A global storyThe initial recruitment of overseas workers to Israel, which began as early as the 1970s, followed a post-World War II trend that saw higher-income countries – such as the US, France and West Germany – sign labour migration recruitment agreements with poorer nations. These poorer countries, which at the time included Mexico, Spain and Turkey, among others, overcame an initial reluctance to lose part of their populace and began to see emigration as a strategy for modernization. The idea was that emigrants could learn modern farming or industrial skills overseas, while sending money back to boost development in their home communities.In the 1970s and 1980s, many South and Southeast Asian countries began to promote the export of migrant workers as a key piece of their economic development strategies. At the same time, receiving countries became hooked on the idea of a flexible, temporary labour force that would not inflame anti-immigrant sentiment as much as more settled migrants seemingly did.Israel’s relationship with Thai workers came initially by way of the United States’ support for the 1979 peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. The US government recruited Thai workers who had once worked on Vietnam War-era US military bases in northeastern Thailand to help build a new air force base in Israel.The arrival of the Thai migrant workers, along with Portuguese workers, prompted public controversy among Israeli lawmakers, trade unionists and the media about the creation of a split labour market, as research done by one of us has shown. Meanwhile, others worried that the workers’ presence cut against Zionist imperatives to guarantee a Jewish majority.Attempting to resolve these contradictions, the Israeli government started to experiment with migration policies designed for a new category of workers – neither Jewish nor Palestinian – who were intended to remain separate from Israeli society.A decade later, in a different political moment, these policy ideas would become concrete in a new category of person in Israel: the “foreign worker.”
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