The stratified middle class and the formation of ethnic identities

Abstract

This article analyzes the relationship between middle-class belonging and minority ethnic identification through the narratives of Israeli adolescents in contrasting middle-class spaces. While current literature suggests that middle-class belonging will either weaken or strengthen ethnic identification, this paper demonstrates that the effect of class on ethnic identity varies between different spaces. Analyzing the narratives of 52 middle-class minority adolescents shows that spatial ethnic boundaries operating in the rural middle class lead these adolescents to construct a salient ethnic identity that can produce feelings of incongruence and subordination. However, in the urban middle-class, where spatial ethnic boundaries are less significant, adolescents develop a thin, interchangeable ethnic identity in accordance with shallow and superficial public classifications. These findings demonstrate that the middle classes are not monolithic but diverse within themselves, and point to the need to study the variety of ways diverse middle classes can affect the shaping of minority ethnic identification.

Keywords

Middle class ethnic identity rural space urban space choosing ethnicity switching

Introduction

Demographic changes in the composition of the middle class in recent decades have revived the discussion of the impact of middle-class status on minority ethnic identification (Pattillo-Mc-Coy, 2000).¹ For integrationists, the expansion of the middle class is understood as a central mechanism for the homogenization of society. Proponents of this perspective argue that, through access to middle-class institutions and neighborhoods, members of minority ethnic groups will adopt the values and behaviors of the dominant middle class, which will result in diminishing the characteristics that identify the groups as separate (Alba and Nee, 2003). Research demonstrates, however, that, even when members of ethnic minorities have attained middle-class capital and cultural patterns, social and cultural boundaries such as stereotypes and the occupational glass ceiling continue to marginalise them, pressures that can work to reinforce ethnic identifications (Crowder, 2000). Moreover, scholars have argued that, because veteran members of the middle class continue to create correlations between traditional middle-class practices and their (white) ethnic identity, they reject the ethnic identity markers of minorities from belonging to the middle class, and thereby reproduce their dominance (Archer, 2011; Twine, 1996).

The arguments set forth by both those promoting and those critiquing the integrationist perspective express conceptions of the middle class as monolithic. In other words, the middle class is perceived as having uniform and homogeneous spatial, economic, cultural and social characteristics that either diminish minority ethnic identity characteristics (Alba and Nee, 2003) or reinforce this identification (Archer, 2011; Crowder, 2000). This perception, however, is limited. It does not cogently account for the existence of multiple expressions of ethnic identity in societies where demographic patterns and achievements of minority groups are similar to those of the dominant group. In other diverse, middle-class locations, however, the importance of ethnic identity has waned, becoming, in Gans’ (1979) term, symbolic, or transformed into what Cornell and Hartman (1998) define as thin ethnicity. Thin ethnicity is a reduced ethnicity that no longer organizes everyday life; because it becomes part of a relatively small repertoire of symbols, contexts, and signifiers, many of its ascribed behavior patterns and characteristics are achievable, as opposed to strong ethnicity, in which the varied characteristics are inherited.

Investigating the spatial structures of two middle-class spaces, one rural and one urban, and the ways these spaces affect the construction of ethnic identities, this article posits that the middle class is not homogeneous, but diverse. It centers on the narratives of 52 Israeli middle-class adolescents whose origins are in Middle East and North African (MENA) countries or in both Europe and in MENA countries (i.e. ‘multi-ethnic’).² Their accounts of daily lived experiences demonstrate the ways in which the overt signification of rural middle-class spaces as Western or Eastern, and the associated social stratification created by visible and invisible spatial boundaries around those spaces, leads these minority adolescents to internalize these classifications and therefore experience a sense of incongruence and inferiority when occupying middle-class spaces. Interactions within these spaces function as daily reminders of the adolescents’ minority ethnic difference, thereby reinforcing and shaping their salient ethnic identification. On the other hand, the adolescents’ narratives indicate that, in urban middle-class spaces where spatial boundaries separating members of different ethnicities are less significant, adolescents adopt cultures characterized by relatively neutral and depthless symbols and signifiers. These cultures lead adolescents to develop a thin ethnic identity that has reduced meaning in everyday life, manifested in their ability to vacillate between different ethnicities, and to adopt characteristics associated with one or another ethnicity based on circumstances and the perceived social value of one or the other ethnicity.

The context in which this article examines ethnic identity is that of Israeli nation-building. The Zionist movement sought to eliminate ‘ethnic’ differences in order to create a unified identity. However, the unequal incorporation of immigrants into the state led to the construction of an ethno-class order in which MENA Jews became a lower ethno-class of Mizrahim, while European Jews consolidated into a middle ethno-class of Ashkenazim (Shenhav, 2006). However, social and cultural changes in the 1980s led to the re-arrangement of the ethno-class order and to the emergence of two distinct Mizrahi middle-class spaces (Cohen and Leon, 2008). The first is an urban middle class, where Mizrahim have consolidated with Ashkenazim in major cities. The second is the rural middle class that has developed in spaces such as the Southern Sharon Region, where immigrants were settled separately according to an ethnic logic (Geva, 1995).

The first of the article’s four sections identifies two lines of research that demonstrate a perception of the middle class as homogenous. We then suggest examining the spatial structures of the above-mentioned middle-class spaces and their effects on identity construction to demonstrate that the middle class is not monolithic. The second section discusses the conditions during the 1980s in Israel that led to the formation of minority middle-class spaces. The third section examines the experience of minority adolescents. It reveals that their ethnic identifications are related to the existence or absence of spatial boundaries. The concluding section employs the ‘identity repertoires’ model developed by Amara and Schnell (2004), and shows that, taking into account the spatial diversity of the middle class contributes to an understanding of the complex formation of ethnic identities as well as to the understanding of power relations between dominant and minority groups in the present-day middle class.

