As of the early 1990s, we have witnessed increasing immigration to Turkey in line with the integration of Istanbul in the globalized economy as an important node in a world-city system (Sonmez, 1995; Keyder, 1999; Gedik, 2000; Hacisalihoglu, 2000; Radikal, 2001; Sibel, 2001; Turkiye Gazetesi, 2002). As an integral part of the global capitalist system since early 1990s, Istanbul has seen an increasing informal economy due to its geographical position and generally unobstructed entry into the country. Istanbul became one of the most common arrival points for the people from neighboring countries, especially those coming from the Newly Independent States (NISs) or ex-Soviet states.

Additionally, the economic turmoil and increasing feminization of poverty (Corrin, 2005) in NISs during the first quarter of the 1990s has gradually forced the residents of these states, especially young women, to earn their livelihood in other countries. The breadwinner role left unfilled by unemployed male householders has inevitably been undertaken by woman at different ages, and the outmigration toward preferred neighboring countries has been largely feminized (Castles and Miller, 1993; Antonova-Ünlü et al, 2015).

In this chapter, this outflow has emerged as the site of intersectional experiences (Crenshaw, 1991) of marginalized young migrant women in Turkey. The experiences in our case have placed the young women migrants at the “intersections of class, sexual orientation, religion, age, citizenship and ethnicity” (Durbin and Conley, 2010, p. 185). Here, following Crenshaw's expansion of intersectionality, the intersectional experience is defined as the set of young women's migratory-exclusionary experiences revolving around multiple categories earlier noted (Crenshaw, 1991). Intersectionality thus provides “a methodological and theoretical framework that conveys the multiple and simultaneous oppressions” (Moore et al, 2011, p. 6) of the experiences of young migrant women at different stages of their movement toward Istanbul. This chapter presents the shifts in female migration to Turkey, the ethnic division of labor, and preferential frameworks that examine the varied discourses and practices about them as migrant workers.

Shifts in migration

The first migration stream during the early 1990s was identical with both trafficked and voluntary migration of young Russian women as sex workers in the northern part of Turkey. The important actors in these trafficking stories were Russian-origin, or those who looked Russian, charming women under 30 years old (Gulcur and Ilkkaracan, 2002).