The dynamics of ‘limited hybridity’ in migration: the case of Zera Beta Israel from Ethiopia

This article develops the concept of limited hybridity to analyze how Zera Beta Israel (ZBI) migrants navigate Israel’s overlapping migration regimes. Drawing on long-term, multi-sited ethnographic research (2005–2011; 2021–2023), it traces their journeys from Ethiopian villages and transit camps to absorption centres and permanent dwellings in Israel. Whereas hybridity is often theorised as fluid and generative, limited hybridity refers to social spaces and identity practices that emerge through migrants’ negotiation of cultural and institutional demands, and are shaped from within by shifting legal, bureaucratic, and religious categories that determine belonging, recognition, and exclusion. These categories do not simply constrain from the outside; they become embedded in everyday life, structuring language, relationships, and modes of participation. At the same time, migrants do not merely experience these classifications; they actively work through them, strategically interpreting and mobilising categories in order to navigate recognition, resources, and belonging. ZBI migrants strategically negotiate eligibility, ambiguity, and conditional inclusion, cultivating agency within bounded identities. Limited hybridity captures these negotiated practices forged within classificatory regimes. The article contributes to migration studies by showing how migrants not only experience categorisation but also actively reframe, perform, and sometimes subvert it.