Literature review: How do class and ethnicity meet?

The increasing numbers of people of ethnic minorities in the middle classes (Archer, 2011; Patillo-McCoy, 2000) has revived the discussion of the role of class on minorities’ ethnic identification. Integrationists have predicted that people of minority identity who enter the middle class will shed their ethnic identity and assimilate into the dominant culture, under the assumption that economic class acts as a platform for the homogenization of society (Alba and Nee, 2003). Due to their perception of middle-class culture and society as normative, egalitarian, and ethnically empty, integrationists assume that, through access to longstanding, middle-class institutions and neighborhoods, minority members will adopt the values and behaviors of the middle class, such as language characteristics and style of emotional expression, thereby diminishing the characteristics that identify them as ethnic (Alba and Nee, 2003). However, cumulative evidence in recent decades shows that people of minority ethnicities, albeit exposed to the dominant culture, maintain their ethnic identity (Crowder, 2000). This leads critical scholars to search for the motivations behind this choice.

One line of critical research points to the operation of visible boundaries that separate minority members within the middle class. Various studies have evidenced the existence of an occupational and academic glass ceiling (Archer, 2011). Even when the ceiling glass is broken, income inequality between historical members of the middle class and middle-class members of ethnic minorities persists (Dagan and Conors, 2013). Ethnic minorities in the middle class also encounter stereotyping and hostility from the veteran middle class (Tuan and Shiao, 2011). Members of the dominant culture often avoid living in ethnically mixed neighborhoods and show negative attitudes to minorities moving into their neighborhoods (Crowder, 2000). According to these studies, these visible boundaries continue to marginalize minority middle classes and to reinforce their ethnic identifications.

Another line of research emphasizes that, while middle-class practices are often viewed as ethnically ‘neutral’, they play a pivotal role in the social construction of an ethnicized dominant identity (Abutbul-Selinger, 2020; Twine, 1996).

These studies demonstrate that associating middle-class propensities such as emotional restraint with their (white) ethnic identity serve dominant groups to reproduce their dominance, and that the continuing correlation of middle-class practices and white ethnic identity constructs the divided identity (Bourdieu, 2005) of middle-class minorities. Schwarz (2016) illustrates this mechanism, offering as an example the phenomenon of minorities in Israel being accused of ethnic ‘passing’. This labeling, which points to the alleged incongruence between minority origin and middle-class position, constructs middle-class minorities as deviant. Being unable to express their disembodied middle-class practices and understand themselves as inauthentic once they perform these practices has led minority Jews to develop a divided identity.

The fundamental flaw in these lines of research is the perception of the middle class as monolithic. Researchers have failed to recognize the fact that, just as lifestyle characteristics of different economic classes are distinct from each other, these categories are diverse within themselves. Thus, while integrationists perceive the middle class as a construct that diminishes the expression of minority ethnic traits (Alba and Nee, 2003), critical literature argues that the middle class reinforces the ethnic identification of minorities (Archer, 2011; Crowder, 2000). In contrast to these prominent views, this article argues that the middle class is not simplistically composed of one layer, pointing instead to the historical, social, economic and spatial structures that differentiate middle class and the ways this differentiation nurtures the ethnic identifications of minority groups. Therefore, this article examines the spatial structure of the middle classes, joining scholarship that, rather than understanding place as a physical container, emphasizes its social dimension and specifically its relation to the shaping of identities (Berry and Henderson, 2002; Gieryn, 2000). By examining the ways that patterns of life and institutionalized forms of behavior are influenced by different environments/locations, these studies demonstrate that identities are embedded in spatial contexts (Kaplan and Herb, 1999).

Two forms of spatial boundaries influence the construction of identities. The first is the social construction of the physical space, which has a significant impact on the social interactions among inhabitants of the space. For example, urban spaces often contain ‘third places’ such as coffee shops, bakeries, and community centers that facilitate spontaneous and consistent social interactions between individuals from different groups. In contrast, in suburbs and rural areas, where ‘third places’ are less common, the interaction between different groups is less prevalent (Lacy, 2004). Moreover, these spaces, characterized by large geographical distances between individuals, often compel a reliance on cars, and as such, social interactions are planned and take place mainly with similar group members, reducing the potential for chance interactions with other groups. In urban spaces on the other hand, with less geographical distance between individuals, social interactions occur more naturally, and interacting with members of different groups is more likely (Souleles, 2018). The second form of spatial boundary is the visible and invisible boundaries. Visible boundaries are practical and observable acts through which members of the dominant group differentiate themselves from members of non-dominant groups. These actions include verbal assaults, use of stereotypes and the choice to remain separate by residing in ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods (Brubaker et al., 2008). Invisible boundaries are the subliminal ways whereby ethnic hierarchies are expressed by members of the dominant group. This process occurs through behaviors such as subtle verbal remarks toward non-members, physical avoidance while in proximity of non-members, and startled responses to the unexpected presence of members of the non-dominant group—responses that do not overtly address ethnicity, but tacitly signify to minority group members their ethnic difference (Bonilla-Silva, 2009).

Accordingly, this article studies the ways minority adolescents narrate their interactions in two different middle-class spaces in the Israeli center. Following these narratives, we examine the different types of spatial boundaries operating in urban and rural spaces and their effects on the construction of ethnic identities.

