Trapped sense of peripheral place in frontier space

This chapter focuses on the construction and the readjustment of sense of place among Mizrahi immigrants who were settled in development towns on the Israeli frontiers/peripheries in the years 1952-2000. It argues that in settler societies the process of producing a national space via territorial expansion and ethnicization processes is a major force that shapes peripheral places that were established during the production of the national space. The chapter attempts to explain how entrapment affects the sense of place among the immigrants. In-place and place-space relations construct and shape the particular sense of place of a community with respect to a specific locality, where the community resides. The sense of place, combined with cultural preferences, religious customs, ethnic affiliation, socioeconomic position, social contacts and political leanings led to the emergence of a Mizrahi ethno-class in the towns, ‘trapped’ on the margins of Israeli-Jewish society.