Migrants, Work and Social Integration

Women’s Labour in the Turkish Ethnic Economy

S. Dedeoglu

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781137371119
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137371126
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Social Sciences

Exploring recent contemporary debates on gender and migration, this book scrutinizes the relationship between women's work in ethnic economies and social integration, arguing that women in Britain zigzag their way to social integration.

1

Introduction

Work, Migrants and Social Integration is an account of the interaction between gender, labour in the ethnic economy and the social integration of migrants into their host society. With particular reference to the Turkish community in Britain, it investigates the relationship between Turkish women’s work and their position in British society by focusing on how ethnically based employment affects their capacity to become socially integrated in the dominant society. The material presented here explores how women have been silent contributors to the expanding family-based establishment of the Turkish ethnic economy in Britain. It further shows how women’s work in the ethnic economy and their role in social ties and networks on which this economy depends preclude their social integration within the wider society. The agency of women in maintaining community networks and representing ethnic/national identity has been essential in the establishment and success of the Turkish community, which places more emphasis on women’s traditional gender roles as mothers and wives.

Sharing the basic premise of Floya Anthias, developed in Ethnicity, Class, Gender and Migration (1992), that the use of female kinship labour has even been considered a necessary ‘building block’ for the development of ethnic minority enterprises in Britain, my argument is that women’s work in the Turkish ethnic economy has been central to its development and success, but that this work has resulted in the invisibility of women’s economic contributions both to their households and to their community. Although the role and use of female labour has been seen as necessary for the development of ethnic minority enterprises in Britain, gender sensitive research, however, shows that ethnic economies do not necessarily support the professional advancement of women as much as they do for men and can keep them in a subordinate position, thus preventing their integration into the host society. It is proposed that female immigrant workers are ‘generally captive by other relationships than that of a wage’ (Panayiotopoulos 1996:455). The predominantly male-controlled, labour-intensive nature of many ethnic economies are marked by ‘social structures which give easy access to female labour subordinated to patriarchal control mechanisms’ (Phizacklea 1988:22). In this framework, women are seen to be under the control of patriarchal and ethnic ties of their community. Therefore, gender divisions and the family are seen as central in understanding the forms of settlement and the economic and social integration of a migrant group in Europe. Migrants’ interaction vis-à-vis the internal cultural and social differentiations within the group and the wider structural, institutional and ideological processes of the country of migration are affected by the very form of gender and family structures (Anthias 1992).

This research presents original findings in a number of ways. The dynamic nature of the relationship between women’s work in the ethnic economy and their social integration has rarely been established in the literature. Most of the literature focuses on the social integration of women migrants who came to Western Europe in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and were able to integrate into regulated labour markets (Kontos 2009). However, today we observe a more diversified pattern of migrant women’s work, mostly within informal labour markets such as domestic services, sex industries, agriculture and tourism. Therefore, there appears to be a need to investigate the integration of female migrants in the labour market and into their host society as the integration of migrants becomes even more important in the face of a changing economic and social structure in Europe. The empirical sections of this book document the complexities of the relationship between women’s labour market position and their social integration in a community in which women represent ethnic and/or national identity and absorb the changing demands of their community with respect to their roles as workers, wives and mothers. These different roles pull and push women in different directions as they strategize their integration and survival in their host society.

Research for the book was conducted through a close examination of a single locality. The impact of the expansion of the Turkish ethnic economy on the role of women in the Turkish community and their social integration is investigated, and the book offers a fresh analysis of the contemporary trends in women, migration and labour in the ethnic economy in Western Europe. The empirical section of the book is based on 15 months of fieldwork, carried out in London, UK, and on the close investigation of the Turkish ethnic economy in London. Participant observation and in-depth interviews were conducted with women, shop owners, their families, community leaders and those engaged in the ethnic economy and community organisations. At a descriptive level, the book presents the lives of those women engaged in the insecure, invisible and low/unpaid end of the Turkish ethnic economy in London, and the Europe wide expansion of the Turkish ethnic economy and its role in offering employment opportunities to the Turkish community.

