Migrant workers in Turkish agriculture :|patterns of mobility and dispossession (1990-2018)

Abstract

This dissertation examines migrant agricultural labor in Turkey as lens through which to explain the effects of economic, political, and geopolitical changes on rural mobilities. Two factors explain why Seasonal agricultural migration is on the rise. First, agrarian transformation starting in the 1990s resulted in a decreasing number of unpaid family workers, and the demand for seasonal migrant workers for agricultural work requiring manual labor surged since then. Second, domestic, regional, and foreign policies being to the Kurdish Question, the influx of Syrian refugees, and migration from the Caucasus have reshaped the new waves of agricultural migrants adding new categories such as refugees, irregular migrants, and internally displaced people to their profile. Given this situation, this study critically discusses how the transformation in agricultural production was realized through the availability of cheap, flexible seasonal migrant workers. Further, this work problematizes new patterns in mobility and the recent phenomenon of the dispossession of workers challenging the “temporal” characteristic of seasonal agricultural work. Based on research conducted in various regions among differing rural actors, this dissertation investigates new forms of rural mobilities and rural space which are being shaped by agrarian transformation, geopolitical developments, and agencies for migrants in Turkey since the 1990s.