The Israeli tied visa regime, known as the ‘binding arrangement’, provides a path into the country for seasonal migrant labourers. It exchanges a tied relationship with a designated employer for a legal job in the construction, care and agriculture sectors, and to a lesser extent in services and industry. These sectors are characterised by harsh working conditions, long and exhausting working hours, and low wages. They are all sectors that struggle to recruit local workers.
The Israeli system shares many aspects with the other tied visa regimes covered in this series. But it has some unique aspects which make it a different sort of target for political and legal interventions.
One aspect I’d like to focus on here is how it behaves vis-à-vis two distinct sets of non-citizen workers. One is Palestinian workers from the Occupied Territories. The other is migrant workers recruited since the 1990s.
