Globalization, sense ofbelonging and the African community in Tel Aviv-Jaffa

תקציר

The paper examines practices of belonging in African migrant labor communities of Tel Aviv-Jaffa in the 1990s and early 2000s. It focuses on the physical and symbolic locations of the churches they established, together with the migrants’ reflections on new practices of belonging adopted by these communities. We argue that these new practices are flexible and multi-layered, connected to various aspects of the migrants ' identities. Thus, belonging to a place is not necessarily related to one coherent and solid aspect of identity; rather, it may be a temporary attachment that is full of contradictions, laden with feelings of rejection and otherness. Nonetheless, this attachment is powerful; its power lies in the fact that it is experienced through many different aspects of the individual migrant's identity.