The Visibility of an Invisible Community’s Labour Exploitation in an Ethnic Economy: A Comparative Study on Kurdish Movers in the United Kingdom
The Visibility of an Invisible Community’s Labour Exploitation in an Ethnic Economy: A Comparative Study on Kurdish Movers in the United Kingdom

Summary/Abstract: Kurdish movers from Turkey are usually considered as Turkish by researchers. Therefore, very little is known about the experiences of Kurdish movers in the labour market in the United Kingdom. Drawing on field research I conducted in 2014 and 2015 about the ethnic economy and labour market conditions of Kurdish, Turkish, and Turkish-Cypriot movers in London, and this study contributes to the literature on migration through analyses of the labour exploitation of Kurds who moved to the UK from Turkey. It demonstrates that the reasons underlying the difference between Kurds and Turks and Turkish-Cypriots in terms of status and working conditions are complex. First of all, Kurdish movers in the UK are relative newcomers, have a limited grasp of English and share a strong sense of solidarity, and also a significant percentage of those Kurds left Turkey in order to escape discrimination and political violence, which makes the possibility of return “impossible”.

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