A Rising Tide? Mixed families in Israel

Over the past few years, scholars have shown a growing interest in mixed families and mixedness. This is reflected in numerous articles and books as well as in special issues of prominent journals devoted to the topic, such as The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in 2015, Ethnicities in 2016, and Recherches Familiales in 2017. Quite surprisingly, and despite the growing interest in this issue, there is no agreedupon scholarly definition of mixedness. A common definition of mixed families, however, is that they are constituted by unconventional and even forbidden marriage or by unions between individuals who belong to specific groups—such as race, nation, class, ethnicity, religion, or some combination of these—that are constructed, depending on the time, the place, and the context, as “different” and socially “distant.”Accordingly, it is also assumed that by their very nature mixed families threaten the social order and collective identities by challenging the prevailing endogamous marital norms and by creating new spaces that disrupt social hierarchies. Moreover, by forming bridges between different groups in society they redraw social boundaries that divide or demarcate individuals and groups and indeed may change societal mainstreams. Also, it is generally agreed that these “barrier-breaking” families are becoming more common, for not only are they part of the globalization process and its intense migration flows, they are also boosted by the continual development of knowledge exchange, global tourism, sports and art, transport, communication, and medical technologies; the emergence of transnational marriage markets; and the growing diversification of family forms. At the current stage of research, it can be argued that the growing body of scholarship already provides us with pivotal insights into the ways that mixedness is formed, lived, contested, fought against, or celebrated, in terms of both the individual and society. It can also be assumed that in the future this research trend will continue, because, as scholars argue, academia itself has a substantial role to play in conceptualizing these processes. Yet, despite the ever-growing number of families that are mixed across national, cultural, racial, and religious boundaries worldwide, it appears that most of the existing research and theorizing on mixedness relates to Western countries, with a special emphasis on English-speaking, North American, and British contexts, where most of the research is carried out. Consequently, research on mixedness in the global village is