ABSTRACT
Several of S. N. Eisenstadt's early works in the field of immigrant absorption in Israel deal with various encounters between immigrants from traditional countries and bureaucratic institutions. Prominent in the analysis of these encounters is what Eisenstadt calls "the infusion of bureaucratic structure with primary non-formal elements of behavior" or "debureaucratization". The immigrants from Muslim countries who, in the 1950s, were directed to urban neighborhoods, development towns, and moshavim passed through different processes of absorption. The absorption of immigrants in the moshavim differed from that of immigrants who had been channeled to urban places of residence. The existence of immigrant population concentrations facilitated access to the immigrants by political entrepreneurs who were prepared to play a mediating role between them and the receiving society—that is, by helping them to obtain the resources required for meeting their subsistence needs and by mobilizing political support from them.
