Gendered Dynamics of International Labour Migration: Skilled Female Migrants in Istanbul

The first part of our research aims to investigate the gendered dynamics of labour migration of skilled (university graduate) more highly educated migrant women working and living in Istanbul, along with their experiences in urban space. This project further focuses on the drivers and processes of migration and urban life (home, work, socialising) experiences in both countries of origin and Istanbul of skilled women who have migrated to Turkey to live and work from countries in both the Global North (high economic welfare level) and Global South (middle and low economic welfare level) (Solarz, 2020, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2020, Garcés-Mascareñas 2018) in the context of gender inequalities.

The significance of this project is that it contributes to analyses of the Global North-to-South and South-to-South skilled female labour migration from a gender perspective, which has emerged as a relatively new and burgeoning trend in migration studies in recent years. Among these trends, skilled female migration, particularly to countries in the Global South, has been largely ignored. Although this phenomenon has become widespread in Turkey as an upper-middle-income country, Turkey’s potential in the context of its intake of skilled migration has yet to be included in the global literature. This project helps reveal the importance of skilled female employment in Istanbul by revealing that the migration flows from the Global South to Turkey do not only include international asylum seekers, refugees, less skilled male workers, and by emphasizing the socio-cultural accumulations and economic potentials of Istanbul as a global city. Another significant value of the project is to map migrant women’s experiences in private and public spaces, as well as their mobility networks in the city, in order to reveal how gender inequalities are spatialised and how they reproduce urban space, which will contribute to urban studies focusing on Istanbul.

Based on empirical fieldwork and qualitative analysis, this socio-spatial research employs an interdisciplinary approach combining ethnographic methods, participant observation, in-depth interviews and urban studies approaches. Furthermore, it uses urban mapping of anonymous information concerning the use of public space with an analytical account of gender-based discrimination encountered in public spaces and sexual harassment experienced by migrant women, as well as their opportunities to access public facilities and places and mobility in Istanbul.

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