The Condition of the Working Class in Turkey: Labour Under Neoliberal Authoritarianism by Mehmet Erman Erol

Author:Mehmet Erman Erol [Erol, Mehmet Erman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780745343112
Goodreads: 57550106
Publisher: Pluto Press
Published: 2021-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

7.4 IRREGULAR MIGRANT LABOUR AND CONSUMPTION

It would be an extremely inadequate explanation to reduce the impact of the migrants on the economy to the incorporation of the migrant workforce into the labour market. In very detailed research on the impact of Latino migrants on the economy of Memphis USA, Mendoza et al. (2000) pointed out that from the $570.8 million of earnings of Latino migrants in the city, only $125.6 million were sent to origin country as remittances. Meanwhile, $85.6 million had been collected as tax, $359.6 million of earnings of the migrants had been spent in the local economy, mostly in accommodation, transportation, supermarkets, domestic appliances and restaurants (Mendoza et al., 2000). Other research estimated that the Mexican-born and Mexican descendants made an 8 per cent contribution to the GDP growth of the US economy between 1994 and 2010 (Delgado Wise and Gaspar Olvera, 2012: 6).

Nevertheless, the role of irregular migrants as a factor that contributes to the expansion in the aggregate demand has generally been overlooked. Furthermore, the impact of the Syrian migrants has mostly been viewed negatively and attributed to increasing prices and inflation. However, it is indispensable to take migrant consumption into consideration particularly during the economic crisis and with a special emphasis on sectors such as consumer goods production and real estate. First of all, it has been observed that the substitution of the native workers with the low-cost Syrian workers – and other irregular migrant labour – led to a reduction of the prices of goods by 2.7 per cent – commodities particularly produced by informal and small-size firms – and to a reduction of the prices of services by 2.2 per cent (Balkan and Tümen, 2016: 15; Tümen, 2016: 458). In other words, the incorporation of a large volume of migrant labour particularly into the small-size firms had a positive effect on consumer prices.

Meanwhile, since almost all of the Syrian migrants live outside the refugee camps, a substantial 5.5 per cent increase in housing rents has been observed (Tümen, 2016: 459). In terms of house prices and rents, two trends can be identified. Firstly, the instant demand of a large volume of immigrants for accommodation increases house prices and rents in the host cities. Secondly, there is a trend of internal migration from the cities and districts that receive the most Syrian migrants, which causes house prices to increase in other cities and districts as well (Akgündüz et al., 2015: 12–13). In that sense, the increase in rents for high quality rental units in low migrant hosting neighbourhoods are much higher (11.1 per cent) than the lower quality housing (1.1 per cent) in the poorer neighbourhoods (Tümen, 2016: 459). Therefore, it is possible to predict that the Syrian migrants and other foreign-born workers directly and indirectly boosted demand in the Turkish real estate and construction sectors.

The economic boost generated by migrants through consumption is manifested most concretely in the current increases in the growth of the agricultural sector, which is the highest in the last decade (Kuyumcu and Kösematoğlu 2017: 79).

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