CMES Seminar: The Making of Migrant Labour: Politics of Land, Displacement and Social Reproduction in Turkey

This talk analyses how structural, political and institutional dynamics actively produce differentiated forms of migrant labour and reshape social relations among farmers, migrants and farmworkers. In the current conjuncture, processes of displacement, agrarian restructuring, and labour flexibilisation have fragmented both the working class and the peasantry, producing labour mobility through rural–rural and urban-rural, often cross‑border, migration corridors. Focusing on seasonal migrant farmworkers in Turkey, the talk explores the intersection of relations of production and social reproduction under rapidly shifting land and labour regimes. The workers—predominantly Kurds and Arabs from Turkey and Syrian refugees—experience the intersecting crises of neoliberal restructuring, rural–urban migration, and conflict- and disaster‑induced displacement in amplified ways. With particular attention to gendered and generational impacts on youth and women’s labour and bodies, the analysis argues that social reproduction must be understood beyond the household, encompassing inter‑household relations as well as kinship, community, and ritual‑based dynamics such as marriage and childbearing. The talk shows how the combined forces of marketisation, family and kinship structures, and the authoritarian state sustain and reproduce migrant labour, capitalising on the intensified exploitation of women and youth.

COFFEE, TEA, AND PASTRIES ARE SERVED AFTER EACH SEMINAR.
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