ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the meaning behind Guestworker-type migrant policies. It summarizes the evolution of Tel Aviv's policy response within the host-stranger relations framework. A similar norm developed at the main municipal hospital, Ichilov, where doctors liberally defined 'emergency treatment' and extended hospitalization days to uninsured migrants. Social workers in the city's welfare department also began treating dozens of migrant children in what they defined as 'critical cases'. In contrast, Tel Aviv presents a contemporary example of a city responding to labour immigration within an old-style national Guestworker regime. The recruitment of overseas labour migrants that began in 1993 was meant to be a temporary solution to the shortage of Palestinian workers 'until the situation stabilizes'. The most remarkable reflection of this paradox was a short-lived but lively mobilization of the irregular African migrant population. The emergence of new, non-Jewish minorities in Israel was felt above all in Tel Aviv.
