Unsettled Labors

In <i>Unsettled Labors</i> Rachel H. Brown explores the overlooked labor of migrant workers in Israel's eldercare industry. Brown argues that live-in eldercare in Palestine/Israel which is primarily done by migrant workers is an often invisible area where settler colonialism is reproduced culturally economically and biologically. Situating Israeli labor markets within a longer history of imperialism and dispossession of Palestinian land Brown positions migrant eldercare within the resulting tangle of Israeli laws policies and social discourses. She draws from interviews with caretakers public statements court documents and first-hand fieldwork to uncover the inherently contradictory nature of elder care work: the intimate presence of South and Southeast Asian workers in the home unsettles the idea of the Israeli home as an exclusively Jewish space. By paying close attention to the comparative racialization of migrant workers Palestinians asylum seekers and Mizrahi and Ashkenazi settlers Brown raises important questions of labor social reproduction displacement and citizenship told through the stories of collective care provided by migrant workers in a settler colonial state.