City of go(l)d: Spatial and cultural effects of high-status Jewish immigration from Western countries on the Baka neighbourhood of Jerusalem

Introduction

I was awaiting my turn to pay for some groceries I just bought at the neighbourhood supermarket in Bethlehem Road. It was noontime in mid-June and therefore quite empty. Two young females entered the supermarket. I could tell they were American, probably tourists or maybe on a year’s Jewish studies program. ‘Is this butter?’ they asked the cashier in English, raising a small pack. She looked baffled and so I answered ‘Yes.’ ‘Like for cooking?’ ‘Yes,’ I said again. ‘What did they say?’ asked the cashier, an Israeli Mizrahi-Jew in her late twenties. ‘They asked if it’s butter,’ I explained in Hebrew. Seconds after, two young men entered. They too looked American. ‘Tooth brush?’ They asked in loud-voiced English without any prior introductions. ‘What are they saying?’ the cashier asked again. ‘They want a tooth brush,’ I said. ‘In the back, on the left,’ she answered in Hebrew and I translated. ‘How can you work here without speaking any English?’ I asked her with a smile, hoping not to offend her. ‘Nobody ever said anything about that,’ she said, ‘and besides, most customers here are French anyway.’

The episode described above is one small encounter that occurred in Baka, a small Jerusalem neighbourhood undergoing a deep change in population. From a Judaised formerly Palestinian neighbourhood dominated by Mizrahim, Jews from Islamic countries who arrived in Israel during the 1950s, it has become, through gentrification processes, one of the main enclaves of the English- and French-speaking populations of Jerusalem. Businesses in the neighbourhood adjust to these changes in order to attract the new population. Therefore, while the cashier found it hard to cope in foreign languages, that very same supermarket offered many imported products that western immigrants like to consume.

Baka is a case-study of a neighbourhood undergoing slow, dynamic and complex processes of gentrification, combined with high-status immigration of Jews from western countries, and particularly from the United States, France and Britain. My main research question was how changes in Baka’s population influenced and reflected spatial and cultural transformations in the neighbourhood. As my ethnography reveals, Baka’s gentrification resulted in various spatial and cultural transformations, mostly reflected in the housing market, the religious sphere, the education sphere, local consumerism and patterns of public participation in neighbourhood affairs. In this paper, I focus on the spatial aspect of the housing market and on the cultural field of consumerism.

Two groups of western immigrants reside in Baka: English-speakers and French-speakers. English-speaking immigrants mainly come from the United States and Britain, but also from Canada, Australia and other countries. In Israel, English-speakers grouped together and became known as ‘Anglo-Saxons’, a term that never applied to them before (Rapport, 1998). Similarly, French-speaking immigrants come from France, Belgium, Switzerland or Quebec, but may have previously immigrated there from North Africa or Eastern Europe.

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the effects lifestyle migration has on cities, neighbourhoods and housing markets and to elaborate the understanding of who lifestyle migrants are, what motivates them and how they live in their destinations. This case-study demonstrates how lifestyle migration links with urban transformation, particularly gentrification. While gentrification has more often been studied in the global north (Filion, 1991; Gale, 1984; Lees, 2000; Walks and Maaranen, 2008; Zukin, 2010), this paper shows that neoliberal processes, like gentrification or the global flow of capital and investments, are indeed much more encompassing. The neoliberal era is characterised by people’s search for good housing investments in up and coming locations, in their own countries or elsewhere. This search links to questions of class, ethnicity, cultural capital, identity and belonging, but also to migration regimes and to policies regarding international property investment. This case is relevant beyond the consideration of Jerusalem, particularly given the persistent role of international capital in urban property markets around the world.

While much has been written on the topic of gentrification, there is not so much on the combination between gentrification and immigration, and particularly high-status lifestyle migration, defined as the mobility of relatively privileged individuals in search for a better quality of life (Benson and O’Reilly, 2009). Similar processes currently occur in many places and therefore, the spatial politics of privileged migration and its impact on cities, neighbourhoods and housing markets is a story that needs to be told. Lifestyle migration has mainly been researched in the context of rural or coastal tourist destinations (Benson, 2013a; King et al., 2000; Linderson, 2010; Spalding, 2013; Warnes and Williams, 2006), and less in the context of cities. This urban case-study therefore illuminates a somewhat blind spot of this body of literature. This case-study is also unique in the sense that this is an ethnic (as well as ideological and religious) migration, which is interconnected with class habits.

Baka, located in the southern part of Jerusalem, is small both in size and population (see Figure 1). Baka’s territory is less than half a square kilometre (Jerusalem in total lies on 125.2 square kilometres), and only an estimated number of 7,500 people inhabit it, while the entire city’s residents were 830,000 in 2013. Following the unification of east and west Jerusalem after the 1967 war and the annexation of vast Palestinian lands to the city, Baka – formerly a borderline neighbourhood – centralised. It is in close proximity to both the city centre and the old city of Jerusalem.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Jerusalem’s location in Israel (left), and Baka’s location in Jerusalem (right), in relation to the city centre, the old city and the ‘Green Line’ (the 1949-armistice borderline).

In the following section, I will describe the methodology of this research. I will then outline the history of Baka as a gentrified neighbourhood. Afterwards, I will theoretically address high-status immigration in Baka in terms of lifestyle/homecoming migration, and show how this immigration affects the neighbourhood. I will end with some conclusions.

