Relocated ethnicities: how do national-cultural repertoires shape the ethnicities of migrants? Evidence from Israeli Mizrahim in Israel, the United States, and Germany

This article examines how national-cultural repertoires influence ethnic identities. The study focuses on Mizrahim (Israeli Jews originating from Arab countries) who achieved class and geographic mobility (or relocation) in three countries: Israel, the United States, and Germany. The findings of our qualitative interview-based study show that all the mobile Mizrahim report dissociation from the Israeli Mizrahiness, considered stigmatic and damaging to opportunities for mobility. At the same time, mobility and relocation into new cultural-national narratives in the U.S. and Germany facilitate new phenomenological foundations for this dissociation and make new content and meaning available for Mizrahi ethnic identities. Several factors are discussed: cultural-state origins of these creative ethnic identities (termed relocated ethnicity); the relationships between ethnic and class identity in the context of migration; and the tension between agentic choices and cultural-structural demands.