Choosing to Be Invisible, Dying to Be Visible: Women in Informal Employment in Turkey

This book explores the social, economic and cultural impacts of participation in the informal economy, at a time when ＂modern slavery＂ as a concept is on the agenda of many sociological, development and human rights literatures. The case study presented in this book focuses on gender dynamics in Turkey, where labour is renowned to be low cost, exploring how the informal sector is enacted through women’s participation and the choices they make in it. It focuses on the survival strategies of women in the informal sector; when dealing with employers, middle-men, subcontracting employment agencies, as well as their families and social networks. It challenges the dichotomy between necessity and choice, arguing thatthere is a middle ground in which individual choice is socially constrained but in which the individual choices and practices also end up shaping the structural constraints themselves.

This well-thought-out ethnographical fieldwork appeals to academicians, postgraduate and undergraduate students with an interest in sociology and social policy, gender and women’s studies, development studies, sociology of work.