You might want to check my older answers:
Why have Jews been expelled from so many countries? (Jews were often the only minority around, in Europe as it was becoming more culturally homogenous, first as religion then as ethnicity)
How did Judaism and Jewish people manage to survive millennia of persecution? (Jews invested heavily in human capital, and were middlemen minorities)
I go deeper into Jews as middleman minorities here, as well as covering how Jews were generally explicitly excluded from post-18th century rising nationalist feelings.