The experience of Arab workers working in Turkey: Qualitative study

Abstract

ARTICLE INFO Abstract Research Article Received 4 July 2020 Received in revised form 23 October 2020 Received in revised form 29 October 2020 Accepted 30 October 2020 This paper investigates the experience of foreign workers (FWs), essentially Arabs, in the workplace in Turkey with a focus on two major aspects, the first aspect is discrimination and bias that FWs face in the workplace in terms of regulations, task assignment, and relationship with colleagues. While the second aspect is the preference of FWs to work in an entrepreneurial career and the preference of working with a non-Turkish boss. The study took a qualitative approach to reach its finding, 17 people were interviewed individually, and two focus groups took place. The interviews were coded and classified through (consider.ly) platform to find the main trends and common points of discussion. The analysis of the collected data shed the light on one of the challenges that blue-collar FWs face when they start working in Turkey which we named as “internal-discrimination”. We define “Internal discrimination” as a type of discrimination that describes the exploitative and discriminatory practices that some people engage in against people from the same country due to a lack of specific skills in an abroad workplace. We noticed that the major factors that encourage this behavior are the language barrier as many FWs lack language skills as well as the desperate need for money to sustain a living. Internal discrimination seems to affect the experience of FWs in Turkey significantly negatively. The analysis found no discrimination; however, the light was shed on a lot of dishonesty and exploitation.