The Ralph and Goldy Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies

The paper analyses the evolution of collective identities from a critical geographical perspective. It focuses on the impact of frontier settlement policies in settler states, during the course of nation-and state-building efforts. In its theoretical part, the paper highlights the key role of space, place and social control policies in the formation of ethnic identities. These are shown to be shaped, reshaped and reproduced during the process of settlement, migration and intergroup territorial conflict. The discussion probes in depth the link between spatial control policies and the settlement of 'internal frontiers'.

Within that framework, the paper then explores the case of Israel, and the impact of the settlement and spatial planning in the Galilee region on the formation of regional collective identities. The analysis shows that the process of settling the frontiers has given rise to ethnic, social and institutional fragmentation, particularly between Palestinian-Arabs, Oriental Jews and Ashkenazi Jews. These sociospatial divisions may -- paradoxically -- undermine the very nation-building and state-building settlement projects which had instigated the settlement of the Galilee internal frontier.