This dissertation investigates how spatial constraints and legal statuses combine to shape social organization and collective self-identification within subproletarian populations. This dissertation is a comparative ethnographic study of subaltern politics under two different spatial-legal contexts: a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank (Jalazon camp) and an Israeli Arab minority neighborhood (in the Israeli city of Lod). A main research question animates this research: What form of politics prevails in West Bank refugee camps? How does it differ from local politics in Arab minority neighborhoods inside Israel? Why does it differ? A main hypothesis guides this research: despite many similarities in class, religious and cultural terms, camp dwellers and urban minorities radically differ in their collective organizing and their collective self-identification. This overarching hypothesis can be divided into several hypotheses: H1) West Bank camps have more in-site associations and centers than Israeli Arab urban neighborhoods; H2) camp associations and centers provide a high level of internal organization but re-produce internal divisions as they tend to be captured by political factions or extended families; H3) camp dwellers perceive themselves as national actors engaged into a collective struggle for recognition; H4) Palestinian urban minorities remain at the margins of the association-building process around which Arab nationalist elites inside Israel organize; and H5) Arab urban minorities do not speak the language of national self-determination, but, rather, they protest the state policies that criminalize their neighborhoods. This dissertation utilizes three main methodological components: a) participant observation of the daily interactions between local administrators and local populations both within institutional sites and in the streets; b) oral histories with the local populations; and c) formal interviews with the in-site and out-of-site administrators. This project advances a relational approach to the effects of state spatial and legal constraints: the genesis and rationale of these policies, their local implementation, and the practices of the subject populations within their daily surroundings. It also strives to clarify the conditions under which a high level of internal organization within a poor community translates into actual collective efficacy. Broader impacts of this research include: disaggregating the category of ?the subalterns? and showing how their engagement into politics is not limited to individual exit or mob-like reactions; contributing to building bridges among scholars of sociology, geography, law and post-colonial studies; and enhancing public understanding of Arab marginalized communities, which are often portrayed as violent masses.
