Settler transformations: Joseph Kaplan Weinger, ‘”One Is a Frontier”: Settler Migration as Transmogrification’, Sociological Forum, 2025 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler transformations: Joseph Kaplan Weinger, ‘”One Is a Frontier”: Settler Migration as Transmogrification’, Sociological Forum, 2025

12Nov25

Abstract: This paper explores the trajectories and framing strategies of American Jewish migrants to Palestine–Israel. Drawing on original in-depth interviews with immigrants who migrated between 1976 and 2021, alongside interviews with and observations of an “aliyah” agency, it examines meaning-making around spatial relocation in relation to the perpetuation of institutionalized stratification and the violence of colonial settlement. Central to this analysis is the concept of transmogrification, which describes the profound affective transformations migrants undergo as they transition from diasporic subjects to settlers embedded in a project of demographic and territorial supremacy. Through an exploration of three key framing strategies persisting nationalization, majoritarian affiliation, and enduring frontierity—this paper investigates how immigrants navigate the material and symbolic landscapes of Israeli society and come to justify their roles within it. By focusing on the cognitive mechanism of framing, the research contributes to broader conversations about the reproduction of structural status positions, the politics of belonging, and the sui generis characteristics of contentious migration.

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