Home-making: Gender, emotional Zionism, and American immigration to Israel

This qualitative study uses ethnographic methods to investigate the migration experiences of Americans who have chosen to live in Israel. I develop the concept of "emotional Zionism" to describe the varied ways these immigrants develop relationships to people and places in Israel. I analyze their migration strategies and their struggles to create new lives, and offer an interpretation of how they construct gendered notions of home, community, and belonging in a country very different from their own. I use a feminist theoretical framework to understand how gender and emotions such as love, grief, and desire deeply structure and shape these processes, and suggest new ways for Jewish studies and feminist scholars to approach questions of transnational movement, Jewish identity, global inequality, and gendered migration.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Loyola University Chicago, 2002.School code: 0112