Structures of abandonment: Gender, statuslessness, and bare life.

This article examines the concept of legal status as it pertains to women without formal legal recognition in Israel, focusing on Palestinian women from the Occupied Palestinian Territories, African asylum seekers (mainly Eritrean), and women from the Former Soviet Union affected by trafficking or interrupted naturalization processes. It argues that status is not a fixed legal category but an unstable, everyday condition shaped by processes of racialization, gendered violence, and institutional abandonment, which reduce these women to what is termed "bare life"—a state of biological existence stripped of political and legal protections. Drawing on feminist and critical race theories, the article highlights how Israeli state policies and societal practices produce overlapping vulnerabilities for both non-citizens and marginalized citizens, perpetuating exclusion through mundane interactions that inscribe illegality and dehumanization onto women's bodies. The analysis shifts focus from formal legal status to the embodied experiences of violence and neglect, conceptualizing these as "structures of abandonment" that sustain systemic inequalities and complicate the boundaries between legality and illegality.