This book was inspired by a panel titled “Gender and Migration in Turkey” at a conference in Turkish migration (TMC) in Athens, Greece, in 2017. As participants on the panel, we realized that although there are studies of migration which apply a gender perspective and include women, these studies were fragmented. The panelists met during the conference and the idea of an edited book on women and gendered migration in Turkey took shape. Since then we have come together to discuss the project in Istanbul in May 2018 in a workshop, supported by Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung (FES) Turkey. This volume is the outcome of our collaboration. Our aim in working together on this project was to collect the work of Turkish experts on women’s migration and to attempt to show the breadth of research available. In doing this we not only showcase the work of writers with long experience of the field—stretching back well before the influx of Syrian refugees—but also introduce the literature on women’s migration written in Turkish and therefore less accessible to an international audience.
The most recent phase in the history of migration to Turkey came with the war in Syria. This influx pushed the numbers of refugees and forced migrants in Turkey up to make it the country with the largest population of people seeking safety in the world. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR 2019) records that there are now more than 3.6 million ‘people of concern’ living in Turkey, making it first in absolute numbers yet third behind Lebanon and Jordan in terms of refugees per head of population. This refugee flow has been important not just because of its volume but also because of its political ramifications. Turkey’s proximity to Europe has put it at the center of a global debate on migration management and governance, and the tension experienced globally between the State’s responsibility to protect vulnerable people and its right to assert sovereignty is a live issue for Turkish policy makers. Turkey’s migration regime reflects many of the heavily politicized debates about the global governance of migration found across the world. The global trend toward the externalization of border control, something clearly demonstrated by the EU-Turkey refugee deal of 2016, is just one aspect of this ‘turn’.
The magnitude of the war and displacement in Syria has led to a reassessment of refugee reception worldwide and national and international policy agenda have focused on Syrian refugee flows and especially on the protection needs of women refugees. Women are increasingly recognized for their role in initiating, maintaining and participating in migration flows. Women are now understood to be proactive participants in all types of migration flows and discourse has moved from the original acknowledgment of women’s role as independent actors (Morokvasic 1984; Kofman 1999) to the wide acknowledgment of the feminization of migration (Castles and Miller 2003). The proportion of women in international migration has not changed dramatically in the last half century, growing from 46.6% in 1960 to 48.4% in 2017 (Zlotnik 2003) but the significance of their migration has been increasingly acknowledged and the subject of academic study. The importance of their gender and the expectations and limitations imposed upon them because of their gender has been recognized and increasingly studied. Women migrants work as traders, maids, seasonal fruit pickers, in factories, in the entertainment sector and in low-status, low-waged gendered segments of the labor market (Kofman et al. 2000; Lutz 2010). Women travel to take advantage of the opportunities of work but they also travel as spouses, students and as victims of various forms of abuse—domestic and state-sponsored. There are global migration flows that are predominantly female, most notably domestic and care work, but the relatively recent acknowledgment that women are independent migrants does not yet mean that the effects of gender norms and assumptions are properly understood.
Women are represented in all migration flows into Turkey, as is the case globally, and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that 53% of migrants in Turkey are female (Migration Data Portal 2019). They work across economic sectors and hold all forms of immigration statuses as secure, permanent workers as well as precarious, undocumented workers on the fringes of society. Women migrants into Turkey were first recognized as independent actors as so-called shuttle traders, buying and selling goods across borders, but later as workers in gendered segments of the labor market (Yükseker 2003; Erder and Kaşka 2003; Erder 2011; Toksöz et al. 2012), as domestic care workers (Kaşka 2009; Keough 2008; Akalın 2007), as low-waged workers in small and medium-sized manufacturing workshop ateliers (Dedeoğlu and Gökmen 2011; Eder 2015), as sales assistants in department stores (Erder and Kaşka 2003), as seasonal workers in agriculture or as prostitutes (Gülçür and İlkkaracan 2002; Coşkun 2018). Women refugees, thus, have been present in Turkey since the early 1990s but a critical turning point came in 2011 when the Syrian war broke out. Refugee flows from Syria made women refugees far more visible. According to the UNHCR (2019), there are 3.6 million Syrian refugees and around 400,000 non-Syrian registered refugees and asylum seekers from other nationalities. Almost half of Syrian refugees in Turkey are women while 22% of all non-Syrian refugees and asylum seekers are thought to be female (UNHCR 2019). Women migrants present a diverse group in terms of their nationality, qualifications, legal status and participation to the labor market; however, gender creates some similarities in their experience.
In this volume we seek to understand how gender norms for women, and by extension for men, shape women’s experience of migration. In involving migrant women as contributors (see the ‘Vignettes’) and as participants in our research we aim to hear a more rounded experience of women’s migration that goes beyond seeing women as either merely economic actors or members of domestic units valued for their reproductive and caring roles. We challenge discourses that portray women as dependent and as victims and we approach the idea of gender as a variable that is far more complex than the famous “add women, mix and stir” approach critiqued by Boyd and Grieco (2003). The studies in this volume reflect on constructions of women in countries of origin and on how women are seen in Turkey within changing social, political and legislative frameworks. Women always face greater scrutiny of their morals and behavior than men and this is particularly the case during migration when women move out of their community settings into new places where their performance of gender may be challenged, judged, rewarded, misconstrued and condemned. Judith Butler has described gender norms as “a psychological imposition” (2015: 29) and women migrants find themselves dealing with the gendered norms they were born with along with others that have been imposed upon them through migration. Outside of their own patriarchal setting, women may become freer to be themselves but may also find themselves without support or protection. In cases where they travel without men to ‘protect’ them, women will be affected by the gender norms and stereotypes of men’s gazes and objectifications. This gendered gaze is omnipresent and enacted by people on the street as much as by institutions and representatives of the state and civil society. A minority of women on the move will be protected by the power of their citizenship, education and social class but the majority of migrant women face a range of difficulties during migration and as migrants because of how their gender is perceived by policy makers, law enforcement officers, voluntary and statutory health and social care support workers, employers, landlords and many others.
Importantly, the studies in this volume recognize that the life chances of the people in these studies are not shaped by their identity as ‘women’ alone but also by their identity as ‘migrant women’. The mostly undocumented position of migrant women in the labor market further intensifies their unequal gendered position and shapes their poor life and work conditions. Working in isolation without access to work permits or social rights and often in constant fear of deportation makes them obedient and controllable, even ‘disposable’ workers.
Turkey as a Country of Migration
Turkey’s history is one of migration, and migration has made it the diverse country, in terms of ethnicity, culture and language, that it is. Citizens of Turkey may consider themselves to be Turks, Armenians, Kurds, Arabs, Circassians, Greeks, Georgians and many other groups but ‘Turk’ has, since the end of the Ottoman period, been a designator of state membership and national identity rather than ethnicity. After World War I, the founders of the Republic of Turkey aimed to build a homogenous nation-state around Turkish identity (Kirişçi 2000 and 2003) and, with the adoption of the historical Settlement Law of 1934, Turkey’s migration policy was restricted to tho...