Methodology

To examine the construction of ethnic identities in rural and urban middle classes, this research focuses on adolescents, as two main characteristics of this life stage make it a useful social site for this purpose. The first is that identity formation is one of the foremost tasks of adolescence (Apter, 1991). At this stage, physical development, cognitive skills and social expectations coincide for the first time, enabling individuals to sort through and synthesize their childhood identifications so as to construct a viable pathway to adulthood (Marcia, 1980). Adolescents come to terms with their parents’ ethnic identities and with societal perceptions of their ethnicity, and make decisions about how they will self-identify. Secondly, in order to construct their ethnic identity, they are granted social legitimation to ‘try out’ a variety of identities and actively explore alternatives. This process points to the unstable and fluid nature of identity in this phase. These characteristics of identity construction and the fluidity of ethnic identity render adolescence a magnifying glass under which identity formation processes can be scrutinized.

The article is based on in-depth interviews of 52 Israeli adolescents aged 16 to 19. By encouraging interviewees to reflect on their experiences, they created knowledge that is a reconstruction of a processive social reality. This research interaction ‘releases’ the dynamic ways through which ethnic identity is constructed. The use of open questions prevents a static description of identity and enables interviewees to move back and forth in time, hence to point to the constructed and fluid nature of identity (Gubrium and Holstein, 2002).

Of the 52 total adolescents interviewed, 24 live in the Southern Sharon Region and 28 live in cities in the Israeli center. All were recruited by snowball sampling. To diversify the interviewee population, we enlarged the initial size of the sample, used different snowballs and diversified the geographic locations from which our interviewees were chosen. We defined ‘class’ according to parental education and occupation. Specifically, a person who had attained a college degree and worked at a professional occupation was defined as middle class. Many of the interviewees’ parents are academics or business owners, or engaged in professions. Most adolescents we interviewed had lived from childhood in middle-class neighborhoods. They attended, or were attending, high school; most were preparing for their matriculation exams; many had traveled abroad with their families; they participated in enrichment classes—mathematics, foreign languages; and most belonged to the Scouts. To make the interview data meaningful we apply narrative analysis (Fine, 2002). This method extricates central components of the adolescents’ narratives that act to construct the meaning to be articulated in the reader’s mind that sheds light on the way adolescents imagine their identity.

The Israeli ethno-class structure and its rearrangement

The establishment, in 1948, of the State of Israel brought about mass immigration of Jews from around the world to the new state. The Zionist movement aspired to eliminate ‘ethnic’ differences between MENA and European Jews, in order to create a unified Israeli identity (Shenhav, 2006). The consolidation of a broad middle class, including both MENA and European Jews, was perceived as a key route to achieving homogenization. By eliminating the cultural differences between the groups and preventing ethnic alienation, it was hoped that a generation of middle-class families would raise children with no ethnic identity who, in turn, would create an authentic Israeli identity. However, despite this ideology, a hierarchical ethno-class structure was constructed in the country’s early years.

This ethno-class structure emerged as the result of two processes. The first was the construction of two classes of immigrant Jews. In the 1950s, MENA Jews were directed by the state to the margins of big cities, to agricultural settlements and to development towns. European Jews lived mainly in city centers and on kibbutzim. This segregation was accompanied by differential allocation of loans and subsidies to shape an ethno-class structure consisting of European Jews at the top and MENA Jews at the bottom (Swirski and Katzir, 1978). This class structure was naturalized through the construction of two hierarchical and dichotomous cultures: Mizrahiness and Ashkenaziness.

Ashkenazi ethnicity was created through the European Jews’ ability to dominate the higher ranks of government, academic, and economic institutions. In various sites, such as prestigious schools and elite army units, middle-class culture and subjects were constructed as Ashkenazi. The identification created between high-status positions and Ashkenazim, together with orientalist discourse (Shenhav, 2006), made possible the ‘modernization’, ‘Westernization’ and dominance of Ashkenazi subjects. In this process, musical genres, occupations and behavior patterns historically shaped in the middle class were signified as Ashkenazi (Abutbul-Selinger, 2020).

Concomitantly, Mizrahiness was shaped by the location of Mizrahi Jews in sites assigned lower status in Israel such as vocational high schools and noncombat units in the army. The connection formed between these ranks and Mizrahim, together with orientalist discourse, made possible the ‘traditionalization’ and ‘Orientalization’ of the Mizrahi subject. In this process, musical genres, occupations and behavior patterns shaped in lower-class sites were signified as Mizrahi (Abutbul-Selinger, 2020: 218).

However, by the 1980s, a significant shift had occurred in the ethnic composition of the middle class. The weakening of the Labor party, identified with Ashkenazim, and the rise of the right-wing Likud party, supported by Mizrahim, lowered ethnic boundaries in the labor market (Dahan, 2013). The transition from a centralized to a capitalist economy, together with the incorporation of Palestinians into the labor structure in 1967, released Mizrahim from their low-status rank and enabled them to develop small businesses (Yaar, 2005). A significant growth of community colleges in the 1990s enabled Mizrahim not admitted to universities to acquire higher education. These changes led to the emergence of a significant number of Mizrahi into the middle class (Cohen and Leon, 2008), thereby increasing the similarities between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim. Differences in family size, religious patterns and leisure activities also significantly decreased (Yaar, 2005).

