Residence, social mobility and ractice theory: the case of Sephardic Jews of Sydney

Abstract

This paper focuses on residential mobility of an ethnic group within a complex linkage between religion, ethnicity and race. It places the triangular transactional relationship between white Australian gentiles, white Ashkenazic Jews and Asian (non-white) Sephardic Jews together with the strategy of residential movement, within the conceptual framework of Bourdieu's Practice Theory. In doing so, the study highlights the unique situation of Sephardim as a fragmented minority within a larger minority (the Ashkenazic community), and within a multicultural ocean of migrants dominated by a white Anglo-Celtic culture based on racial criteria. Supported by several case studies, the study shows how the practice of residential movement has changed the system, making it less rigid and more open to migrants, and how the gradually changing system has influenced the lives of the doers (Sephardic Jews). Specifically, the practice of residential movement has gradually increased diversity in the make-up of Australian residential structure. At the same time, this major social change has been accompanied by change in the make-up of the Sephardic community, involving reconstructed kinship relations and ethnic identities, particularly Sephardic acculturation into the Australianised Ashkenazi subsystem