Abstract
In the 20 years since its emergence, the migrant domestic workers’ market in Turkey has become an intrinsic element of the urban (upper) middle-class experience. While the domestic work sector was formerly a realm that attracted Turkish women of the urban poor, it has become a true labour market with the arrival of migrants originating from post-socialist countries in proximity to Turkey. From the outset, a defining aspect of the migrant domestic workers’ market has been the high turnover of workers. Until the recent introduction of a government regularisation scheme, migrant domestics were typically employed through oral contracts based on mutual agreement regarding the workers’ wages, work schedules and workload. In practice, this has meant that neither side was legally bound to comply with any rules or regulations. From the point of view of employers, utilising migrants was thus very advantageous: because there was a constant in-flow of new migrants, there would always be somebody out there who was more hard-working, less demanding, less annoying and so on, if they were dissatisfied with their current employee. Since the power ultimately rested with them, employers were not compelled to consider the working rights of their employees and so the practice of readily hiring and firing migrant domestics became a defining aspect of the market.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adams, V., M. Murphy, and A. E. Clarke (2009). ‘Anticipation: Technoscience, Life, Affect, Temporality’, Subjectivity, 28 (1): 246–65.
Akalin, A. (2014). ‘“We are the Legionaries!”: Filipina Domestic Workers in Istanbul’, in Whose City is That? Culture, Design, Spectacle and Capital in Istanbul, eds D. Ö. Koçak and O. K. Koçak. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Akalin, A. (2015). ‘Motherhood as the Value of Labour: The Migrant Domestic Workers Market in Turkey’, Australian Feminist Studies, 30 (83): 65–81.
Asad, T. (2004). ‘Where are the Margins of the State?’, in Anthropology in the Margins of the State, eds V. Das and D. Poole. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
Beasley-Murray, J. (2010). Posthegemony: Political Theory and Latin America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Bigo, D. (2007). ‘Detention of Foreigners, States of Exception, and the Social Practices of Control of the Banoptican’, in Borderscapes: Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory’s Edge, eds P. K. Rajaram and C. Grundy-Warr. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Chakrabarty, D. (2000). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Cox, R. (2006). The Servant Problem: The Home Life of a Global Economy. London: I. B. Tauris.
de Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
De Genova, N. (2002). ‘Migrant “Illegality” and Deportability in Everyday Life’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 31: 419–47.
De Genova, N. (2012). ‘Bare Life, Labor-Power, Mobility, and Global Space: Toward a Marxian Anthropology’, CR: The New Centennial Review, 12 (3): 129–52.
Dogan, S. (2012). Symbolic Boundaries, Imagined Hierarchies: A Case Study of Women from Post-socialist Countries Working as Domestic Workers in Istanbul. Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Sabanci University.
Hardt, M. and A. Negri (2013). ‘Biopolitics as Event’, in Biopolitics, a Reader, eds T. Campbell and A. Sitz. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Hochschild, A. R. and B. Ehrenreich (2002). ‘Introduction’, in Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sexworkers in the New Economy, eds A. R. Hochschild and B. Ehrenreich. New York: Metropolitan Books.
Marx, K. (1977). Capital: Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy. New York: Vintage Books.
Marx, K. (1978). ‘Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844’, in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. R. Tucker. New York: Norton and Company.
Mezzadra, S. (2011). ‘How Many Histories of Labour: Towards a Theory of Postcolonial Capitalism’, Postcolonial Studies, 14 (2): 151–70.
Mezzadra, S. and B. Neilson (2013). Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Murphy, M. (2013). ‘The Girl: Mergers of Feminism and Finance in Neoliberal Times’, The Scholar and Feminist Online, 11(2). Available at: http://sfonline.barnard.edu/gender-justice-and-neoliberal-transformations/the-girl-mergersof-feminism-and-finance-in-neoliberal-times/ [accessed 10 August 2013].
Ong, A. (2006). Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Papadopoulos, D. and V. Tsianos (2007). ‘The Autonomy of Migration: The Animals of Undocumented Mobility’, in Deleuzian Encounters: Studies in Contemporary Social Issues, eds A. Hickey-Moody and P. Mallins. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Papadopoulos, D., N. Stephenson, and V. Tsianos (2008). Escape Routes: Control and Subversion in the 21st Century. London: Pluto Press.
Read, J. (2003). The Micro-politics of Capital: Marx and the Pre-history of the Present. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Rollins, J. (1985). Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Romero, M. (1992). Maid in the USA. New York: Routledge.
Salter, M. B. (2011). ‘Places Everyone! Studying the Performativity of the Border’, Political Geography, 30 (2): 66–7.
Salter, M. B. (2012). ‘Theory of the /: The Suture and Critical Border Studies’, Geopolitics, 17 (4): 734–55.
Tsianos, V. and S. Karakayali (2010). ‘Transnational Migration and the Emergence of the European Border Regime: An Ethnographic Analysis’, European Journal of Social Theory, 13 (3): 373–87.
Virno, P. (2013a). ‘An Equivocal Concept: Biopolitics’, in Biopolitics, A Reader, eds T. Campbell and A. Sitze. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Virno, P. (2013b). ‘Labor, Action, Intellect’, in Biopolitics, A Reader, eds T. Campbell and A. Sitze. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Weeks, K. (2011). The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics and Postwork Imaginaries. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Wright, M. W. (2006). Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism. New York: Routledge.
Yeoh, B. S. A. and S. Huang (2010). ‘Transnational Domestic Workers and the Negotiation of Mobility and Work Practices in Singapore’s Home-spaces’, Mobilities, 5 (2): 219–36.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 Ayşe Akalin
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Akalin, A. (2016). The Lie Which Is Not One: Biopolitics in the Migrant Domestic Workers’ Market in Turkey. In: Adkins, L., Dever, M. (eds) The Post-Fordist Sexual Contract. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137495549_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137495549_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-57759-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-49554-9
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)