Two major middle-class spaces, one urban and one rural, have formed in Israel’s heartland. The urban middle class is consolidating next to the Ashkenazi middle class in cities such as Ramat Gan, Herzliya and Kiryat Ono. In these cities, extensive interaction between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim in the education system, youth movements and enrichment classes has led to the formation of a heterogeneous middle class characterized by a high frequency of interethnic marriages, high cultural tastes, increased involvement in politics, and an emphasis on higher education (Cohen and Leon, 2008).³ As social and cultural differences are blurring in this class, characteristics of ethnicity have been creatively mobilized and re-constructed as thin signifiers (Cornell and Hartman, 1998). These cultural signifiers no longer contain hierarchical meanings but neutral and superficial meanings that represent an alternative and egalitarian lifestyle. Thus, to many, Mizrahi masculinity, once represented by the dominant culture as aggressive and threatening, has become ‘cool’, confident and desirable. Mizrahi tradition, previously perceived by many as obsolete and primitive, is now perceived by many as authentic (Abutbul-Selinger, 2020).

The second Mizrahi middle class emerged in the rural Southern Sharon region. Similar to other geographical locations in the country’s early years, this region was geographically and socially engineered by an ethnic logic, with each settlement inhabited according to ethno-national categories of either MENA or European (Chyutin and Chyutin, 2016; Shokied, 1971). Accordingly, the Israeli state settled MENA immigrants in the Southern Sharon region which was, until 1967, close to its eastern border, to serve as a human border with Arab countries (Weitz, 1967). This ethnic logic also shaped the political, social and cultural institutions of the region. Thus, in order to neutralize the impact of MENA settlements—which outnumbered the European settlements—they were classified, in the settlements' national organization, as ‘new’ settlements. This classification enabled the election of a director from the European settlements while MENA settlements had to settle for the election of his deputy. An ethnic segregation developed also in the education system, through the allocation of adolescents into different school clusters, and through the separation in the youth movement into two separate ethnic divisions. This process created a stratified space which prevented social interactions between European and MENA Jews. The Six Day War of 1967 pushed the eastern borders of the country further away; in conjunction with the development of Tel Aviv’s metropolitan area in the last decades, this has made the southern Sharon part of the Israeli center.⁴ Along with the re-shuffling of the ethno-class order in the 1980s, these factors fed into a complex situation in the region. On the one hand, MENA Jews gained social mobility, and some of the political and social boundaries that they had faced were removed; but on the other hand, the segregated structure of the settlements has continued to operate.

Alongside the ethnic identities that were shaped in rural and urban spaces, other identities emerged among MENA Jews. The first took shape in the urban centers of west Rishon-LeZion, Gan Yavne, and Rosh Ha’Ayin, suburban towns located around central cities (Cohen and Leon, 2008). In these homogenized suburbs, powerful political, social, and economic Mizrahi communities have emerged. These communities, who tend to demonstrate new modes of religiosity and to stress the ethnic dimension as a meaningful factor in their lifestyle, have been active participants in the construction of Israeli identity. Another ethnic identity has been shaped among the growing number of multi-ethnic (‘mixed’) individuals, with ethnic origins from both Europe and MENA countries. According to Okun and Khait-Marelly (2008) and Sagiv (2014), due to the absence of a cohesive in-group and social encouragement to ‘choose’ an ethnic ‘side’, multi-ethnic individuals have been prevented from developing an identity that extends beyond ethnicity, and consequently adopted ethnic identities that aligned with dominant classifications. This choice, according to Sagiv, constructed a class of individuals who exhibited a consistent set of cultural preferences, manifested ethnic identity in their everyday routines, and attributed meaningful significance to the cultural differences between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim.

The classification of rural spaces

In rural middle-class spaces, minority adolescents in our study adopted an ethnic identity in response to prevalent discourses and practices taking place within them. This practice is enacted through the classification of spaces as Mizrahi or as Ashkenazi, and permission or prohibition of entry into these locations. When adolescents are symbolically or physically unable to enter public spaces, they experience foreignness and a negation of their middle-class heritage (Sue, 2010), and hence recognize their ethnic difference. Avi, a 19-year-old boy who self-identifies as having dark skin,⁵ expresses how boundary work constructs spaces as ethnic and signifies his difference:

I lived in Neve Yarak⁶ and went to my local high school, and several times students came up to me and said, ‘You live in Neve Yarak? You look like a person who lives in Elishema’.⁷

Through their amazement that a dark-skinned adolescent—dark skin serves in Israel to signify Mizrahi origin—resides in Neve Yarak, Avi’s classmates signify that Mizrahiness does not belong to this space, and thus construct Neve Yarak as an Ashkenazi space. Simultaneously, their comment that Avi belongs to Elishema signifies this settlement as a Mizrahi space. Through the classification of the settlements, and his classmates’ symbolic prohibition of his being part of the Ashkenazi settlement, Avi experiences himself as a foreigner in his own settlement (Sue, 2010) and thus recognizes his ethnic identity as Mizrahi. Guy, a 19-year-old youth from Adanim⁸ who works as a bouncer at parties in the Southern Sharon Region, offers a similar observation:

The selection is very efficient. It actually created communities. Currently, in different places, there are segregated communities, and individuals know which they belong to. Sometimes you can say it’s unfortunate because it can prevent other connections from forming between people who might have common ground […] Currently, the situation is such that a Mizrahi guy accepts the fact that this is his identity, he accepts the fact that he belongs to the guys that can’t get in.

