Connecting Ethnicity and Space: the New Russian-Mediterranean Pop Culture in Israel’s Periphery

This ethnographic study explores the co-influences between urban spaces and ethnic hierarchies in the pop-cultural creations of Russian-speaking immigrants of Generation 1.5 in Israel. The theoretical analysis draws on the concepts of orientalism, ethnicity and spatiality in the context of migration. The findings suggest that physical place influences intergroup/ethnic relations that in turn reshape the symbolic meaning of urban spaces. Young immigrant ethnic entrepreneurs have invented the new cultural trope of Mizrahi or Mediterranean Russianness, expressed in various venues of pop culture, in which they are involved as cultural producers: video clips, festivals, music and dance performances. It is a symbolic expression of Hitmazrehut — the Easternization process experienced by them in Israel’s geographic and social periphery.