The working life experiences of women who immigrated from Bulgaria to Turkey during the “close relatives migration” and 1989 migration.

The presence of women in the labor market, whose immigration began to be accepted in the 1970s, is exposed to an insensitivity that also includes invisibility. Women’s labor, which often takes place in a position defined as secondary and reserve labor or as “women’s work”, can be further devalued when it comes to immigration. At this point, the focus of the study is women’s labor in working life as an immigrant. The main purpose of this study is to reveal the women’s experience and working phenomenon before and after migration through immigrant women from Bulgaria. In this direction,
the information of two groups of six immigrant women who migrated to the province of Bursa from Bulgaria between 1969-1978 with “close relatives migration agreement” and during the 1989 migration period were consulted. Comparison of the findings of this study with the examples in the literature reveals that the experience of migration and work differs by being influenced by gender, political and economic system, and socio-cultural structure. The inadequacy of women’s leisure practices, their determination to own a home, with their embracing the image of “hardworking
immigrant woman” and the discourse of “industriousness” that has been broken with the second generation are the other findings of the study.