By preventing adolescents from entering their parties, the bouncers create Mizrahi and Ashkenazi spaces. Permission and prohibition signify for adolescents their ethnic difference. Guy also illustrates the process whereby boundary work, consolidates ethnic identities. When adolescents recognize that they cannot get in because of their ‘ethnicity’ they avoid trying to get into the ‘opposite’ space. Thus they reinforce the ‘Mizrahiness’ and ‘Ashkenaziness’ of spaces and the ethnic identification of the subjects who visit them. Note that, by arguing that it is the selection that prevents the construction of other communities, Guy reflects his understanding that boundaries create ethnic subjects and communities. However, although recognizing the option to shape alternative communities which are not based on ethnicity, Guy disallows this alternative and follows the dominant discourse.

The classification of spaces serves not only to create ethnic identification of adolescents, but also to place Mizrahi and Ashkenazi identities in a hierarchical relation. This process occurs through the shaping of settlements as having dichotomous meaning. By tacitly constructing the Ashkenazi settlement as positive and normal and the Mizrahi settlement as negative and deviant, these discourses demean the Mizrahi heritage and identities; this places Ashkenazi adolescents in a dominant position and Mizrahi adolescents in a subordinate position.

The next citation is from Romi, a 17-year-old girl from Yarchiv.⁹ It demonstrates the way adolescents recognize their social subordination through the differentiation of space:

I have an Ashkenazi friend. She asked me to teach her history. When she came she told me that she was very surprised that I had a computer. I asked her, “What do you mean?” She said, ‘I didn’t expect …’ And then she saw my plasma TV and was very surprised too. I told her, ‘Wait a second, aren’t you going to ask me if I ride to school on a camel?’

We met our interviewees in their homes, which exhibit many similarities in their style. In many living rooms stood a plasma TV; adolescent children had their own room, which had a computer, and numerous additional devices. Romi’s home in terms of styling is similar to her friends’ homes. However, the main narrative through which signifiers are organized in the above excerpt is that of modernity. As part of this narrative, Mizrahi Jews are represented as traditional and backward in order to enable the representation of Ashkenazi Jews as modern and progressive. Although attending the same school and sharing similar social and cultural practices, Romi’s friend expects Yarchiv to be a traditional and backward space, due to the spatial segregation and ethnic classifications in the rural space. To her surprise, she sees devices that are not expected in Yarchiv: the plasma TV and the computer, signifying modernity and innovation. Her comment and surprise construct Romi’s home as different. They signify for Romi that these devices are not expected to be found in her settlement. These assumptions then construct Yarchiv as obsolete and backward and her associated Mizrahi identity as stagnant and inferior to the Ashkenazi identity of her friend. Romi’s answer points to the discomfort she feels hearing her friend's demeaning remark, and her attempt to resist the subordination that this remark contains.

Adolescents in our study also expressed narratives demonstrating an internalization of the spatial dichotomies and hierarchical relations created by the ethnic boundaries in rural spaces. When these adolescents enter middle-class spaces outside of their settlements, they experience them cognitively through these hierarchies. By not entering certain spaces, by experiencing incongruences between spaces, and by perceiving movement between spaces as a transition in time, these adolescents act in ways that reproduce the ethnic order. Shay, for example, an 18-year-old youth from Chagor,¹⁰ describes visiting home while spending a summer semester at Tel Aviv University:

It’s a little embarrassing to talk about it. Whenever I came home from the university it was as if I was going back in time. I looked at my parents, and they seemed to me quite ancient. It’s not that they’re riding on camels. You see, the university and the lecturers, and the girls—they all seem to me cool and new. My home seems to me so outmoded and so traditional. We have these colorful Moroccan glasses, and we eat couscous.¹¹

The Israeli dominant discourse represents Tel Aviv University as an Ashkenazi space, located in the modern present. Couscous and colorful glasses are presented as exotic and traditional; hence they construct the Mizrahi home as part of the obsolete past. These social constructions are the foundations for Shay’s inner experience, in which the spatial movement from the university to his home in the MENA settlement was a transition in time, from the present into the past. It is a transition from a space that represents modernity and innovation to one that represents tradition and obsolescence. The experience of inner transition in time and in space constructs Shay’s sense of Mizrahiness and backwardness.

The construction of adolescent’' inner experience as a transition in space and as constraint within a cultural boundary often causes them discomfort entering middle-class spaces outside of their settlement. An instance of this internalization is described by Zohar, a 17-year-old girl who self-identifies herself as having dark skin:

We were at ‘Top Shop in Hertzliya’.¹² It’s a stylish store for girls’ clothes. It makes me feel like wow, why can’t I be white for a moment? It’s a feeling inside; it’s not something that you can see. I said to myself ‘I really want to be white now, to cover myself with talcum powder!!!’ To masquerade and to get in. There was something […] I feel it deep inside. I feel like those white girls feel like they’re above me.

As noted earlier, the dominant discourse constructs settlements populated by Jews of European descent as Ashkenazi and advanced, and settlements populated by people of MENA descent as Mizrahi and backward. This discourse also employs the imaginary phenotype differences between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews to shape spaces as delineated by skin color: ‘white’ and ‘dark’ spaces. As a result of this boundary work, Zohar experiences the Top Shop in Hertzliya as a transition into a white and superior space, a space she does not belong to due to her ‘dark skin’. This internal process prevents Zohar from entering the store and makes her feel inferior to the ‘white’ girls inside. These inner feelings of alienation and subordination in her homeland sparked a fantasy about becoming white. For a moment this countermanded her sense of inferiority and allowed her to feel that she belonged to middle-class spaces. The inner experience of space-crossing, her awkwardness entering high-prestige spaces and her occasional fantasies construct Zohar's ethno-racial consciousness.

