Embedded in Land: Gendered Political Divergence in Post-Disaster Expropriation among Arab-Alawite Community in Southern Hatay, Turkey

Pelin Gul, University of Toronto

Scholarship on gender and migration has long shown how migration reshapes intra-household power dynamics. Yet it often narrowly links women’s "empowerment" to their labor market participation, while assuming their political passivity. This paper challenges that assumption through a study of southern Hatay, Turkey, a rural border region near Syria in a post-disaster context. Following the February 2023 earthquakes, the Turkish state implemented rural land expropriation practices in the name of reconstruction. In response, Arab-Alawite women in male migrant-sending households (what migration scholars commonly call "left-behind women") have emerged as some of the most visible opponents of this state intervention. Despite their long-standing detachment from formal politics, these women now engage in direct confrontations with state forces, as well as grassroots organizing and party politics, to defend their land. Drawing on 60 semi-structured interviews and three months of participant observation, I examine how gender dynamics shape distinct political narratives and land-based actions. I find a pronounced divergence: men tend to avoid confrontation, favoring negotiation for “fair” compensation and treating land primarily as a commodity acquired through migrant labor. In doing so, they draw on provider masculinity and nationalist loyalty claims to justify negotiation and maintain their alliance with the state. Conversely, women reject both expropriation and gendered expectations of compliance, as land anchors their material livelihoods and social autonomy. By highlighting how political action emerges from gendered embeddedness in land—shaped under structural conditions—this study theorizes what I call the “political afterlives of the migrant labor system.” It shows how women’s political engagement in migrant-sending communities is structured by the intersection of labor migration, land relations, and authoritarian state intervention. In doing so, it advances our understanding of gendered land relations, the political consequences of labor migration, and rural political subjectivities under authoritarian rule.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 54. Labor Stratification, Migration, and Political Economy