Motivational diversity and the sense of ill-treatment back home among the UK’s migrant workers from Turkey: A cross-intersectional approach

Abstract

Drawing on unstructured interviews, the present article examines the motivations behind the migration of workers from Turkey as an under-researched community in Britain. For this, a crossintersectional approach is developed. Intersectional evidence suggests that motivations are informed by both economic and social factors. In particular, economic ambitions have become considerably variegated in recent years, but added to these are non-economic motivations within spatial, ethnic/religious and gender/sexuality domains as well as human capital considerations. These also give a dynamism to migrants' motivations. Even so, one should go beyond intersectionality for a fuller account. A sense of ill-treatment back home occasionally turns out to be an inextricable component across both economic and non-economic motivations whilst causing prolonged stays. Unpleasant experiences reported by the majority of participants largely reflect policy deficiencies in Turkey. Addressing them could have potential implications for more sustainable migration controls by encouraging returns and easing the search for a better life abroad.

How do Individuals Form Their Motivations to Expatriate? A Review and Future Research Agenda

“…According to these Indian employees, France could offer them and their families a more prestigious life. Similarly, other skilled employees from New Zealand expect Asian countries to offer them economic advantages ( Thorn, 2009 ), and employees from Turkey expect the United Kingdom to provide them with economic benefits because it offers comparatively more business opportunities ( Cam, 2017 ). Employees from Yugoslavia and Turkey expect to earn more income by moving to Austria ( Winter-Ebmer, 1994 ), likely also because it is wealthier than their home country.…”

“… Alonso-Garbayo and Maben (2009) revealed that nurses used recruitment agencies in their home countries to obtain jobs abroad. Cam (2017) provides some insights into the means used by SIEs to evaluate their expatriation options by discussing how individuals use their personal social network in the host country (United Kingdom) to find assistance during their expatriation.…”

“…Evaluating options. All ten articles noted that academics, healthcare professionals, engineers, entrepreneurs and highly skilled migrants moved as SIEs ( Alonso-Garbayo and Maben, 2009 ; Thorn, 2009 ; Cerdin et al, 2014 ; Khosa and Kalitanyi, 2015 ; Pinto and Araujo, 2016 ; Cam, 2017 ; Harry et al, 2017 ; Mielly et al, 2017 ; Richardson and Wong, 2018 ; Ridgway and Robson, 2018 ). However, among those articles, only two discuss how individuals evaluated their options for moving as SIEs, and none discuss whether options for moving as AEs were evaluated.…”

“…Building preferences. We found five articles discussing how SIEs formed their preferences to move to a specific country; they did this by comparing political situations between home and host countries ( Pinto and Araujo, 2016 ; Harry et al, 2017 ; Mielly et al, 2017 ) and comparing which country would offer the most freedom to practice other religions ( Alonso-Garbayo and Maben, 2009 ; Cam, 2017 ).…”

Empowerment as a pre-requisite to managing and influencing health in the workplace: The sexual and reproductive health needs of factory women migrant workers in Malaysia

“…Cam, 2014; Refslund, 2018; Tucker, 2020) and motivations for migrating (e.g. Cam, 2017) have received attention. Research on how they manage their health-related needs however remains underexplored – although this is considered as part of wider analyses in the context of workplace occupational health and safety (Hopkins, 2017; Walters and Wadsworth, 2020).…”