Kevin Yildirim (2019)

My PhD research investigates the impact of migrant workers on the informal recycling economy in Istanbul. Over the past decade, the arrival of foreign migrants into the city’s vast unregulated recycling sector has altered social and political relations between workers and those they encounter on the job or in the city. In particular, it has challenged the ways in which “hosts”—those who were in the city before the foreign migrants arrived, including government organisations— consider who or what should profit from the trade in recyclable waste. The project provides empirical insight into how the presence of migrants alters understandings of what is right and wrong in urban economies, particularly in sites of political and social conflict. Analytically, it contributes to debates on waste, exchange, moral economy, and work.