Social

1
Social Cultural Mobility of Israeli Jewish
Immigrants in the United States, 1980-2000

• Uzi Rebhun
• The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• The 3rd International Population Geographies
  Conference
• Population Geography Research Group
• Royal Geographical Society
• Liverpool, June 19-21, 2006

2
General Purpose of Study

• To trace social and cultural mobility of Israeli
  Jewish immigrants in the U.S. through three
  complementary indicators language proficiency,
  citizenship, and educational attainment and
  further to examine the extent to which they
  maintain contacts and attachment to their country
  of origin

3
Previous Research

• On the average, Israeli Americans are
  socio-economically more successful than both
  population at origin and destination.
• This high socio-economic profile does not pertain
  to all Israelis in the U.S. Rather, in comparison
  to immigrants of European provenance, Israelis
  are more likely to be at either end of the
  occupational and income distribution.
• Socio-economic achievements as well as language
  fluency are strongly associated with young age at
  immigration and tenure in the new country

4
Empirical Basis

• Data were culled from the IPUMS of the 1980, 1990
  and 2000 U.S. Censuses.
• Complementary data derive from the 2000/01
  National Jewish Population Survey (conducted by
  RoperASW).

5
Figure 1. Algorithm for Identifying Israeli-Jews
in the U.S. Census, 1980-2000
A. Israeli-born
Language Spoken at Home
Hebrew/
Other than Hebrew/Yiddish/
Yiddish
Arabic/Armenian

Ancestry
Other than Arab/Palestinian/Armenian
6
Figure 1. Cont.
B. Foreign-born
Language Spoken at Home
Hebrew
Other
than

Hebrew
Ancestry
Israeli
Adopted from Cohen and Haberfeld, 1997.
7
(No Transcript)
8
(No Transcript)
9
Figure 4. Fluent English Speech (Very Well/Only
English) among Israeli-Jewish Immigrants in the
U.S. A Cohort Follow-Up, 1980-2000 (Percentage)
10
Figure 5. U.S. Citizenship among Israeli-Jewish
Immigrants in the U.S. A Cohort Follow-Up,
1980-2000 (Percentage)
11
Figure 6. Mean Schooling Level of Israeli-Jewish
Immigrants in the U.S. A Cohort Follow-Up,
1980-2000 (Percentage)
12
Figure 7. Linguistic Skills, Citizenship, and
Schooling among Israeli-Jews in the U.S. A
Comparison of Three Immigration Waves
13
Figure 8. Connection to Israel, by Period of
Immigration
14
Conclusions

• Descriptive analyses show that Israeli-Jewish
  immigrants are successfully integrated into the
  American society.
• As time in the U.S. elapses they progressively
  distance themselves from their country of origin.
• The gradual nature of these processes corresponds
  closely with the Alba and Nee typology of
  boundary shift, boundary blurring, and boundary
  crossing.
• Advanced stages of this research will apply
  multivariate techniques to explore the
  determinants of the social and cultural processes
  of Israeli Jews in the U.S.