Methodology

Baka had been the topic of my ethnographic research from 2008 to 2013. Such lengthy fieldwork was possible due to my residency in the neighbourhood then. In the course of my fieldwork, I have conducted 100 formal interviews (recorded and later transcribed) as well as many informal conversations. In order to explain the effects that western immigration had on Baka’s urban transformation, I needed to include respondents with different perspectives, and therefore interviewed neighbourhood residents (Israelis, western immigrants and Palestinians), community leaders, religious laypeople, merchants, architects, realtors, representatives of absorption organisations, local politicians and neighbourhood activists. Many respondents belonged to more than one category. My analysis is based on the different perspectives gathered. Forty of my respondents were western immigrants: 25 from English-speaking countries (of which 17 were Americans) and 15 from French-speaking countries, mainly France. The numbers correlate with the representation of these populations in Baka. My respondents immigrated to Israel in various periods, from the 1960s until the present. In terms of religiosity, the majority of immigrant respondents (33 out of 40) were Orthodox, although of different backgrounds and levels of practice. My other respondents (60 in total) were more diverse: 34 were secular or traditional Jews, 21 were religious, from different streams of Judaism, and four were non-Jews. Men and women were equally represented among the immigrants, but men were slightly over represented among the other respondents. I often found my respondents using personal networks or through the ‘snow ball’ technique. I asked respondents various questions, depending on the category to which they belonged. Neighbourhood residents (immigrants and others) were the majority of my respondents, and I always asked them about the reasons that brought them there (to Baka, to Jerusalem, to Israel) and about their everyday lives and practices.

In order to understand the extent of urban transformation in Baka, I conducted numerous participant observations in contexts where representations of transformation could be found – synagogues, neighbourhood parks, streets, supermarkets, cafés, shops, schools, private homes and community institutions. While some of my observations were structured (I was there for that purpose), others were spontaneous, as a part of my day, and therefore difficult to quantify. Sometimes I entered the sites as a researcher, but I generally gained access as a resident, parent, activist, client or friend. My participation was often active – I prayed in synagogues, played in parks, did my shopping, trained at the gym, handed flyers, attended neighbourhood and municipal meetings (and stated my opinions occasionally), had food and drinks in cafés, sent my kids to school, and visited people’s homes. When I could, I would write notes while I observed, in a small notebook I carried everywhere. When impossible, I did it later. As my fieldwork was ‘at home’, issues of reflexivity and subjectivity, which anthropologists have been debating for decades, were particularly relevant. I was not ‘a fly on the wall’. My own positioning as a resident of the neighbourhood, middle-class, secular, native-Israeli, relatively young, mother of young children and not the owner of my apartment, clearly influenced my research. Anthropologists acknowledge that anthropological findings (or ‘truths’) can only be partial, as they are delivered by individuals with unique positioning and worldviews (Clifford, 1986). Being aware of that, I have done my best to include and represent as many voices as possible, in order to validate my analysis.

On top of interviews and participant observation, I also followed newspaper articles on issues related to my research in nationwide and local newspapers and in French- and English-speaking media in Israel. I have searched the municipality’s archive and studied the history of the neighbourhood since its establishment. I have also conducted online netnographic research (Kozinets, 2010) that included various email correspondence, Facebook discussions and new immigrants’ forums. I gained access to several mailing lists, sometimes as a resident and sometimes as they were accessible to all. On Facebook, I only had access to what my personal contacts posted. Immigrants’ forums, like the Nefesh B’Nefesh forum (the organisation that brings most English-speaking Jews to Israel nowadays) and a French Yahoo group, required special permissions to access, which I got. There were other freely accessible online forums and blogs. I archived many of the data on my computer and then analysed them according to the themes that emerged from my interviews and observations. Much of this information correlated with my ‘offline’ findings while adding substantial data. Moreover, the netnographic research provided precious details and views that immigrants did not often share with me, because of the limited length of interviews or my positioning as native-Israeli, but did share with one another.

The history of Baka as a gentrified neighbourhood

Baka was established in the late nineteenth century by wealthy Palestinians who were forced out of the neighbourhood during the 1948 war. The abandoned Palestinian homes were declared ‘absentee properties’ and were soon populated by new Jewish immigrants, mainly lower-class Mizrahim, as well as by some government employees, military veterans and evacuees from the Jewish neighbourhoods damaged in the war. The spacious houses were divided into small units and became densely populated. The rough living conditions soon turned Baka into a poor, crime-infested neighbourhood. The 1967 war was a turning point for Baka as the new city borders turned it from a peripheral to an inner-city neighbourhood. Moreover, a new architectural trend saw value imbued in all that can be termed historic, authentic or ‘with character’ (Nitzan-Shiftan, 2005) and middle-class Israelis were re-enchanted by Palestinian homes. In fact, the Palestinian homes were the ‘engine’ of Baka’s gentrification.

Gentrification processes consist of several stages: first, a small group of ‘pioneers’ enters the neighbourhood. They are mainly artists and architects with knowledge, time and ability to perform the restoration, and not much wealth. This stage lasted in Baka until the mid-1970s. In the second stage, homebuyers and investors enter the neighbourhood, and buy properties for much higher prices. This stage occurred in Baka from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. In the third stage, businesspersons, realtors, developers and builders enter the neighbourhood and greatly increase the value of assets (first sprouts of it appeared in Baka as early as the 1980s, but the main process occurred in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s) (Gale, 1984).

It is impossible to say when a gentrification process is completed. As other social processes, it is dynamic and has different shape and length in different places. The end of gentrification is vague. It may ‘end’ once all or most old-time residents are replaced by newcomers of higher class, it can remain in an incomplete state for decades and it can develop into something new. Often enough, when the process is ‘completed’, it turns out that the residents of high social status (reflected mainly in education) – first wave gentrifiers – were partially pushed out (Filion, 1991). Walks and Maaranen (2008) argue that near the end of the process, with virtually all the social and economic risk eliminated, the most risk-averse bourgeois households make their home in the neighbourhood. Remaining tenanted buildings are de-converted, both housing and retail are re-renovated, and the neighbourhood completes its transformation into one of the most ‘desirable’ locations in the city (Walks and Maaranen, 2008: 4). Loretta Lees calls it super-gentrification; when the upper-class (the super-rich) pushes out the middle-class (Lees, 2000). This process has been going on in Baka since the late 1990s, while at the same time ‘regular’ gentrification continued. ‘Regular’ gentrification currently continues in the poorly built housing developments of the 1960s and in buildings from the 1970s and 1980s, while super-gentrification refers to luxury apartments – in new buildings initially designated for upper-middle class or in additions on Palestinian homes. From the onset of Baka’s gentrification, real estate prices increased a hundred-fold and the former ‘slum’ is now a prestigious neighbourhood.