These interviews suggest that spatial structures play a significant role in the construction of ethnic identity. The classifying of MENA and European settlements as dichotomous and hierarchical leads adolescents to recognize their ‘ethnic’ difference and thus to develop salient ethnic identification.

Choosing and ethnicity-switching in urban spaces

Public discourse in Israel classifies Western/Ashkenazi and Eastern/Mizrahi as dichotomous, and as a result, adolescents learn to identify their cultural preferences as belonging to one or other side of the ethnic boundary, and thus claim the aligned identity (Tuan and Shiao, 2011; Waters, 1990). In interviews, Israeli adolescents described the process of choosing an ethnic identity and switching between them in relation to the classification of Mizrahi and Ashkenazi cultures.

The characteristics that Aya, an 18-year-old girl from Givaatim,¹³ suggests as the criteria for her self-identity exemplifies how public classifications operate in the heterogeneous middle class. When asked why the Scouts’ leader had divided them into ethnic groups, Aya responded:

It was just to check who’s Mizrahi, and who’s Ashkenazi. According to the stereotypical traits, people can identify which group a person belongs to. I remember they gave us spicy food. They gave us nuts and sunflower seeds. They asked us to dance belly dance. Usually the Mizrahi skills are ‘cool’ and humorous and Ashkenazi traits are related to mathematics and seriousness […] I’m pretty good with sunflower seeds and spicy food, so I guess I choose to be a Mizrahi.

By categorizing food, body movements, and emotions as falling into one of two dichotomous cultures, and by asking adolescents to place themselves within one identity in accordance with these classifications, the Scouts’ instructor used public classifications of Mizrahi and Ashkenazi cultures in order to identify the campers’ ethnicity. Thus, when Aya learned that she is gifted with belly dancing and able to eat spicy food, characteristics stereotyped as Mizrahi, she positioned herself on that side. Note, however, that the values ascribed to the different ethnicities have shifted significantly. Traditionally, Ashkenazi culture has been correlated in dominant discourse with ‘Western’ and ‘positive’ characteristics and values such as whiteness, progress and courtesy, while Mizrahi culture has been correlated with ‘Eastern’ and ‘subordinate’ characteristics and values such as backwardness, rudeness and hyper-masculinity. Being part of a heterogeneous middle class in which adolescents share social and cultural practices, the Scouts’ instructor applied thin classifications in which the signifiers of Mizrahi and Ashkenazi cultures are imbued, not with hierarchical, but neutral and superficial meanings (Cornell and Hartman, 1998). This shift in the meaning of ethnicity is aptly demonstrated in Aya’s narration of the process of choosing her identity. In her indifference to the ethnicity she chooses, by not being sure, only ‘guessing’ how she identifies herself, Aya signifies that this identification is not highly significant to her, implying that these classifications do not contain the same hierarchy and meanings they used to carry in the past.

The following statements by Omer, a 17-year-old boy, and Yotam, a 19-year-old boy, brothers who live in Ramat Hasharon,¹⁴ point to the nature of ethnicity in urban spaces:

Omer: People laugh when I tell them that I’m also Turkish. I’m as white as whitewash. I’m definitely not Mizrahi, because if a person is white, he’s Ashkenazi. So he’s got certain characters of an Ashkenazi: being uptight, being modern [….] I feel more like an Ashkenazi because that’s the label they stuck on me. So it affects the way I perceive myself. I’ll give you an example. We had a Scouts’ activity. The counselors asked us to join the ethnic group we belonged to. I joined the Ashkenazim.

Yotam: The truth is that we don’t have a real difference here. I always had to convince people that I’m Mizrahi because I’m white. I don’t really know if I feel that way. To tell you the truth I don’t really know what a Mizrahi is and what an Ashkenazi is. Now I’m starting to develop it slowly […] I identified myself as Mizrahi because I wanted to be cool. […] I joined the Mizrahim because of the media—Mizrahim are perceived as masculine. I always wanted to be masculine, so I guess that this was one of the reasons for identifying with the Mizrahim.

Omer and Yotam’s narratives point to the thin nature of ethnicity in their heterogeneous neighborhood. Ethnicity as a social category is not central in their everyday routine: they do not know any ethnic traditions; attend ethnic events; or know the difference between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim. Since they do not know how to distinguish between the ethnicities, they use the shallow and superficial public classifications of ethnicity as defined by discourse in, for example, the media and the Scouts. Thus, Omer understood that his light skin color classifies him, according to dominant discourse, as Ashkenazi. Yotam, on the other hand, guided by his desire to be cool and masculine—characteristics that are classified with Mizrahi ethnicity—chooses to identify as such, contrary to his younger brother. That Omer and Yotam feel at liberty to pick and choose which are the salient traits of their various origins, their vacillation between the two ethnicities and their different ethnic choices demonstrate that ethnicity in these heterogeneous spaces is not an essential category.

Urban adolescents also described ‘ethnicity switching’, namely moving from one ethnic identity and performance to the ‘other’. Their narratives indicate that, in social interactions with their peers, adolescents identify their ethnicity with respect to public classifications. However, when the nature of the interactions changes and they are offered opportunities to switch into the other ethnicity, they adopt characteristics associated with the other culture, a move that in some cases improves their status among their peers.

