UC San Diego

The Moroccan-descended Jewish community of Iquitos, Perú has engaged in large-scale migration to Israel since the early 2000s. Despite strong self-identification as Jews, Israel’s immigration regime requires “conversion” practices that privilege Ashkenazi-normative Jewish identifications and customs and help integrate Iquiteño migrants into Israel’s racial hierarchy. In two sets of in-depth interviews in 2016 and 2019, Iquiteño Jews explained their reasons for migrating, changes to their modes of identification, and their understanding of their future place in Israel. Their explanations reveal the tension between sociological theories of diaspora and transnationalism. After applying interview data to these theories, this thesis finds that the Iquiteño case is one example of how interested actors, including states, use the rhetoric of diaspora to stimulate transnational activity, such as philanthropy and migration, among otherwise-localized communities, thereby introducing and reinforcing external racial hierarchies among the far-flung nodes of diasporic networks. Broadly, the rhetoric of diaspora serves interested actors’ transnational political aims, which often homogenize diasporas even as they activate them.