The first wave gentrifiers included mostly young couples and families, secular, educated, not particularly wealthy and on the political left, who came from the more established neighbourhoods of the city. Detached homes with a garden for attractive prices could also be found in the satellite neighbourhoods of Jerusalem or in the suburbs, but those who came to Baka preferred the inner-city, liked the Palestinian architecture and saw the potential of the neighbourhood. Amiram Gonen claims that middle-class Jewish households always preferred the inner-city, and the trend of suburbanisation had not really changed that. Yet, since the early 1970s, the Jewish middle-class’ bias against the old quarters of the lower classes has declined (Gonen, 2002: 728–729).

While native-Israelis initially dominated the gentrification process of Baka, it always included immigrants from western countries. As early as the 1980s, these immigrants constituted 30% of the neighbourhood’s gentrifiers (Cohen, 1985). The 1967 war, and particularly the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, sparked the imagination of western Diaspora Jews and caused them to identify with Israel and adopt a Zionist worldview. Those who immigrated to Israel then were mostly young, single, educated and not particularly wealthy. They shared a strong Jewish identity and came from secular, traditional, non-Orthodox or Orthodox backgrounds (Avruch, 1981; Dashefsky and Lazerwitz, 1983: 266). The first western immigrants who came to Baka were liberal Americans, mostly from secular, Reform or Conservative backgrounds. Western immigrants who followed were already of different characteristics.

While at first the main attraction to Baka was its housing options, western immigrants are currently drawn to Baka because of its reputation as a good and central neighbourhood with large communities of both English- and French-speakers. The synagogues established by western immigrants are another point of attraction, as are the schools, good services, heterogeneous population and community atmosphere. Nowadays, western immigrants are the main new population to settle in Baka. According to the Baka Community Council and Israel’s 2008 Census, western immigrants comprise about 25% of the neighbourhood’s population (French-speaking immigrants constitute about 10%, and English-speakers, 15%). If we include the second generation of immigrants, the numbers are larger and total 30–40% (for both populations) of all residents. These numbers do not include tourists and students on visiting programmes, nor do they include Jewish home owners who had not officially immigrated to Israel and are therefore not Israeli citizens (although they can easily become ones). The dominance of western immigrants, nowadays most of which are religious Orthodox Jews, intensified with the shift from gentrification to super-gentrification.

High-status immigration of the privileged in Baka

Israel is an ethnic immigration country, and the only criterion for migrant selection is Jewish ethnic origin (Joppke and Rosenhek, 2002). The Law of Return (1950) established an open-door policy for Jews and extensive support benefits for immigrants. Moreover, encouraging Jewish immigration to Israel is a central goal for the state (Gal, 2008; Shuval, 1998). However, in recent years, the number of immigrants has declined. As the source of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union and Ethiopia decreased, the reservoir of potential immigrants consists of Jews from western countries and Israeli expatriates.

The Jews residing in western countries are often quite successful in professional and economic terms. They also hold a cultural capital, which is highly regarded in Israel. Now, most immigrants from the west are religious and Zionist (as opposed to the large numbers of non-Jews or Jews-under-question who immigrated to Israel from the FSU and Ethiopia). Their financial means enable many of them not to burden the state by claiming benefits (again, in opposition to other migrants), and they are perceived as contributing much to the state. Therefore, this population is greatly desired by Israel. Although one would not expect Israel to have a policy regarding highly-skilled migrants (Shpaizman, 2013: 184), the State of Israel is actually willing, in various ways, to encourage highly-skilled western migration. One such way is by giving free rein to private organisations engaged in encouraging immigration from western countries (Shpaizman, 2013). Another way includes financial incentives such as significant tax benefits. These measures have turned Israel into a tax haven for wealthy Jews.

When combined with various push-factors, such as tax reforms (in France for instance), economic crises or growing anti-Semitism, these measures further enhance the attraction of Diaspora Jews to Israel, and their wish to fully or partially immigrate to Israel or merely invest capital. Although privileged migration to Israel is not a new phenomenon, the policies that encourage such migration and facilitate investments by wealthy Jews are a new trend in Zionism. The State of Israel wishes to participate in, and capitalise on, the growing trend of the global upper-middle class to retire or spend significant periods elsewhere. Why should Jews invest their money in the Hamptons, coastal Spain or rural France and not in Israel? The western Jews residing in Baka are more often permanent migrants or people whose centre of life is in Israel, even when making their living overseas. This, however, is not always the case. Indeed, for many western Jews it is enough to feel deeply connected to Israel by owning property there, without necessarily being resident in it. Israel’s migration regime and its encouraging policies concerning international property investment of foreign Jews are greatly affecting local housing markets. Highly desired areas, and the communities residing there, are particularly affected.

While immigration to Israel has been constantly dropping, the number of western immigrants is actually increasing, and stands at several thousand per year. In 2013, for example, 16,884 people immigrated to Israel, and about 40% of them came from western countries, more than the previous year (CBS, 2014). Immigration from France, in particular, has risen. In 2014, the number of French immigrants reached a new peak – almost 7,000 immigrants, and is expected to rise further in 2015, following the terrorist attacks on ‘Charlie Hebdo’ and the Jewish kosher supermarket in Paris (Hasson et al., 2015).

Jerusalem attracts more western immigrants than any other city in Israel. In 2011, 34% of all American immigrants and 27% of French immigrants chose to settle in Jerusalem (CBS, 2012), while 33% of British immigrants settled in Jerusalem in 2009 (CBS, 2010). Many of them find their way to the Baka neighbourhood.