1.1 Migration and women’s work in the Turkish ethnic economy

The feminization of international migration all over the world has gone hand in hand with the feminization of employment that has been a partial result of the increasing casualization of labour markets as a result of global economic restructuring. Saskia Sassen (1996) analysed economic and social developments in global cities and pointed out that the concentration of financial services in big cities results in a polarization of activities into highly qualified/well paid versus poorly qualified/devalued activities. The low qualified and devalued activities are for the most part performed by women and migrants, whereas the need for personal services for the highly paid opens up opportunities for small-businesses in global cities that are economically marginalized. However, there is little evidence of whether women’s economic activities generated by their own ethnic networks offer chances to gain autonomy and foster their integration into wider society. The Turkish ethnic economy, through its kebab döner business, has been expanding all over Europe with its enormous employment generation capacity, and its small-scale family-based nature also implies that women’s labour has been central in the expansion of the ethnic economy. Therefore, the book’s first objective is to explore the nature of women’s work in the Turkish ethnic economy in London, where Turkish women previously used to heavily work in the garment production industry until its demise in the early 2000s. It is highlighted that Turkish women are a major source of unpaid or lower paid labour for London’s Turkish ethnic economy. They not only offer their labour as a family ‘help’, but are also the major source of low-paid wage labour. A similar situation is found in Light and Bonacich’s study (1988), in which they show that 60% of all Korean firms in the United States relied on the use of nuclear family or extended family members in their businesses. Therefore, it is evident that the success of self-employed men is highly criticized as disguising the contributions and efforts of other family members, especially those of women.

The second objective of the book is to examine the structure of the Turkish ethnic economy in London and demand factors that condition women’s ethnic work. The growing importance of the Turkish ethnic economy in Europe went hand in hand with the growing commercialization of döner takeaways, which led to a web of distribution and sales networks in Europe through large-scale factories owned and run by Turkish people in Germany. This resulted in the easy engagement of Turkish migrants in the production and sale of döner takeaways all over Europe, which generated a considerable amount of employment for Turkish migrants in Europe (Panayiotopoulos 2010). While there is clearly a Turkish economic enclave in the UK, the main economic unit is shops such as kebab houses, corner-shops and coffee shops, whose numbers have increased considerably in recent years. For Turkish migrants, employment opportunities are mostly limited to ethnic shops that offer not-so-decent jobs with low wages and long hours of work (Strüder 2003, Enneli et al. 2005). The operation of ethnic businesses is heavily based on the utilization of family labour and ethnic networks of support. The size of the community and the extent of ethnic economy are often dependent upon a constant flux of new migrants who are both an important source of clientele and labour supply for the ethnic economy. As more and more people seek to take advantage of the lucrative outcomes of ethnic business there is a growing demand for ethnic labour, which is usually met by newly arriving migrants and Turkish students who move to London mostly to learn English.

The dominance of small-scale, family-run shops in the Turkish ethnic economy provides the grounds for attracting women’s labour from the same family circle into the ethnic economy, often informally and usually unpaid, while keeping their domestic identities as mothers, wives and daughters intact. The engagement of women in family-based business under the shadow of their domestic identities, without any public recognition of their work, casts doubt on the separation between women’s public and private sphere activities. The entanglement between women’s domestic and public activities provides a useful case study to show how difficult it is to separate one from the other. A very useful distinction was made by Elson (1999) between women’s labour force participation, which includes all types of employment status (employee, self-employed and unpaid family labour), and labour market participation, which excludes unpaid family labour. Elson (1999) points to the measurable gaps that exist between women’s labour force and labour market participation. Labour force participation, including all types of employment status or ‘productive activities’, is counted as a part of national production. On the other hand, the unpaid, unmarketed caring activities of women, the ‘reproductive economy’, are also crucial for the functioning of society as a whole and contribute to the reproduction of ‘productive’ labour, but are excluded from national accounts. Elson suggests that a large gender gap between labour force and labour market participation exists in every society (1999:614). The Turkish ethnic economy is the most ample example of the blurred line between the productive and reproductive activities of women’s work.

