ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the immigration of Chinese migrant workers to Israel in light of the ‘illegal but licit’ analytical framework as advanced by Van Schendel and Abraham (2005). The ‘illegal but licit’ analytical framework conceptualises a useful distinction between the il/legal and the il/licit, in order to enable us to grasp better, and talk about, what really happens on the ground – in, across and under the formal authority of nation-states. The ‘illegal but licit’ framework broadens and forces our analysis to include flows and actions that are located in a zone where a mismatch exists between the state’s formal political authority and non-formal social authority. 1
