9625124 Hout This Dissertation Improvement research examines the emergence of ethnic inequality among Jewish men who immigrated to Israel during the first ten years of statehood (1948-1958). Israel is unique because it was formed through massive, concentrated immigration form a variety of countries. Despite significant heterogeneity in educational and occupational attainments among these immigrants, a bifurcated social structure emerged, such that Middle Eastern and North African Jews tended to be lower in both occupational status and control of economic and political resources than European Jews. Using Israel's 1961 census, this research will compare occupation prior to immigration with occupation after immigration. Specifically, the research will investigate the effects of ethnicity, class and a number of practical and cultural resources that enables an individual to translate prior occupational attainment into occupational attainment in Israel. Using secondary historical materials, scholarly and media publications on Israel's ethnic gap, and Zionist writings, the investigator will examine the group-level processes that account for the role of ethnicity in Israel's occupational attainment system. This research will increase our theoretical and practical knowledge of the importance of ethnicity to individual opportunity, the utility of specific individual-level resources in combating ethnic discrimination, the relative roles of class and ethnicity in shaping macro-level ethnic inequality, and the level of conscious strategy present in ethnic competition for socially valued objects. ****
