Everyday forms of resistance in Istanbul day labourer areas: Comparative experiences of immigrant and local workers

Abstract

Precarity extends beyond economic and material conditions to shape people's identity, belonging and subjectivity. As a process, precarity has made instability a virtue by lifting the smokescreen that previously hid relations of production. Its institutional crystallization becomes concrete in state apparatuses and social relations. It targets both subjectivity and the life of the population as a whole. Therefore, it participates in everyday life as a hegemonic form of rule. This study focuses on the experiences of precarity, the production of subjectivity and the areas of conflict of local and migrant labourers in day‐labour hiring sites in Istanbul. Day‐labour sites are areas where precarity is normalized. In contrast, day labourers produce their own areas of autonomy in day‐labour sites. The loyalties of migrant and non‐migrant labourers to each other differ in day‐labour sites. Due to the production of certain oppositions through identities in labour areas, the relations of domination have certain invisibility. Nevertheless, the practices of day labourers in organizing their mutual relations intersect in these sites.