הקבוצה לחקר חינוך לדמוקרטיה וצדק חברתי

This article explores the affective dimensions of school choice
among Palestinian middle-class mothers in Israel, a group
increasingly enrolling their children in Jewish-majority schools to
secure mobility within a stratified educational landscape. Drawing
on Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and field, alongside feminist
theories of affect, we conceptualise school choice not merely as a
strategic calculation but as a site of intense emotional
governance. Based on 54 in-depth interviews with Palestinian
parents residing in Jewish-majority localities, the study reveals
that the crossing of ethno-national boundaries generates a
specific form of ‘politicised maternal guilt’. This guilt arises from a
‘structural impasse’ in which mothers are forced to choose
between academic resources and cultural safety. We identify
three manifestations of this emotion: (1) guilt over the child’s
potential distress or rejection; (2) cultural and linguistic guilt
regarding the erosion of Arabic identity; and (3) socially gendered
guilt, amplified by community surveillance and mother-blame.
We argue that this guilt is a ‘sticky’ emotion (Ahmed 2013) that
metabolizes systemic exclusion into personal failure. Ultimately,
the article suggests that for minoritized mothers, school choice
imposes an ‘emotional tax’, forcing them to bear the moral
weight of living between conflicting national projects