Migration literature usually deals with the more common phenomenon of the movement of people from the developing world to the developed western countries. However, there is also a growing body of literature that deals with the limited opposite phenomenon, the mobility of privileged people (Amit, 2007; Croucher, 2009, 2012), by choice. Such is the theoretical and empirical literature on lifestyle migration. Lifestyle migration is defined as the mobility of:

relatively affluent individuals of all ages, moving either part-time or full-time, to places that, for various reasons, signify, for the migrant, a better quality of life … Lifestyle migration is a search, a project, rather than an act, and it encompasses diverse destinations, desires and dreams. (Benson and O’Reilly, 2009: 609–610)

Lifestyle migrants are not driven by job opportunities or solely by economic reasons that have driven much of migration throughout history (Jackiewicz, 2010: 1); many of them desire a slow and more meaningful way of life (O’Reilly and Benson, 2009: 4). They predominantly belong to wealthy societies in the western hemisphere and they choose to relocate to places with lower costs of living, thus capitalising the multiple opportunities that the differences of purchase power and social and symbolic power relations facilitate (Janoschka and Haas, 2013: 1–2). The reasons for lifestyle migration are varied. Some people desire to live a rural lifestyle, outside the big cities (Benson, 2013a). Others desire to live more cheaply where the weather is warmer, usually near the sea (Karkabi, 2013; King et al., 2000; Linderson, 2010; Spalding, 2013; Warnes and Williams, 2006). Some wish to lead a more spiritual life (Korpela, 2010). Many retirees hope to spend their retirement years pleasantly and in financial comfort (Howard, 2008; Jackiewicz and Craine, 2010; Lizárraga Morales, 2010; Rojas et al., 2014). Lifestyle migrants, unlike most other immigrants, do not necessarily want to raise their living standards, but their quality of life – as they perceive it.

I suggest looking at western immigrants to Jerusalem as lifestyle migrants as they are immigrants by choice, mostly motivated by the ‘pull factors’ of Israel (Amit and Riss, 2007; Kay, 2001). Their motivation to immigrate usually stems from cultural imaginaries, national ideology and religion (Amit and Riss, 2007; Cohen, 2002, 2007; Sheleg, 2000). These immigrants seek a better life religiously, nationally and culturally and hope to gain a sense of belonging. For this, they are willing to reduce their material quality of life and face the challenges of immigration. However, their quest for a more meaningful way of life does not mean total lack of interest in maintaining, at least partly, the standard of living to which they are accustomed.

While lifestyle migration usually applies to rural or coastal areas, the case of Baka is closer to Michael Herzfeld’s description of processes in the Monti neighbourhood in Rome. Monti attracts well-off Italians and foreigners seeking residency in an ancient neighbourhood with elegant architecture right at the core of the historic city. ‘Cosmopolitan fashion’ writes Herzfeld (2009: 3), ‘now invests owning and inhabiting a piece of an allegedly universal history of civilisation with irresistible appeal.’ Herzfeld’s work corresponds well with the case of Baka, as much like Monti, it attracts well-off newcomers for its unique architecture and central location, and its proximity to the old city – the ancient spiritual centre of the Jewish world. In Baka, it is the ‘Jewish (rather than cosmopolitan) fashion’ to own or inhabit a piece of holiness figured in a property located in the holiest city for Jews, in the holy Land of Israel. Owning a property in Jerusalem (or Israel) is significant for many Diaspora Jews, and it became a trend and status symbol for Jews who want to show their identification with Israel. In fact, more than 11,000 properties in Jerusalem, mostly in central neighbourhoods, belong to foreign Jews and remain empty most of the year (Paz-Frenkel, 2013).

Western immigrants to Israel are not only lifestyle migrants; they are also performing a certain type of ‘homecoming’. Sociologists Edna Lomsky-Feder and Tamar Rapoport speak of the Jewish immigration to Israel as an ‘ethno-national homecoming’. They argue that this is a political-national return movement sponsored by the nation-state. This ‘return’ is based on the naturalisation of immigrants returning from exile to the historical homeland, the national home, in which their belonging to the national collective is based on common ethnic ties. They further claim that what distinguishes this ethno-national homecoming from other homecomings is the legal overlap between citizenship and nationality. The Israeli law grants rights to ethnic community members living outside the nation-state, often for many generations (Lomsky-Feder and Rapoport, 2012: 2). Fran Markowitz and Anders Stefansson (2004) also refer to Jewish immigration to Israel as ‘homecoming’. They argue that these people uproot themselves from the only country they ever knew in order to settle in their people’s homeland (Markowitz and Stefansson, 2004: 4). This ‘homecoming’ is therefore symbolic and imaginary in nature. Jews hold an image of Israel as their homeland based on biblical sources and practices of prayer. This image is so deeply rooted in Jewish religion and culture that it is not necessary to know Israel as a real place in order to imagine it as home.

It is important to note that what defines certain immigrants as privileged is not only the fact that their immigration is voluntary and that they have the resources to immigrate (Amit, 2007), but also that they are citizens of powerful countries (Janoschka and Haas, 2013: 2). Although the global era made people incredibly mobile, nation-states constantly tighten their borders in order to prevent undesirable migration (Shamir, 2005). Thus, the mere possibility to immigrate legally and be welcomed in one’s destination country, as is the case for western Jews, is another privilege.

Western immigrants in Israel willingly form their own enclaves and are even encouraged to do so by absorption organisations. Since these are relatively powerful groups, when they settle somewhere, especially en masse, they influence this place and change it. Lifestyle migration of western Jews and the formation of enclave communities also occur in other Israeli cities like Tel Aviv, Netanya and Ashdod (all coastal cities), where real estate became tied to second home and summer apartment purchases that impact local populations. The case of Baka can shed light on these other places too.

