TEMPORARY AND ILLEGAL LABOR MIGRATION - THE ISRAELI EXPERIENCE

In recent years, Israel has become a major recipient of documented and undocumented temporary labour migrants from many countries outside th e Middle East region. The purposes of this article are to-describe Isr ael's experience of temporary labour migration and its concomitant, il legal. labour migration; and also to explore what her policies on temp orary labour migration indicate about the nature of the policy-making process in this policy domain in Israel. To these ends the article tra ces the evolution of temporary labour migration -legal and illegal -an d recent policy initiatives of the Israeli government. It then conside rs some of the major conceptions of the policy-making process found in public policy literature. The article concludes by pointing to the un iqueness of Israel's experience of temporary labour migration and to t he fact that her policies have been overwhelmingly reactive -inadequat ely considered, ill-conceived, ambivalent in relation to their ultimat e purpose and, in the course of implementation, vulnerable to ''privat ization'' (being taken over by vested interest groups). Analysis of th e most recent policy initiatives designed to reduce the number of lega l labour migrants and address the problem of illegal labour migrants, reflect a policy-making process that is not followed by commensurate a ction.