Worker-Mothers on the Margins of Europe: Gender and Migration between Moldova and Istanbul

Worker-Mothers on the Margins of Europe explores the world of undocumented migrants from a postsocialist state, following Moldovan women who “commute” for six to twelve months at a time to work as domestics in Istanbul. Leyla J. Keough examines the gendered moral economies that shape the perspectives of the migrants—Turkic-speaking Christians of Gagauz ethnicity—their employers in Turkey, their communities in Moldova, and the International Organization for Migration. She finds that their socialist past continues to color how the women view their labor and their roles within their families, even as they are affected by the same shifts in the global economy that drive migration elsewhere. Keough puts scholarship on gender and migration into dialogue with postsocialist studies and offers a critical assessment of international anti-trafficking efforts.

Leyla J. Keough is a visiting assistant professor of anthropology and Middle East studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. She was a Kennan Institute Title VIII–supported research scholar at the Wilson Center in 2007–8.

Maps and Figures
Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The Returns on Mobile Mothers’ Work

2. Uplift in Gagauz Yeri

3. Desiring a New Domestic

4. Working in Istanbul

5. Managing Migration

Conclusion: “Driven” Women

“Anyone interested in the phenomenon of migration, particularly the gender dynamics of international migration and the politics of ‘trafficking’ in an era of globalization, will find this book an invaluable contribution…. This is ethnography at its best.”—Kristen Ghodsee, Bowdoin College