Eyal, a 17-year-old boy from Ramat Gan,¹⁵ demonstrates the changing position of adolescents:

How do I identify myself? As Mizrahi … No … as Ashkenazi […] When I first came to Ramat Gan I didn’t get along well with the Mizrahi group. I was kind of Ashkenazi then. But then I figured out how to behave with them. If they get crazy, I get crazy […] Never be silent, if you’re silent they’ll think you’re a nerd. If someone kicks your ass, kick back […] With Ashkenazi friends it’s relaxed. With them it’s possible to have deep conversations, ones that I’ll never have with the Mizrahi kids [….] My behavior is different with the Mizrahim. It’s a masculine language. If I use fancy words they’ll ask ‘Are you Ashkenazi?’ They’ll laugh at me.

When Eyal lived in a city mainly populated by the veteran middle class, he identified as Ashkenazi. However, when he moved to Ramat Gan, he recognized the need to switch between ethnicities in accordance with the groups he interacted with. In this city, ethnicities are thin; i.e. they represent an alternative and egalitarian lifestyle and consist of mainly shallow and non-hierarchical signifiers—Eyal’s ability to adopt characteristics associated with Mizrahi ethnicity—such as being noisy and cool—is revealed to be relatively easy, enabling him to switch between ethnicities on a daily basis. The next story, of Amir, a 19-year-old boy from Hertzliya, demonstrates this shallow nature of ethnicity:

I tried to understand which group I belonged to. At first I wasn’t as self-confident as now, I didn’t go out at all […] And then people would say “Are you Ashkenazi?” and I’d say to myself am I really Ashkenazi? No, I had to go out, but I just couldn’t… […] I preferred to be in control, I didn’t like to drink […] I was a kind of Ashkenazi. The change happened in one day. It’s hard to explain. I went with cool guys that went to parties. I took on various habits from them. It’s the self-confidence that strengthens my Mizrahiness […] my self-esteem rose. It covers my way of talking to people, my behavior that has become free, my hand movements that are aggressive […] I feel, it’s like it’s easier to talk to people, it’s a much nicer feeling […] I’m cool now.

Despite having Mizrahi origins, Amir’s sharing of middle-class practices with his peers places him in an unclear position. He does not know to what ethnicity he belongs. In order to position himself in the ethnic setting, he reflects on his experiences. The fun his friends make of his characteristics—passivity and restraint—and the connection they make between these characteristics and the Ashkenazi culture leads Amir to identify as Ashkenazi. However, after his acquaintance with a dominant group who identified with Mizrahi ethnicity, Amir switches his identity. Through socialization and the adoption of the group's characteristics—self-confidence, free expression, and hand gestures, traits identified as ‘Mizrahi’, Amir considers himself Mizrahi and is able to move into that identity.

By switching between ethnic identities, Eyal and Amir demonstrate that ethnicity does not contain the same significance and meanings it carries for rural adolescents. In the case of Eyal, the shallow and arbitrary nature of the ethnic signifiers constructs lower boundaries that allow him to switch between ethnicities. In Amir’s case, the thin nature of ethnicity enables him to have not just one set of ethnic characteristics but both sets, and thus to apply the set of characteristics that correlates with the nature of the interaction. These switchings undermine the meaning of ethnicity. If adolescents are able to move between ethnicities relatively easily and have a variety of characteristics, each of which emerges according to the nature of the interaction, the understanding of ethnicity as a category that channels our interactions, or manifests any hierarchical differences, is losing its meaning.

Discussion

Contrary to current literature, which characterizes the middle class and the formation of ethnic identities within it as homogenous (Alba and Nee, 2003; Archer, 2011), this article demonstrated that the category of middle class is not monolithic, and that its spatial differentiation leads to the construction of different ethnic identities. The narratives of minority adolescents demonstrate that, in rural areas, the operation of spatial ethnic boundaries leads to the construction of a salient ethnic identity, while in urban areas, in which spatial ethnic boundaries are less significant, adolescents developed a thin ethnic identity.

Current integration literature does not wholly explain the continued existence of ethnicity in societies in which demographic patterns and achievements of minorities are similar to those of the dominant group, and where many barriers have been lowered. Critical theorists on the other hand, struggle to explain the waning of ethnic identities, or their transformation into a thin form in other middle-class locations. This article indicates that these different phenomena do not contradict each other, but exist next to each other and emerge in different middle-class spaces.

In order to explain this phenomenon, we employ the model of ‘identity repertoire’. Amara and Schnell (2004) conceptualize identity as multi-dimensional; composed of a repertoire of sub-identities, which developed in different social contexts and with complex relations existing between them. According to their conceptualization, different groups constitute different relations for themselves from within the components of their identity repertoire. Thus, there are contexts in which identity is composed of independent, high-salience sub-identities, such that none of them dominates the others; while in other contexts, sub-identities maintain their interdependence, influencing the salience of the other sub-identities (Amara and Schnell, 2004: 189).

In the context of our case study, the salience of adolescents’ ethnic identification is interdependent with their middle-class position and identity.¹⁶ The ways that the adolescents narrated their experiences show that in rural areas—which were deliberately planned and constructed to create a geographical segregation—spatial boundaries continue to operate, differentiating between middle-class adolescents from veteran and minority backgrounds. These boundaries, which signify middle-class spaces as Western and Eastern and consequently array them in hierarchical order, has led minority adolescents to internalizing these classifications—and thus to identify with the minority identity.