Several studies deal with the spatial and cultural effects of lifestyle migration on the places where it settles, on the relations between immigrants and locals and between immigrants and the authorities. Nadeem Karkabi (2013), for example, writes about Europeans in Sinai, Egypt, and their relationships with the local Bedouin population and with the Egyptian authorities. In Israel, as stated, high-status Jewish immigration is highly encouraged, but the relationships between western immigrants and other groups are sometimes complicated. Michael Herzfeld (2009) writes about the effects of affluent external and internal migration on a Rome neighbourhood and its lower-class residents, who are pushed out of their homes due to external demand. The same thing happens in Baka. Real estate agents and other individuals told me that they used to knock on doors and make purchase offers to residents. I too, as a resident of Baka, frequently received letters stating that French- and English-speaking clients would be interested in purchasing ‘my’ property. Another frequent method is marketing new housing units solely in English and French, and mainly overseas. Michaela Benson (2013b) and Michael Janoschka (2009) refer to the effects of North-American immigration on the places where it settles in Panama and Costa Rica (respectively) in terms of the housing market and rising real estate prices, costs of everyday products, availability of imported food products in local supermarkets, traffic and parking issues and the relations between different social groups. All these effects appear in Baka too. Eva Jeppsson Grassman and Annika Taghizadeh Larsson (2013) refer to the flourishing Church of Sweden and the important roles it fills for Swedish immigrants and tourists across the globe, who were not frequent attenders of the church back home. The religious institutions that immigrants established in Baka filled a significant role in their lives too, and greatly affected the neighbourhood. As Michael Janoschka and Heiko Haas argue (2013: 6–7), there is need for a more critical point of view towards lifestyle migration and its outcomes and implications for the places and communities in which it settles. This is certainly a major goal for this paper too, and the reason for my bringing together the literature on lifestyle migration with that on gentrification.

In the following sections I shall refer to several effects that previous lifestyle migration literature had pointed out and put it in the urban context. I will argue that while the social and spatial segregation of ethnic minorities is usually connected with less affluent neighbourhoods (think of the Parisian banlieues for example), when it comes to privileged migration, we are dealing with the affluent and central parts of the city. The spatial politics of privileged migration therefore clearly has a wide impact on cities, neighbourhoods and housing markets. I will focus on the connections between high-status immigration and gentrification and address two of the spatial-cultural effects in Baka, on real estate and consumerism.

Why Baka?

Two interviews I conducted, with representatives of private institutions encouraging Jewish immigration and assisting its absorption, shed light on the question why Baka is so attractive for French- and English-speaking immigrants. I heard similar expressions from many western immigrants in the course of my interviews but find these ‘bird’s eye view’ quotes more enlightening and useful here.

The CEO of AMI, an organisation for French immigrants, explained why the French come to Baka:

When French immigrants come here, they build a ghetto. It did not use to be like that before. They used to go to good neighbourhoods because they were good, not because they were French. Their request is ‘if you take my community and re-build it in Jerusalem, I’ll make Aliya’ [immigrate to Israel]. You see ads in the local French newspaper in Baka: ‘a beautiful apartment near the synagogue’. What does it mean? Near the French synagogue, in the French street. This is their model. Living in the French neighbourhood is a minimum requirement nowadays. These are French-style Orthodox people, who like watching television, going out and eating in restaurants. They need their ‘Champs-Élysées’ nearby. They want to live in a religious area, but one that is more open to the world. This is why people who can afford the prices in Baka go there. In Baka they tried to copy some of the models they knew from France – the synagogue, the Torah lessons, all in French. They have no chance, desire, ability and need to learn Hebrew. They have cable TV in French, Facebook and Internet and cheap flights to France, and they can work in call-centres [serving French institutions from Israel]. The impact is so strong that even well absorbed veteran immigrants tend to stick to the French community. You have become an Israeli and suddenly now, when you are fifty or sixty, you can reconnect with your past. This is the new reality of the world of migration. I believe that these trends will only become stronger in Baka. The French and the Americans will eventually push out the Israelis.

The CEO explains that veteran French immigrants affect the choices that new immigrants make (where to live, where to pray), but there is also the opposite effect, that the new wave of immigrants have on those that preceded it. Veteran immigrants who integrated into Israeli society can suddenly ‘return to their origins’, thanks to the critical mass of French-speakers. New technological possibilities are part of it too: satellite TV, cheap flights and advanced communication services. These effectively reduce the distance between France and Israel. For the CEO, the ‘ghetto model’ reflects ‘the new reality of the world of migration’. The Jewish ghettos of middle ages Europe were marked by over-crowdedness and high percentages of illness and death, but also by flourishing institutions, a sense of community and social cohesion. The forced isolation from the outside world provided protection (Wacquant, 2004). French immigrants seek these positive aspects of ghetto life. This is the lifestyle they are familiar with, as in France too they were an ethnic minority. However, the lifestyle that the French-speakers in Baka adopt is that of an ethnic enclave and not a ghetto lifestyle, as they are not as secluded and isolated as the term ‘ghetto’ suggests.

The education and community advisor of Nefesh B’Nefesh, an organisation dedicated to increasing Jewish immigration from North America and the United Kingdom to Israel, spoke about the voluntary segregation of English-speaking immigrants:

There is a difference between the American immigrants of today and those of thirty years ago, who were less keen on being with other English-speakers. Israel is also completely different and now it is more acceptable to live in an ethnic community. It also affects immigrants’ decisions of where to live when they feel that it is fine: I do not have to be the ‘new Israeli’ I can be an American who wants to immigrate to Israel. I want to fit in, live in Israel, work, put my children in schools, but I still have values that I want to keep. I would say that 60% of immigrants want to live in a place with many other English-speakers. Others want to be where there are English-speakers, but not much. It is very rare that people do not want to be with English-speakers at all. Baka is a place where one can live with many English-speakers but also be around many native-Israelis. There is the convenience of the English-speaking community, with similar values, language and culture, but on the other hand if they want to integrate, they can.

Many immigrants today do not feel the need to substantially change following their immigration to Israel and become ‘the new Israeli’, as the Nefesh B’Nefesh advisor put it. They are satisfied with hyphenated identities of American/French/British-Israelis. It reflects the different approach towards immigrant absorption today, which shifted from the ‘melting pot’ approach to the multicultural approach. My interviewees, English- and French-speakers alike, mentioned the neighbourhood’s heterogeneous population as a source of attraction, but they also said they wanted to live in a place where at least some people were like them. These are contradicting requests that cannot coexist forever.

