Becoming a Brill Author. Publishing Ethics. Publishing Guides. General Open Access Information. For Authors. For Academic Societies. For Librarians. Research Funding. Open Access Pricing. Specialty Products. Catalogs, Flyers and Price Lists. Accessing Brill Products. Corporate Social Responsibility. Sales Contacts. Ordering from Brill. Editorial Contacts. Offices Worlwide. Course Adoption. Contact Form. This chapter will examine sex work as it developed and changed in Jaffa and Tel Aviv during the twentieth century.
Jaffa is an ancient port town. Tel Aviv was established in by Jewish residents of Jaffa, as a suburb to the north of Jaffa. By new Jewish neighborhoods emerged which were granted the status of an autonomous township by the new British colonial rule the British mandate granted by the League of Nations. Jaffa was a predominantly Arab town with a Jewish minority, while Tel Aviv was an almost exclusively Jewish town which became an independent municipality in Both Tel Aviv and Jaffa were important urban centres for the national Jewish and national Palestinian communities, respectively.
During the war of and the establishment of the State of Israel, the majority of the Arab population of Jaffa left, fled, or were expelled. Jaffa was then populated mainly by new Jewish immigrants, with a minority of Palestinian Arabs. We argue in this chapter that the case of Israel, as represented by the urban centres of Tel Aviv and Jaffa, is a prime example of the centrality of migration for the formation and shaping of society, and of the link between migration and sex work. Indeed that was the case under British colonial rule in Palestine and after the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state in We begin by briefly presenting the theoretical links between sex work and migration, after which, in the following section, we discuss the different periods and waves of migration to Israel to Palestine prior to and their particularities.
The close link between migration and sex work has been noted in the sociological and historical literature for several decades. Migration, which has assumed numerous forms, can result in sex work, and conversely sex work can initiate migration.
Three types of associations between migration and sex work are relevant for this chapter. The first is women who migrate, often as part of a large migration wave, and opt for sex work owing to difficulties in making a living in the destination country. An inability to speak the local language, lack of knowledge concerning the formal and informal rules in the destination country, and a lack of skills suitable for the given labour market can lead to short-term involvement in sex work. In some cases, if difficulties are aggravated by various personal and familial conditions, or if individual women find this work to be a preferred option, such involvement has the potential to become long term.
