Erasable Citizenship in Marginal Spaces

In 2009, I published an article titled “The Challenge of Citizenship: Arabs, Foreigners, Israelis.” Focusing on two events in the educational field — an Arab democratic school in Jaffa and the struggle of children of labour migrants for citizenship — I examined how the neoliberal turn impacted citizenship in marginalised communities. As neoliberalism prioritises markets over other paths for inclusion, it unlocked new opportunities for individuals to claim citizenship or feel as citizens. However, there is a specific conditionality embedded in this concept of citizenship: it is individualistic, relegating any sense of collectivity to the cultural sphere and leading individuals to reconstruct themselves as homo-economicus. Almost two decades later, I revisit these two groups to ask: what remains of the promise of citizenship? Has that promise ever materialized, and does citizenship still serve as a pathway to social solidarity? While many left-leaning Israelis regard citizenship as a means of transcending nationalist barriers to foster social cohesion, examining it from the margins raises questions about its effectiveness. Drawing on recent examples from the experiences of Palestinian citizens and labour migrants, as well as research on young Israeli adults’ conceptions of citizenship, I introduce the term “erasable citizenship” to describe the conceptual and practical limits of Israeli citizenship.