Real estate for the rich

The real estate market in Jerusalem responds quickly to every fluctuation, especially as the building of new apartments fails to keep in pace with the high demand. The steep rise in real estate prices is not exclusive to Jerusalem, rather a general problem reflected in Israel’s current housing crisis. Jerusalem’s unique characteristics make its housing market even more problematic: political issues, lack of available land, long processes of building permits and high demand for particular neighbourhoods by particular communities. Thus, properties in Jerusalem are the fastest in the country to sell and prices keep climbing even though it is one of the poorest cities in Israel.

During the 1990s, there was a growing interest from wealthy western Jews in real estate in Jerusalem. Local realtors, architects and designers quickly realised which way the wind was blowing and started to build, plan and sell to these homebuyers. They knew what would sell best: Arab-style architecture, either original or duplicate, with arches, red-tiled roofs and cuckoo-windows. The inside must fit the life of a modern – usually religious – Jewish family. This clientele also wanted smart-housing operational systems; under-floor heating; climate controlled air-conditioning systems; basements; dens (unfamiliar in local house planning); large dining rooms to host many people on Shabbat; and well-equipped modern-style kitchens. These trends – ‘authenticity’ on the one hand, and high-end modern comforts on the other – appear in the words of an architect who mainly works with wealthy English-speakers, in Baka and outside it:

In recent years, many Diaspora Jews seek a hold in Jerusalem, which has a deep religious and cultural significance for them. Many of them earned a lot of money overseas and see their future, especially after retirement, in Israel. Very few of them want new modern buildings and prefer building additions on old houses or new buildings that keep the same traditional, original Jerusalem spirit. It seems exotic to them, authentic. It signifies Jerusalem for them. Inside their houses, they want all the comforts they are used to, and they have the money for it.

The imagining of an ‘authentic’ Jerusalem is problematic. How authentic is a former Palestinian neighbourhood without its previous inhabitants? What is authentic about a one-level house transformed into a three-levels totally renovated building, or the architectural duplication of Palestinian styled homes? Such authenticity, it seems, is only superficial. While the preservation of the outdoor stone mouldings is required, the inside of the house can be utterly changed: the floor is dug, staircases are added, ceilings are removed and interior walls are torn-down. It seems paradoxical that to be truly at home in the Land of Israel, the interior of the home has to resemble Paris/New York/London as much as possible. There is an inherent contradiction between being drawn to the idealised place, which then must be remade in the image of a home left behind.

‘Authenticity’ and the issue of preservation therefore clearly have their limits. In her dissertation about the Yemin Moshe neighbourhood in Jerusalem, Tamar Zandberg (2008) touched upon similar questions and showed how preservation can be used as a discursive tool for what is actually the transformation of a place into a gentrified luxury neighbourhood. Ashworth and Tunbridge (2000) also ask what is authentic in houses and monuments that are so thoroughly restored, re-built, relocated, added to or utterly changed inside. The photos in Figure 2 demonstrate the ‘preservation’ of a one-level house in Baka, by a British-Jewish family. Nothing remained from this Palestinian home, except its façade, which is now inside the new building and cannot be seen from outside.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Before (right) and after (left) the ‘preservation’ of a house in Baka.

Sharon Zukin argues that authenticity has fictional qualities that are not ‘real’, but have a real effect on our imagination of the city, and on the new cafés, stores, and gentrified places where we like to live and shop. Authenticity, she adds, is a cultural form of power over space that puts pressure on the city’s old working class and lower middle-class, who can no longer afford to live or work there (Zukin, 2010: xiii). The search for an imagined ‘authentic’ Jerusalem along with high regard of preservation (while at the same time completely transforming those ‘preserved’ houses) is certainly a form of power, with real effects on the neighbourhood space and the population inhabiting it.

Compared with other neighbourhoods in the ‘historic city’ of Jerusalem, the parts built prior to 1948, Baka mostly attracts people who wish to live there, rather than purchase a second home that would remain empty most of the year. For now, Baka is still a lively neighbourhood with only 6% of ‘ghost homes’ (Leurer, 2007: 22). The demand to raise building standards (and hence, their costs) resulted in the creation of two real estate markets in Jerusalem: one for Israelis and one for western immigrants and foreigners. In neighbourhoods where there are both high demand and high land value, such as Baka, new buildings and additions to old buildings aim at the latter population. The steep rise in real estate prices slowly pushes out the less fortunate population – usually everyone who earns their living in shekels rather than foreign currencies – Israeli-born or veteran immigrants alike.

The quest for authenticity not only includes the architecture, but the community too. Many Baka residents, immigrants and natives alike, told me that they appreciated living in a heterogeneous community, and that they would like it to remain this way. The preservation of a vital and diverse community seemed no less important for many of them than the preservation of houses. A young immigrant who came from London in 2011, said: ‘I do not want to live in a neighbourhood where everyone’s like me. One of the things I like about this neighbourhood is the variety of people here.’ Another, who emigrated from Paris in 1996, told me:

I do not want to lose the uniqueness of the neighbourhood, which is still quite mixed, compared with other expensive Jerusalem neighbourhoods. I have a friend whose family could afford buying a very nice house here, but she says she is concerned that only wealthy families like hers could live in Baka.

