a very interesting case because they might be under much less social pressure to improve their Hebrew skills than other immigrant groups who speak other languages (Beenstock 1996). Our research design combines data from a representative sample of Jewish South African immigrants with in-depth interviews. Most studies provide quantitative information on immigrants’ language proficiency but cannot furnish evidence on the underlying socioeconomic mechanisms associated with linguistic assimilation; these cannot always be captured by statistics, simple or sophisticated. Our mixed- method approach affords a rich and more complete picture of the complex process involved. Immigration to Israel Israel is a society of immigrants and their offspring, where at the end of the twentieth century, two out of three members of the Jewish majority were foreign-born (40%)orofthesecondgeneration(30%)(RaijmanandKemp2010). Unlike most migratory movements, immigration to Israel has been characterized as a returning ethnic migration. The centrality of the idea of immigration as a return from the Diaspora is expressed in the Law of Return of 1950. This law grants Israeli citizenship to Jews and their children immediately upon arrival in the country. Jewish immigrants (hereinafter olim)2 came to Israel in a series of waves (see Appendix 1). The first arrived at the turn of the twentieth century mainly from European countries. The second wave arrived shortly after statehood (1948) in the context of the incremental immigration of Middle Eastern and North African Jews and survivors of the Holocaust. Immigration in the three decades after the establish- ment of the state (1960s to 1980s) was more sporadic and less systematic. It was characterized by a slow but constant stream of immigrants from North and South America, as well as immigrants from South Africa, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Ethiopia, and Iran. By then, a broad infrastructure of public housing and support was available for all new immigrants. Research indicates that, over time, most of the immigrants of the 1970s and the 1980s became fully integrated and achieved higher levels of socioeconomic status (Raijman and Semyonov 1995, 1997; Cohen 2002, p. 46). At the beginning of the 1990s, Israel witnessed a renewal of massive immigration flows, mainly from immigrants from the former Soviet Union and their families who came to Israel under the Law of Return. Between 1989 and 2010, more than one million people immigrated to the country. To this main group, we should add the flow 1 These studies are based on the 1972 Census of Population. It is interesting to note that, in Israel, a country of immigrants, there is a lack of systematic collection of relevant data for the study of linguistic assimilation of immigrant groups. 2 In Israel, immigrants arriving under the Law of Return are labeled olim (Hebrew for “ascenders”). We decided to use this word rather than immigrants because our respondents defined themselves as olim. Linguistic Assimilation of Jewish South African Immigrants of immigrants arriving from Ethiopia (4.1 % of all immigrants arriving during the 1990s and 10.2 % of those arriving during the 2000s) and a smaller but constant flow of Jewish immigrants from Western and Central Europe, North and South America, and South Africa. These immigrants account for some 7.7 % of all immigrants arriving during the 1990s and 24.8 % of all immigrants arriving during the 2000s (Raijman and Kemp 2010).3 South African Immigration to Israel Beginning in the 1880s, Jews came to South Africa from Eastern Europe, mainly from Lithuania and Byelorussia (Horowitz and Kaplan 2001). Upon arrival, they were granted full citizenship rights, and in the years since then, successive gener- ations have became highly acculturated and integrated into the country’s socioeco- nomic and political life (Dubb 1994). As elsewhere in the Diaspora, the educational attainment of the Jews is much higher than that of the general population—the White population in the case of South Africa—as a whole. They tend to be overrepresented in the professional, administrative, and sales occupations, concentrate in the com- mercial, financial, and manufacturing sectors, and belong largely to the middle and upper income categories. Although South African Jews have acculturated almost exclusively to the country’s English-speaking culture, pro-Jewish and Zionist sentiments prevail almost universally among them (Kaplan Center for Jewish Studies 2006). Since the 1970s, South Africa has become a major source of Jewish emigration to other English-speaking countries and to Israel. Political instability and violence—or fear of such circumstances in the future—have been important determinants of migration.4 In the 1970s, the target destinations were primarily Israel (38 %) and English-speaking countries (23.7 % to the USA, 15.2 % to Britain, 12.9 % to Australia, and 9.4 % to Canada) (Dubb 1994, pp. 20–21). Emigration soared in the 1990s due to a dramatic surge in violent crime rates and economic uncertainty, both of which have been associated with the 1994 shift to Black majority rule (Dubb 1994; Kosmin et al. 1999). By then, distribution by destination countries changed dramat- ically, with Australia topping the list at almost 40 %, followed by the USA with 20 %, Israel with 15 %, and Britain and Canada at around 10 % each (Horowitz and Kaplan 2001). The reduced position of Israel indicates a decline in its ideological appeal for South African Jews. The evidence suggests that Israel sometimes functionsasanemergency“destination of last resort,” particularly when barriers to entry into English-speaking countries cannot readily be overcome at short notice (Horowitz and Kaplan 2001, p. 9). Since the founding of the State of Israel, approximately 25,000 South African Jews have entered the country under the terms of the Law of Return. 5 3 Since 1993, we should also add to these numbers a stable flow of non-Jewish labor migrants recruited to replace noncitizen Palestinian workers in the Israeli labor market. These labor migrants (documented or undocumented) comprise 10 % of the labor force (Raijman and Kemp 2010). 4 The 1976 Soweto uprising and the 1985 State of Emergency are examples of the surges in political violence. Renewed political violence was also feared in the run up to the 1994 elections. 5 Averaging the number of South African Jews over the past century, we find that some 20–25 % of them immigrated to Israel. R. Raijman Figure 1 illustrates the migration flows of South Africans to Israel. Immigration to Israel has been unstable, surging during periods of political unrest and violence in the late 1970s, mid-1980s, and mid-1990s, when South African Jews, anxious about their immediate safety, took advantage of Israel’s Law of Return. In the 2000s, migration flows dropped to relatively low levels, although some increase has occurred since 2008. South African olim, who constitute a selective population displaying relatively high levels of education and socioeconomic attainment