Besides their (re)productive activities in the ethnic niche, women not only provide input to family-based establishments, but also to the continuation of Turkish culture, through their roles of motherhood. Migrant women are perceived to have a major role in the construction and reproduction of national ideologies and identities. As the symbolic figuration of a nation, women construct and reproduce particular notions of their specific culture, through their involvement in rearing children and in social and religious practices (Yuval-Davis and Anthias 1989). This representation is also found among the migrants from Turkey. Because of a strong emphasis on women’s motherhood roles in the community, women not only care for their children and work in the ethnic shops, but also are representatives of their national and cultural identities. Moreover, women’s maternal identities seem to set the foundation of national culture on which the Turkish ethnic economy rises. In this regard, this book pays special attention to the experience of migrant women, the ordeals to which they are subjected, but also their capacity to assume their destiny, to give it meaning and to represent it.

The focus of the enquiry of this book is on women’s work in the Turkish ethnic economy in London, and it seeks to explore the structure of the ethnic economy, women’s role in it and how women’s work in the ethnic economy has an impact on women’s position in their families, communities and their host society. Thus, my third objective is to provide an understanding of the implications of expansion of the Turkish ethnic economy as the sole economic activity of Turkish migrants in London on gender relations and women’s perceived place in the society as well as their sense of inclusion and integration. This analysis is developed against a backdrop of transformations brought through migration and changing economic activity of the community which shifted from textile production to catering services. The transformation of the main ethnic economic activity has had a great impact on women’s paid activities. In the heydays of textile production in the 1980s and 1990s in London, almost all Turkish migrant women were textile workers, but after the closure of the textile sweatshops women’s economic activities remained limited. The growth of the catering based ethnic economy and family-based businesses has required women to be a part of the economy as family members and to focus on their roles as mothers and wives. In this regard, the prevailing culture of Turkish society is interlaced throughout as a necessary backdrop in analysing the changing position of women in economic activities. In traditional patriarchal relations, women’s place in the society is defined as being home, and the portrait of women is thought to be ‘women of their home’ (evinin kadını). The justification for taking paid work is almost always connected with the aim of providing for their families, and before women can take up paid employment the consent (izin) of the male or senior female authority must be secured at all times. Despite the crises created over women’s identity through paid work, women themselves very often make an extra effort to show that priority is always given to their domestic identities. Even their public demands and negotiations are voiced by the utilization of these roles and remain within their confines. Seemingly, women’s internalization of traditional gender roles and identities allows them to move into the public arena and take up paid work without losing social protection and security. In this regard, women exchange their labour in the informal economy as a symbol of the manifestation of their community membership and identity in Turkey (Dedeoglu 2012).

Among the Turkish community in London, gendered relations are also mediated and renegotiated in relation to women’s work in the ethnic economy. More specifically, the development of the Turkish ethnic economy in London is based on close family ties and the operation of family units, which provide safety as an institution and are the stimulator of change in the roles and positions that women have taken on as a response to the transformation in the community’s economic activity. The themes addressed in the book are also highly relevant to debates concerning the impact of integration policies on migrant communities and gendered outcomes of engaging in ethnic economy, and women’s roles and positions in a migrant community. By detailing the ‘micro’ level impact of ‘macro’ level changes, the book presents the consequences for women, gender ideologies and the structure of the Turkish community in London.

The growing importance of the ethnic economy not only has an impact on gender relations in the Turkish community of London, but also affects how the community constructs its social integration with the host country. Almost all EU countries hosting different immigrant communities have problematized these groups’ social integration and labour market participation from the perspective of governments, and adopted social policies developed from a top to bottom approach. However, this research offers an insider view to inequalities in society and their consequences, and focuses on migrants’ experience at the centre of the analysis with a theoretical and methodological reversal that shows how inequalities through social change are reproduced, as well as focusing on their economic and social consequences. Women’s integration into the host society through their work and participation in the ethnic economy shows a zigzag way. This is because women’s contribution to the Turkish ethnic economy enables the integration of their communities into British society. However, women’s integration is not an individual affair, but one that traverses zigzagged pathways, based on their community’s economic achievements and their role in the raising of second generation British citizens. Therefore, women are the invisible contributors to the survival and business success of their communities through their roles as mothers, wives and workers in the Turkish ethnic economy. In theory, this means only a weak integration and does not offer women the chance to emancipate themselves from their traditional patriarchal relations and roles.

