Latinos in Israel

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Alejandro Paz demonstrates the processes by which margins of identity are constructed or challenged. Israeli identity is routinely imagined in relation to Arab, particularly Palestinian, identity. The fact that the space occupied by undocumented Latino youths in Israel is negotiable shows the complexity and contingency of national identity, raising interesting points about how it actually works.

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~Bonnie Urciuoli, author of Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences of Language, Race, and Class

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Latinos quest for recognition as citizens is publicly grounded in their ability to convey their similarity to Israelis and their difference from Palestinians. Thus, speaking like a citizen is much more than a surface performance, as Alejandro Paz convincingly shows, and Latinos themselves are transformed in the process.

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~Dafna Hirsch, author of 'We Are Here to Bring the West': Hygiene Education and Culture Building in the Jewish Society of Palestine during the British Mandate Period

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This fine-grained ethnography of the Latino migrant community in Israel illustrates the ways in which every day linguistic practices—such as 'speaking like a citizen'—can become cunning political tools in the hands of undocumented populations. Moving boldly beyond regionally-bound ethnographic approaches, Alejandro Paz's study demonstrates how the precarious lives of Latino communities in Israel are implicated in larger global histories of displacement and colonialism, even as it reminds us that the fate of the non-citizen Palestinian and the non-citizen labor migrant are intimately intertwined.

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~Rebecca L. Stein, author (with Adi Kuntsman) of Digital Militarism: Israel's Occupation in the Social Media Age