Hosting Overnight Guests: Gendered Unpaid Work as a Solidarity Mechanism of Migrants in the Process of Urbanization in Turkey

Abstract

This article addresses overnight guest hosting, which is a widespread solidarity practice among rural-to-urban migrants in Turkey. The fieldwork, based on in-depth interviews with 28 first-generation migrant women, reveals that it was mostly the young migrant women who shouldered hosting tasks as gendered unpaid work, which deepen their time poverty and reinforce their dependence on family. The analysis highlights the links between intersectional disadvantages of young migrant women and poverty, the failure of the welfare state to provide social assistance for migrants, and the familialist character of social policy during the peak years of migration.