ABSTRACT
How do harshened control policies towards undocumented migrants and asylum seekers affect local policies of incorporation and notions of urban citizenship? Scholarship on urban rescaling of immigration policies typically emphasises two possible local responses: challenge or cooperation. Drawing on the Tel Aviv/Jaffa case, I suggest that exclusionary policies have not transformed the city into either an autonomous sanctuary or a compliant subcontractor of state policing. They rather yielded paradoxical results expanding the organisational infrastructure dealing with migrants’ incorporation and bringing greater state involvement while simultaneously reconfiguring the urban logics for incorporating migrants in ways that reinforce their precariousness and state of emergency. The conclusions expand on the impact of “acts of sovereignty” as a significant factor in the reshaping of the “local turn” in immigration and discuss their perverse effects on inclusive notions of urban citizenship.
