Turkey is home to the largest Syrian refugee community in the world and the agricultural industry offers work opportunities for vulnerable Syrian refugee families. This book exposes the fast-changing relationship between seasonal agricultural production and the work practices of Syrian refugees in Turkey. Through close ethnographic study carried out over three years with nearly 1000 people, the book illuminates how the increasing number of incoming Syrians results in the ‘precarization’ of the workers – particularly women and children. The author examines Syrian families’ working and living conditions with a special interest in the dynamics of how they utilise the labour of women and children to survive and have access to work. An in-depth study of the Syrian community – at a time when the state apparatus is hostile to research on the subject – the material in this book is unique and offers an insight into remote agricultural sites that are invisible to many. It is an analysis of the precarization process of Syrian labour in an industry that wants to attract the most vulnerable people into the workforce. By focusing on the intersectional vulnerabilities and the context-dependent precarization, the book argues that the commercialization of agricultural production and the increasing use of waged labour blooms antagonistic encounters of different ethnic, cultural and religious groups in rural Turkey.

This collection analyzes women’s narratives on the workplace. These narratives speak to the daily struggles women face in the workforce, such as inflexible and long work hours, masculine workplace cultures, employers’ stereotypical attitudes, and the absence of work-life balance initiatives. Viewed from a sociological perspective, the authors emphasize the reoccurring themes of devaluation, exploitation, and dehumanization of female workers resulting from unconscious or implicit bias and which directly impacts women’s quality of life.

Turkey is home to the largest Syrian refugee community in the world and the agricultural industry offers work opportunities for vulnerable Syrian refugee families. This book exposes the fast-changing relationship between seasonal agricultural production and the work practices of Syrian refugees in Turkey. Through close ethnographic study carried out over three years with nearly 1000 people, the book illuminates how the increasing number of incoming Syrians results in the ‘precarization’ of the workers – particularly women and children. The author examines Syrian families’ working and living conditions with a special interest in the dynamics of how they utilise the labour of women and children to survive and have access to work. An in-depth study of the Syrian community – at a time when the state apparatus is hostile to research on the subject – the material in this book is unique and offers an insight into remote agricultural sites that are invisible to many. It is an analysis of the precarization process of Syrian labour in an industry that wants to attract the most vulnerable people into the workforce. By focusing on the intersectional vulnerabilities and the context-dependent precarization, the book argues that the commercialization of agricultural production and the increasing use of waged labour blooms antagonistic encounters of different ethnic, cultural and religious groups in rural Turkey.

Globalisation is often considered as not only generating jobs, but also having a negative effect on those at the bottom of the labour supply chain. Here Saniye Dedeoglu shows us exactly how globalisation has affected women engaged in insecure, invisible and low/unpaid garment work. Through a close ethnographic study of women workers in Istanbul's garment industry, she reveals how industries have adapted their labour demands to make use of local female labour supplies, and highlights the strategies and responses that have evolved in response to contemporary changes in global industrial production in Turkey. Dedeoglu shows how production for global markets has seeped into local labour markets, contributing to a culture of work which is informal and whose participants are often invisible. "Women Workers in Turkey" throws up the critical question of what it means to be a woman in today's globalised society, and is an important contribution to the various perspectives on the social and economic consequences of globalization to the least priviliged in industrial socieities.

In promising women equal citizenship rights and promoting gender equality, Turkey's recent welfare reforms appear to address fundamental problems-the patriarchal system limits women's lives to their roles as wives and mothers, and their labour to informal and unskilled sectors. Yet these policies, guided by the process of accession to the European Union, have conflicting outcomes for women. The reforms sweep away historic support structures and deem women 'equal citizens' without adequate interventions in legal and social frameworks, thus increasing their vulnerability. The AKP's neo-liberal policies and rising Islamic movements further weaken the reform process. With a comprehensive analysis of Turkey's welfare regime and of EU policy through the lens of gender, this book will be indispensable for all those interested in Turkish and Middle East studies, the EU, sociology, gender studies and globalisation.