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

Worker-Mothers on the Margins of Europe: Gender and Migration between Moldova and Istanbul by Leyla J. Keough

Publisher

Woodrow Wilson Center Press with Indiana University Press, 2015

ISBN

978-0-253-02088-8 hardcover; 978-0-253-02093-2 paperback; 978-0-253-02101-4 ebook
Worker-Mothers on the Margins of Europe: Gender and Migration between Moldova and Istanbul by Leyla J. Keough

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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.

About the Author

Leyla Keough

Leyla Keough

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, School of Critical Social Inquiry, Hampshire College
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Kennan Institute

The Kennan Institute is the premier U.S. center for advanced research on Russia and Eurasia and the oldest and largest regional program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The Kennan Institute is committed to improving American understanding of Russia, Ukraine, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the surrounding region though research and exchange.  Read more