The overall aim of this research is to render Turkish women’s work more visible in London, by highlighting the role of women in the Turkish ethnic economy, and to represent a single account of the relationship between women’s work and the ethnic economy in Europe. By placing gender in the centre of analysis, the formation of the ethnic economy and social integration are developed through migrant women’s perspectives. Studies focusing on ethnic economy and gender usually date back to the late 1980s and 1990s, such as Annie Phizacklea (1988) ‘Entrepreneurship, Ethnicity and Gender’, in Sallie Westwood and Parminder Bhachu (eds) Enterprising Women: Ethnicity, Economy, and Gender Relations and also Felicitas Hillmann (1999) ‘A Look at the “Hidden Side”: Turkish Women in Berlin’s Ethnic Labour Market’, in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. These studies take account of how the male-controlled and labour-intensive nature of many ethnic economies use patriarchal control mechanisms to have access to low-cost, easily accessible female labour. The examination of Turkish women’s experience in London shows the way in which women have adapted to changes in the economic activity of their community over time, and the social and cultural resources that shape these adaptations. Moreover, the case of Turkish migrant women in London shows the result of economic restructuring of migrant communities in a multicultural society and the subsequent impact of these restructuring efforts on women and gender inequalities. The incorporation of theoretical perspectives on Turkish migrant women’s social integration in Britain, together with gender sensitive evidence, allows this work to address the core concerns of migration studies and sociology.

1.2 Studying migrant women’s work

Migration research is historically motivated by the need to measure and control migrant labour in a colonial or post-colonial context. Thus, its focus has been on ‘male labour migration’ and that became the central concern of policymakers. Until very recently, women were mostly invisible, due to normative assumptions that they were either totally absent from the migration process or present as passive ‘family members’ of male migrant workers. The most gender neutral research has explicitly appeared to reflect the experience of men. In the rare cases where the presence of women is acknowledged, their contribution to the economic and social realities of the host country is often ignored or underestimated (Kofman et al. 2000:3). When women are portrayed, they are often pictured as ‘backward-looking … guardians of family unity and the culture of origin’ (Council of Europe 1995:32). Metso and Le Feuvre (2006) show that some large statistical data is composed of genderless migrants. It is only when it comes to estimating levels of human trafficking that the statistics present a gender difference, thus making women appear exclusively the passive victims of forced migration for domestic servitude or sexual exploitation.

The use of feminist methodology is therefore important to further develop women’s experience of migration from different angles. As Marjorie DeVault (1996) states, ‘Feminist methodology provide the outline for a possible alternative to the distanced, distorting and dispassionately objective producers of much social research’ (34). Feminist methodology is designed to shift the focus of standard research practice from men’s concerns, in order to reveal the locations and perspectives of (all) women, seeks a science that minimizes harm and control in the research process, and will support research of value to women, leading to social change or action beneficial to women (DeVault 1996:32). Feminist methodology is mostly applied by using qualitative research tools, which is often thought to value subjective and personal meanings, and is said to be conducive to giving a voice to the most oppressed groups in society, while quantitative research is constructed in terms of testing theories and making predictions in an objective and value-free way (Metso and Le Feuvre 2006).

Given these concerns, a qualitative and biographical approach would be the most appropriate in exploring the relationship between women’s social integration and their work in the Turkish ethnic economy, and the categories which women employ in their everyday lives and on the community networks that sustain women’s social links. Chamberlayne and Rustin, advocating the use of a biographical approach, note that a biographical method, by contextualizing statistical data and demonstrating what they mean for individual lives, contains implications for social policy, and furthermore that such an approach can highlight the network of existing relations between the individual and others (1999:21).

The point is that people live their lives within the material and cultural boundaries of their time span, and so life histories are exceptionally effective historical sources because through the totality of lived experience they reveal relations between individuals and social forces, which are rarely apparent in other sources.

(Lummis 1987:107–108)

In-depth, open-ended, non-structured interviews and oral narratives were the methods utilized to give voice to the women whose experiences of ethnic-based work are at the centre of this study. Using these methods is the most suitable way of describing and analysing women’s experiences from their own perspectives and making sense of their place in the world. These methods also capture in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Women Migrants, Work and Social Integration
• 3. The Ethnic Economy and the Turkish Ethnic Economy in London
• 4. Migratory Trends and the ‘Turkish’ Community in London
• 5. Turkish Immigrant Women in London
• 6. Women’s Work in London’s Turkish Ethnic Economy
• 7. Zigzag Paths to Social Integration
• 8. Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index