A Future Agenda: Policy and Practice in Gender, Migration and Research in Turkey

Abstract

The title of this book, Women, Migration and Asylum in Turkey: Developing Gender-Sensitivity in Migration Research, Policy and Practice, reflects our aim to recognize women migrants as independent actors and to foreground their presence in migrant flows in Turkey. In seeking to move knowledge of women’s migration to Turkey forward, the chapters in this volume consider the experience of different groups of women migrants through research using feminist approaches and gender-sensitive methods. Our hope is that the perspectives presented here will contribute to understandings of the experience of women migrating to Turkey for a multitude of reasons including for work, for experience, to seek a new life or to escape danger, conflict and persecution. Contributions show how acknowledging the significance of a gender-informed approach to migration research is essential to understand migration dynamics in Turkey as elsewhere. Studies presented in these chapters show women as active agents in migration yet often forced to struggle against stereotypes and patriarchal institutional structures that limit their opportunities and impede their goals and aspirations. We have aimed to show how gender and gendered assumptions about women, their lives and capabilities have shaped their experience of migration in Turkey. We believe the chapters of this book have implications for academics and practitioners working in and interested in Turkey. These implications reach far beyond Turkey’s borders to other countries where women migrants find themselves held back, discriminated against and limited in their options because of their gender and because of how their gender is constructed and perceived by policy makers, service providers, the public in general and indeed by their own families and communities.