Outsourcing domestic care: Gendered labour mobility and ambiguities of Turkmen migrant work in Istanbul

As part of the mass post-1990s feminisation of (labour) migration in Central Asia, many young and middle-aged Turkmen women have joined the global trend of moving abroad to work in the service sector, predominantly as nannies/care providers, domestic workers, or employees in the entertainment sector. They have been integrated into the labour market and private households in Turkey through the discursive frame of familial and ethnic affinity. This frame serves as a medium for the domestication of migrant labour, confining it to the familial site which is rendered as devoid of any form of labour. In this chapter, I argue that domestication is a mode of labour exploitation that extends from the legal and policy terrain to relationships in the private household. This chapter recounts migration and labour stories of women from Turkmenistan working in Turkey, with a specific focus on the negotiations and strategies of navigation they employ against the legal uncertainties, fraught emotional work and ambiguous boundaries within the private households where they are employed.