Japonica Brown-Saracino (2004) calls the quest for an authentic and diverse community ‘social preservation’. She discusses the various discourses and practices of social preservationists, whom she differentiates from ‘regular’ gentrifiers. In Baka, too, the desire to preserve the character of the neighbourhood, both architecturally and community-wise, led many to participate in various civic and political activities. At a public assembly of neighbourhood residents gathered in March 2010, the crowd of about 120 people mainly comprised new and veteran Israeli gentrifiers and veteran English-speaking immigrants. The attending residents clearly stated that they wanted their neighbourhood to remain heterogeneous, with many young families and green parks. They wanted affordable housing and resented the building of luxury apartments and the phenomenon of ‘ghost homes’ triggered by lifestyle migration. At the same time, they were also opposed to building higher than three to four levels buildings. The solution proposed by the planners was to keep the historic parts of the neighbourhood low-built and build higher in the outskirts of Baka, mainly on top or instead of the housing developments of the 1960s. This scheme is expected to enhance the processes of gentrification and super-gentrification, as rejuvenation schemes would remove low and mid-range apartments from the housing market, to be replaced by better quality and more expensive units, while more luxury apartments would be built on top of historic buildings and purchased by wealthy lifestyle migrants. This would likely encourage low and middle-class residents to leave, while more affluent newcomers, native-Israelis or western immigrants, would move in. These processes would further homogenise Baka’s population, mainly socio-economically, but ethnically too.

Religion can also influence housing preferences. James Bielo (2011), for example, wrote about young evangelicals’ return to the city and their contribution to the gentrification processes. Baka is another example of it. The cafés on the south part of Baka, that French-speakers frequent, offer the French-speakers weekly Le P’tit Hebdo. The real estate ads often state ‘Proche Emouna’. Emouna Chelema Biyrushalaim (True belief in Jerusalem) is the biggest and oldest synagogue of the Francophone community in Baka, established in the mid-1990s by French Jews of North African origin. As Orthodox Jews do not drive on Shabbat, living in close proximity to one’s synagogue is an important thing, with implications on the surrounding housing market.

The imagination of Jerusalem as a holy city makes it attractive for religious Jewish immigrants. Moreover, the imagination of it as an ‘authentic’ space determines the city’s built landscape and results in various urban processes. Baka’s ‘authentic’ homes fuelled its gentrification process. Later on, additional features made it still more desirable. At a certain tipping point, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Baka became so desired by French- and English-speakers and at the same time so expensive that gentrification turned into super-gentrification, as the upper-class, mostly western immigrants, pushed out the middle-class that preceded it.

Consuming and belonging to the city of go(l)d

Consumerist patterns in Baka say much about the issue of belonging. Belonging is always to a specific place and entails feelings for it. Place symbolises something for its residents; activities – including those that are considered financial or consumer-oriented, such as buying a property, making purchases in a store, or sitting in a café – acquire emotional meaning and are not motivated solely by financial motives (Firey, 1945). Indeed, many Baka residents say that they tend to do most of their shopping in the neighbourhood, not because it is cheap (it is not), but because they wish to support local businesses and enjoy familiarity with the owners.

As stated, the ethnic segregation of western immigrants in Baka affects space considerably. This impact partially results from immigrants’ initiatives. Such is the case for synagogues established by immigrants, theatre groups in their languages and various classes and courses. There are also businesses and services designed to meet a need arising in the community: telecommunications services, English/French speaking kindergartens or service providers who are members of the community and therefore appear reliable and easy to communicate. Their advertisements reveal these perceptions and define their marketing strategies (such is the case for ‘the British plumber’ or ‘the American handyman’). While economic motivations are not at the core of high-status Jewish immigration, most immigrants still need to earn a living. Like many other lifestyle migrants worldwide, they often run small businesses, frequently in the field of tourism, or provide services for other migrants. As Benson and O’Reilly argue (2009: 610), these businesses are usually used by such migrants as a means to an end; funding their new lifestyles. Other migrants continue working overseas, thanks to current technological possibilities. This had become a frequent phenomenon among western immigrants in Israel. Moreover, as English language is essential in the Israeli job market, many job opportunities are available for English-speakers, but less so for French-speakers.

The impact of western lifestyle migration on the commercial sphere is also driven by the response of local market forces. One business whose target population is western (female and religious) immigrants – is a women-only gym and spa. It offers personal trainers, training in Hebrew and English and a multi-lingual staff. Other cases are an online delivery service servicing the wealthy English-speaking community; realtors and asset management personnel who specialise in western clientele; foreign language bookstores; cafés and restaurants aimed at western immigrants’ tastes; and a variety of imported products sold in local grocery stores and supermarkets. Many products are imported to Israel by immigrants, but once there, also appeal to local crowds and influence consumerist norms and preferences.

Both types of changes, those initiated by immigrants and those generated in response to them, profoundly influence space and the social and cultural trends that take place there. These changes influence the wider society, not just immigrants and their communities. A local religious community established by Israelis in 2006 adopted the American/European style of religious communities, where a synagogue is not just a house of prayer, but also a community centre and source for identity. Developments in the housing market determine which populations leave Baka and enter it, and enhance gentrification processes. High demands for housing in Baka affect adjacent neighbourhoods too. Baka is becoming more religious. New sports appear, like baseball and hockey. Local primary schools adopt models of parental involvement and try to attract western immigrants.

The fact that people can sustain much of their former lifestyle post-immigration – be it sipping their cappuccino in a Parisian style café or finding their favourite brand of cereals in the local supermarket – enables immigrants to gain a sense of belonging and attachment to place. Yet, they remain distanced from native-Israeli society. As a male respondent who emigrated from New Hampshire in 1996 told me:

Baka is one of the sole neighbourhoods where Americans can have the quality of life with which they are comfortable. Some people come here with a serious job, with money, with high standards, with openness to the world. Baka might be the most western, open and global neighbourhood in the country. They can live in Israel, be Israeli and raise their family in an Israeli environment but at the same time go on with their American life.

How exactly are Americans living in a transnational enclave ‘open to the world’? It seems that they are actually trying to make the ‘world’, in this case Israel, more American. The same goes for French and British immigrants, whose transnational practices are similar. However, the manner in which Baka culturally adjusts to western immigrants’ needs has more to it than the immigrants themselves. Israeli society as a whole is undergoing fast processes of globalisation and Americanisation. In a place heavily dominated by western populations, such processes are even more striking and accelerated.

