It is our pleasure to have Stephanie Nawyn contribute as this week’s guest. Dr. Nawyn is an assistant professor of Sociology at Michigan State University. Her areas of expertise are migration and gender, and she focuses specifically on mechanisms of exclusion of migrants and their consequences. During the 2013-14 academic year she is a Fulbright Scholar at the Women’s Research Center at Istanbul University.

I came to Istanbul in September 2013 to learn more about human trafficking and the conditions of immigrants’ lives in the city. In my conversations with immigrants and immigrant advocates in Istanbul, one thing has become undeniably apparent; Istanbul seriously lacks space for immigrants. I am not referring to a lack of physical space, although that is part of the problem. I am referring more generally to a space to BE, as in both a physical and socio-cultural space to exist and flourish and live dignified lives.

I see this as a particular problem for immigrants who are trafficked into and within Turkey. People doing empirical research on human trafficking increasingly find that many of the common narratives about the kinds of force traffickers use are false. Individuals are rarely kidnapped off the streets, held in chains and forced into labor. More often, they are enticed by promises of improving their economic circumstances, are mislead by how much improvement they might experience, and their mobility is hindered by debt peonage and other types of labor exploitation. Immigrants may even wish to continue working in situations of extreme exploitation because their other options are worse. In other words, the metaphor of “modern-day slavery” can be very misleading. More often, trafficking is a situation of extreme labor exploitation. And in order for trafficked people to be free of extreme labor exploitation, they need to have rights as laborers that are enforceable. (more…)