CULTURAL CAPITAL AND THE RICHES OF MANNA: INTEGRATION OF IMMIGRANT SCIENTISTS IN ISRAELI ACADEMIA

The article deals with transnationalism – the flow of cultural capital across borders. Around 16,000 scientists entered Israel during the 1990s. Some of them joined the academic staff. This case study is the first to compare between achievement measures of new immigrant and native Israeli senior academic faculty. It is based on the analysis of performance records of 206 senior faculty members from the Ariel University Centre, out of whom 77 were born overseas. The study analyzes staff who received financial rewards for excellence for the three years 2006-2008, based on their activities, as measured by several criteria: excellence in research, teaching, academic administration, and contributions to the community. On the whole, the study revealed that a larger percentage of immigrant faculty members vs. native Israelis scored on excellence criteria. A discriminant analysis was performed in order to examine to what degree scoring on various excellence criteria distinguishes between immigrants and native Israelis faculty. All in all, the research reveals that immigrant scientists have become well integrated in the analyzed institution; their academic contribution was a major one.