(In)formalizing livelihoods: a case study of a refugee work permit scheme in Turkey

Thesis

This dissertation conducts a mixed methods case study of a refugee work permit scheme (RWPS) for Syrian refugees in Turkey. For refugees with regularized residency status, a RWPS grants access to the formal labor market of their host countries. Across four empirical chapters, I examine the factors influencing work permit uptake and the RWPS's socio-political and economic outcomes. I combine problem-solving and critical approaches and adopt economic informality and livelihoods as the two conceptual prisms through which to assess the RWPS. For my analyses, I draw on primary legal and policy texts, labor force surveys, social media data and in-depth interviews with a diverse array of informant groups.

I quantitatively demonstrate that the RWPS fails to fulfill its dual purported goals of alleviating the labor informality and economic exclusion of Syrians under temporary protection (SuTP) in Turkey. I attribute this failure to the policy's incongruence with (a) the structural and sectoral labor informality dynamics of the Turkish labor market and (b) Syrian refugees' portfolio-building and present-oriented livelihood strategies.

I then explore the RWPS's broader outcomes. Firstly, I show how the Turkish state uses the RWPS as a ‘‘discretionary formality'' tool as I term it. The state selectively awards work permits to politically privileged labor market actors so as to formalize a symbolic number of Syrian workers while the vast majority remains indefinitely informal. Secondly, I argue that the refugee aid sector in Turkey has humanitarianized the RWPS and refugee livelihoods programming more broadly in order to accommodate national interests and sensitivities. I assert that these concessions undermine longer-term economic inclusion efforts and thus contribute to Syrian refugees' state of perpetual impermanence in the country.

I conclude that the RWPS, rather than facilitating SuTP formalization and economic inclusion in Turkey, serves to maintain the status quo of informality and exclusion in more ways than one.

Authors: Salihoğlu, A

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-mpzxe5y4b
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Syrian refugees; economic inclusion; economic integration; right to work; integration; work permit; humanitarianization; forced migration; informal economy; decent work; development aid; Turkey; humanitarian aid; informal sector; informality; refugee livelihoods; labor formalization
• Subjects: Forced Migration Studies; Informality Studies; Refugee Studies; International Development