Towards ‘ethno-national peripheralisation’? Economic dependency amidst political resistance in Palestinian East Jerusalem

Abstract

Recent studies discuss ‘peripheralisation’ as an uneven socio-spatial phenomenon driven by processes of economic centralisation and marginalisation (Kühn and Bernt, 2013) in capitalist (or capitalising) societies (Bernt and Colini, 2013). In this article, I utilise the concept of peripheralisation in the context of an ethno-national dispute in which spatial, economic and regional dynamics are largely determined by territorial policies of control and exclusion. I combine extant literature on the geopolitics and economy of Jerusalem with the Centre–Periphery framework in order to analyse the development and decline of East Jerusalem’s socio-economic status and political environment from 1967 to 2016. As I will show, since the beginning of the 1990s, Israeli national security policies have transformed East Jerusalem from a Palestinian metropolitan centre into a region on the socio-economic periphery of Israel. I term this particular type of marginalisation ‘ethno-national peripheralisation’, a process of socio-economic decline that is not a relational product of neoliberal centralisation, but an output of ethno-national policies of division and annexation. The radical shift in East Jerusalem’s regional socio-economic status, from a centre of one national realm to the periphery of another, transforms urban life and political spatial strategies in contemporary Jerusalem. The case of East Jerusalem’s peripheralisation demonstrates the ways in which ethno-national policies can create counter outcomes of ethno-national desegregation accelerated by physical entrapment, economic dependency and urban neoliberalism.

‘Enabling Periphereality’: Artistic Trajectories in a Peripheral City

“…The periphery, on the other hand, accepts the authority and ideas of the centre without taking part in their creation or dissemination. Inspired by this conceptualisation, many studies have refined and constructed this discourse, conceptualising centre–periphery power relations as a socio-spatial configuration that leads to uneven socio-spatial development (Castells, 1997; Kühn, 2015; Scott and Soja, 1996; Shtern, 2018; Wacquant, 2008). Moreover, Shields (1991) links geographical periphery to social and cultural marginalisation.…”

“…Both groups were concurrently marginalised in the labour market and socially excluded (Swirski and Bernstein, 1990), although Mizrahi Jews were incorporated into the state-building project as part of the dominant Jewish majority and enjoyed a social position that most Palestinians in Israel lacked (Aharon-Gutman and Ram, 2018). Since 1948, Palestinian Arabs have been marginalised by Israeli intrastate planning policies, and they remain markedly segregated from the Jewish majority in terms of housing and the labour market (Shtern, 2018; Yiftachel and Yacobi, 2003).…”

A City for Itself: A Peripheral Mixed City's Struggle for Cultural Capital

“…2 In a two-part Interventions piece in IJURR titled "Bourdieu Comes to Town," Wacquant, influenced by Savage (2011), gathers and analyzes a significant body of urban research produced by a new generation of scholars who employ Bourdieu's conceptualization in urban contexts (Wacquant 2018). 3 For a review of center-periphery relations in the Israeli context, see also Shtern (2018).…”

Making Jerusalem “Cooler”: Creative Script, Youth Flight, and Diversity

“…Up to 1987, Jerusalem functioned as a center of urban agglomeration under Jewish dominance, where Palestinians from neighboring cities could work (Shaly and Rosen ), although primarily in blue‐collar jobs without social benefits (Shtern ). After the first Intifada (a term referring to Palestinian uprising in 1987) and the Oslo agreement (1993), a system of roadblocks and checkpoints was established.…”