Browsing by Author "Tuncer, E."

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From ‘safe Haven’ To ‘Zone of Precarity’: Locating Istanbul Through the Perceptions and Everyday Urban Practices of Skilled Migrants
(Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH, 2025) Tuncer, E.
This article seeks to position Istanbul through the practices of everyday life of middle-class, skilled migrants from both the Global North and South and their perceptions of urban safety and precarity. It examines individuals’ processes of migration to Turkey, revealing their initial impressions of Istanbul as a safe city of opportunities, and then analyses their everyday urban lives, highlighting hidden forms of precarity and discrimination. Through in-depth interviews with 45 women and 34 men—more than half of whom are North American and European—and participant observation in people’s living environments and at various social events, I argue that Istanbul, while perceived as a ‘safe haven’ at first, becomes a ‘zone of precarity’ where most of the participants have experienced intersectional forms of precarity, latent patterns of discrimination, and insecurities that belie the common perception that skilled migrants are privileged. To substantiate this argument, this ethno-spatial study presents an analysis of qualitative data as well as an online subjective mapping of Istanbul, where perceptions of urban safety and spatial precarity are displayed through socio-spatial experiences encountered in neighbourhoods, workplaces, and public spaces. © The Author(s) 2025.
Citation - Scopus: 1
Secluded Lives: Restricted Urban Practices of Migrant Domestic and Care Workers in Istanbul
(University of L'Aquila, Department of Civil Construction, Building and Architecture, Environmental Engineering, 2022) Tuncer, E.; Tuncer, Ezgi; Eren-Benlisoy, Z.
Our research investigates the gendered processes of labour migration of domestic and care workers (MDWs), along with their experiences of urban life in Istanbul. As an interdisciplinary urban study in concordance with ethnographic methodologies, it further focuses on gendered drivers of migration: the home, work, and social urban environments of MDWs. The significance of our study is that it contributes to analyses of Global South–South female labour migration from a gender perspective, which has emerged as a relatively new and burgeoning field in migration studies. It is also significant in that it reveals how gender inequalities are spatialised. This is done by representing the city through the digital mapping of anonymous information from MDWs concerning their use of Istanbul. Our findings state that the urban practices of MDWs are highly limited and restricted by patriarchal family structures, either remote husbands or transnational communities. The fear of being a foreign woman in Istanbul, language barriers, illegal status, and the expensive costs of socialising outdoors restricted their urban social lives as well. Furthermore, the host community sometimes stigmatises foreign women as “easily exploited”, thus, most were exposed to verbal, physical, and/or sexual harassment in public spaces, which caused women to lead secluded lives. Fearing male violence, which is widespread in Turkey, they censor themselves. In this sense, gender inequalities seem to be spatialised; this can be traced through Google My Maps based on the subjective urban narratives of MDWs. It represents how urban policies remain insufficient in responding to feminised labour migration. © 2022 University of L'Aquila, Department of Civil Construction, Building and Architecture, Environmental Engineering. All rights reserved.