Abstract
The roughly 3.5 million Syrian refugees who moved to Turkey in the last 5 years appear as a homogeneous group with respect to their basic demographic characteristics. But factors such as gender, marital status, number of children, cultural background, competencies and language skills affect their integration and employment processes. Although 46% of Syrian refugees are women, they remain somewhat invisible in most studies concerning migrants’ integration into the economy, participation in working life and employment conditions. Turkish studies focusing on the Syrian female labor force remain few and far between, which might partly be explained by Syrian women’s limited participation in the labor market. There is a narrow literature on female Syrian refugees which, in general, argues that they have disadvantaged positions in the labor market, are open to exploitation and have limited career opportunities. However, there is almost no discussion on qualifications, level of education and cultural capital of women engaged in the above-mentioned unqualified and low-paid jobs.
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Notes
- 1.
Hatay and İstanbul are the two cities that host the highest number of Syrians.
- 2.
According to dual labor market theory, the labor market is divided into two parts—the “primary” and “secondary” sectors. Secondary labor markets include lower wage, insecure and less unionized jobs and consist of high-turnover, part-time or temporary work. Women, immigrants and students are concentrated in the secondary labor market.
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Ünlütürk-Ulutaş, Ç., Akbaş, S. (2020). The Most Invisible of the Invisibles: Skilled Syrian Women in the Turkish Labor Market. In: Williams, L., Coşkun, E., Kaşka, S. (eds) Women, Migration and Asylum in Turkey. Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28887-7_9
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