Changes in the Employment Structure of Arabs in Israeli

Abstract

The present study consists of two parts: the first analyses changes in the employment structure of Arabs in Israel, specifically the formation in recent years of a permanent industrial labour force, identifying the particular locations assigned to it in the country's technical and social divisions of labour. The second attempts to conceptualize future research on possible implications for public health of profound changes in the patterns in which people earn their livelihood. The transformation of traditional rural producers into modern industrial wage workers may affect not only objective changes in their health status and patterns of morbidity, but also subjective changes in attitudes towards, and use of, health services and related community networks. Findings concerning the recency of the class transformation involved, and the fact that this is a case of proletarianization without urbanization in the fact that this is a case of proletarianization without urbanization in which industrial workers are essentially daily commuters between residential rural spaces and urban work-places make health-related research questions of on Palestinian Arab villagers in Israel can no longer be adequately conducted without considering the labour processes which rural inhabitants, as daily commuters, are performing in urban work-places. This particular form of proletarianization is likely to affect health status in traditional rural