ABSTRACT
Labour migration into Turkey has two characteristic features which are also observed in international labour migration in different parts of the world; one feature is the increase in women’s participation in international migration (the feminisation of migration) (Akis 2012: 379ff), while the other is that immigrant workers hold a semi-legal status under precarious conditions and with low wages (irregular migration) (Atasü-Topçuoğlu 2012: 501ff). With the globalisation of production (e.g. trade of goods, international fragmentation of production to countries with cheap labour) comes also the globalisation of social care work. In particular, the demand for highly educated workers opens up windows for well-educated women. At the same time the load of social care work is still seen as women’s work. Thus immigrant women become major elements in an irregular transnational market. The labour that provides reproduction (domestic labour) constitutes an international hierarchical structure; at the top of this hierarchy there are the native women in immigration-receiving countries who are liberalising themselves from unpaid domestic labour. Immigrant women are at the second level and female relatives in emigration countries who cannot fi nd the means or opportunities to migrate and provide domestic and caretaking services – at home – are at the bottom of the hierarchy (Parrenas 2000). Thus, migration of women supports the inclusion of women from different regions into the labour market.