Edward Relph argues that the desire to belong to a place and participate in its traditions can fuel attempts at systematic exclusion of all those who are believed not to belong (Relph, 1997: 208). The issue of exclusion raises the question: whose neighbourhood is it? Many businesses in Baka identify their target customers. They modify themselves to the status and tastes of consumers (Bourdieu, 1984) and to the potential profit inherent in the place. The attempt to attract potential customers reflects how businesses perceive the neighbourhood’s population and identify its people and their lifestyles. Not only do businesses reflect which population they identify as the most profitable, but by doing so, they also contribute to the identification of that population as the owners of the physical space. It both reflects the current composition of the neighbourhood’s population and shapes future social composition. When western immigrants recognise Baka as a place that caters to their needs, it increases their belonging. The local native-Israelis on their part often express their feeling of being ‘under conquest’ by western immigrants and resent them for pushing them out, economically and culturally. When these Israelis sense that a business attracts too many English- or French-speakers, they may feel out of place there and be put off by it. When Kalo, the most veteran café in Baka closed for refurbishments, I heard local Israelis telling the owner – ‘Don’t make it too American.’

Conclusions

High-status immigration from western countries is an immigration of the privileged (Croucher, 2009, 2012). This is a relatively understudied field in immigration studies (Benson, 2013b: 314). This paper focuses on transformations caused by this type of immigration when it settles in an urban space, and aims to bring together two bodies of literature – lifestyle migration and gentrification. By doing so it contributes to lifestyle migration literature by adding the urban perspective and to the gentrification literature by showing how it links with privileged migration, immigrants’ imaginaries regarding the receiving place, migration regimes and state supported foreign property investments. The wider relevance of this paper stems from the fact that other urban locales are currently dealing with similar phenomena, encouraged and enabled by the neoliberal regime.

As this case-study demonstrates, religious Jewish immigrants, mainly from the United States, France and Britain, currently dominate the gentrification of Baka. What generates this dominancy is the relatively high numbers of western immigrants to Baka, but more importantly – their visibility and impact. The economic power of these groups make them attractive for the real estate market and for local businesses. Their highly regarded culture and values affect the religious, educational and civic participation spheres.

English-speakers are more dominant in the public sphere than French-speakers. Besides the fact that it is a larger group, English-speakers are dominant for other reasons too. In general, they have better proficiency in Hebrew than French-speakers do, which is a key for acclimatisation. At the same time, the status of English allows immigrants (particularly recent ones) not to acquire Hebrew. Indeed, English is very dominant in the public domain in Baka and in Jerusalem as a whole, and often causes resentment from native-Israelis. Moreover, English-speaking countries enjoy a higher status in Israel (and worldwide), than French-speaking countries. This is particularly true in the case of the United States.

French-speaking immigrants in Baka are particularly dominant in the housing market. The French-speakers are mostly Orthodox Jews and their communities mainly form around synagogues. Thus, they wish to live near francophone synagogues and by doing so, influence space. The recent tax reforms in France and the accumulation of anti-Semitic acts there lead many wealthy French Jews to invest in real estate in Israel. This trend greatly affects Baka’s housing market. Apart from their impact on the housing market, I found that French immigrants had only limited spatial and cultural effects on the neighbourhood. They were mostly active within their own community and rarely reached out to the wider population. According to my French respondents, the individualistic character of the French and the common practices of Jewish communities in France explain this. Their lesser impact on the public space also relates to the lesser status of France and other French-speaking countries in Israel.

Immigrants from western countries immigrate by choice, motivated by Israel’s ‘pull factors’ and by ideological and religious reasons. They come in dribs and drabs and not in a flood. They are mostly highly-skilled and greatly desired by the state. The different approach towards immigrant absorption in Israel today, due to the abandonment of the ‘melting pot’ strategy, increases the legitimacy of a transnational lifestyle for western immigrants. Their tendency to congregate is even encouraged by the state and private absorption institutions. In fact, transnational lifestyle and practices enable people who never considered immigrating to Israel, for employment reasons or their valued ties with their home countries, to find a way to do so. In that sense, the State of Israel actually profits from transnationalism.

Immigrants are motivated to leave their comfortable lives behind and come to Jerusalem because they desire a more meaningful way of life, which for them lies in the ability to lead a fulfilling religious and cultural lifestyle in a place where Jews are the majority, and gain a sense of belonging. They are nonetheless interested in preserving the formal lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. Western immigrants may come to Israel motivated by their imaginaries of it as the place that the Bible relates to and where Jewish history formulated. They may also aspire to fulfil Zionist ideals. Yet, once there, they still need to adapt to a foreign reality. As I have argued, they are more easily integrated when living in an expatriate community, where space accommodates to their needs. Living in an enclave does not necessarily mean disconnectedness from Israeli everyday life; it is a softer, more adaptive way to experience reality. Additionally, those who choose Baka, unlike western immigrants in other places, also like the heterogeneous character of this neighbourhood.

By wanting to live in the centre of the Jewish world and in French- and English-speaking communities, immigrants actively enhanced the gentrification process of Baka, as their dominancy and economic power caused vast changes. The real estate and consumption markets responded to their needs and desires, thus causing prices to rise and less well-off residents to leave. As most immigrants are religious, secular lifestyle (and people) also diminished. The appealing heterogeneity of the neighbourhood, at least class-wise, decreases slowly. In fact, the process of super-gentrification pushes out early-stage gentrifiers and not just weaker populations. The former, on their part, are calling to preserve the neighbourhood’s character and slow down gentrification, currently accelerated by real estate developers, who seek to capitalise on the neighbourhood’s character and location by building luxurious housing units for wealthy western homebuyers.

Imaginaries that high-status immigrants may have, in this case the imagination of Jerusalem as a holy place, have many implications for their places of settlement. Part of the challenge for urban research, I believe, is to examine the implications that privileged immigrants’ imaginaries have on processes of gentrification and urban change.