These narratives attest that rural adolescents do not develop a full middle-class identity or belonging. Their daily interactions prevent them from entering public spaces, cause them to feel embarrassment and frustration, and lead them to experience incongruence and subordination when they attempt to move across different middle-class spaces. According to Amara and Schnell’s analysis (Amara and Schnell, 2004: 190), by constantly reminding MENA adolescents that they do not belong to the middle class, these inner experiences play a key role in developing their ethnic consciousness. In other words, the operation of spatial boundaries—impairing the social integration of MENA adolescents, and thus preventing them from converting their middle-class positions and patterns into high-salience middle class identity—led to the development of a salient ethnic identity in their multi-dimensional identity.¹⁷

On the other hand, the narratives of adolescents living in urban environments demonstrate that for their part, they have developed a thin ethnic identity. This is illustrated by the fact that, in heterogeneous spaces, where spatial boundaries are less significant and where MENA adolescents share many social and cultural practices with their veteran peers, these adolescents have developed a salient middle-class identity. They feel natural and comfortable in middle-class interactions, and do not experience disquiet or distress in middle class spaces. According to the identity repertoire model, these inner experiences lead urban adolescents to underemphasize their ethnic component, and to develop an ethnic identity that has a reduced meaning in their everyday life. Indeed, the interviewees’ narratives demonstrate that public classifications encourage adolescents to identify behaviors and characteristics as belonging to a specific ethnicity—and thus feel the need to choose an ethnic identity, and to switch to a different ethnicity when the circumstances demand it. Internalizing these classifications has prevented urban adolescents from shedding these labels. They do not altogether lack an ethnic identity; however, their stable middle-class position and belonging, together with the relatively small repertoire of neutral and depthless symbols and signifiers that composes ethnicity in these spaces, enables these adolescents to achieve two sets of ethnic behaviors and characteristics. They vacillate between the two ethnicities, switching their ethnic choice while quite often being indifferent about this choice. In other words, the absence of significant spatial boundaries, which enabled MENA adolescents to convert their middle-class positions and patterns into a salient middle-class identity, led to the development of a thin ethnic component. This is not a burden for them, but rather often grants them an ‘X- factor’—an extra ingredient that supports them in social interactions, empowers them, and improves their social status.

These findings raise the question of why there is still an ethnic division in Israel, even among socially mobile groups. Kachtan (2017) suggests that, although social boundaries between MENA and European Jews have become blurred over time, deep-rooted ethnic perceptions remain, operating in different social spaces and holding these ethnic groups as distinct. Her work demonstrates how these perceptions, expressed in the symbolic signification of military units as possessing a Mizrahi or Ashkenazi nature, creates a substantive ethnic discourse, shaping ethnic consciousness among Israeli soldiers. By revealing the existence of symbolic, ethnic depth structures within Israeli social spaces, this work offers another explanation for our findings from rural spaces in Israel. It could be argued that the ethnic history and structure of the southern Sharon region of Israel created a space characterized by deep ethnic perceptions and meaning. Thus, despite the significant mobility of MENA Jews, this symbolic depth structure endures, alongside spatial boundaries, in the shaping of salience ethnic identities among rural adolescents. Birnbaum-Carmeli, on the other hand, points to the existence of heterogeneous upper-middle-class spaces in Israel, where ethnic divisions are insignificant (1997, 2000). In these spaces, national and meritocratic discourses operate, together with personal interests, in the shaping of various practices that underemphasize ethnic differences and consciousness. Thus, Mizrahi families who believe that their mobility depends on evading ethnic gaps educate their adolescents to consider themselves autonomous individuals, to belittle ascriptive identities, and to acquire higher education. The integration of the Ashkenazi population with Mizrahi Jews grants the latter a social legitimacy, enabling them to negotiate with city and national authorities over resources and reinforcing the shaping of a unified local identity. This study provides another explanation for our findings with respect to heterogeneous spaces. In other words, it is possible that, alongside the absence of spatial boundaries in heterogeneous middle-class spaces (that leads to the weakening of ethnic identity) the liberal discourses and internal dynamics between mobile and dominant groups that characterize heterogeneous spaces can also—according to Birenbaum-Carmeli—contribute to this weakening.

Various studies point to the relationships between middle-class practices and interactions and ethnic differentiation. Recently, scholars have also shown that the middle class is not monolithic and that its diversification influences the construction of ethnic and racial identities (Cohen and Leon, 2008; Lacy, 2004). Lacy (2004) shows there are intra-group differences in the way black middle classes construct their identity in black suburbs versus white suburbs. Thus, in black suburbs, parents assume that because their children are immersed in black community interactions, they do not need to take additional acts in order to develop their adolescents’ positive racial identity. In white suburbs, on the other hand, where blacks are rare, parents need to act and to expose their adolescents to black spaces in order to construct their positive racial identity (2004: 924). This article complements research of the middle class by examining middle-class locations that are not only different in their population but also in their physical and environmental nature, i.e. rural versus urban spaces. By pointing out that different spatial mechanisms operate in rural and urban locations, we contribute to the undeveloped study of middle-class diversity and the ways this diversity affects the formation of different ethnic identities. This paper also contributes to the understanding of the complexities of current ethnicity in Israeli society by demonstrating the operation of simultaneous, albeit opposing, ethnic structures in the public sphere. On the one hand, there exist social spaces in which ethnic discourses, practices, and spatial boundaries continue to be dominant in shaping the ethnic experience and consciousness of mobile groups. But, in parallel, competing discourses and dynamics operate in other social spaces, which serve to blur ethnic differences and weaken the ethnic identifications of these groups.

This article highlights the need for further investigation of the historical, social, economic and spatial structures that differentiate the middle class. This research can expand our understanding of power relations between dominant and minority groups in the present-day middle class.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Avihu Shoshana, Dana Kachtan and Guy Shani for their significant contribution to the writing of the article. We would like also to thank the anonymous reviewers for their thought-provoking comments.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Guy Abutbul Selinger

Avraham Shnider

Notes

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