Agrarian Change and Labour Supply in Turkey, 1950-1980

Abstract

Agrarian structures based on small peasant property can have two opposite kinds of impact on urban wages. In the first type, stable smallholder farming bringing high returns puts upward pressure on wages. In the second type, smallholder farming that does not bring sufficient returns leads to semi-proletarianization in which workers' access to rural sources of income functions as wage subsidy and puts downward pressure on wages.This paper argues that the situation in Turkey between 1950 and 1980 fits the second type. By pointing out the factors that changed the attitude of the migrant labourers towards class struggle from relative passivity to increasing militancy, it suggests that instead of the rural ties of the emerging working class, the main reason behind the dramatic rise in urban wages in Turkey in the 1960s and 1970s was the working-class struggle throughout the period.

Agrarian Structures, Urbanization, and Inequality

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The Coal Crisis in Appalachia: Agrarian Transformation, Commodity Frontiers and the Geographies of Capital

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