?MORE RIGHTS AND MORE FREEDOM?: COMPARATIVE REPRESENTATIONS OF GENDER ROLES FROM TURKISH WOMEN IN LONDON

Migration to another country can change everyday cultural texture significantly, including dominant gender roles. Increasingly commonplace in an age of migration, such change is relevant to the under-researched topic of why migrants settle or move elsewhere. This paper reveals awareness of the cultural shaping of gender roles and practices by highly-educated Turkish immigrant women in London, England. Based on fifteen semi-structured interviews, results show that through lived comparisons of gender and patriarchy fore-grounded strongly contrasting roles. England was depicted as a land of minimal patriarchy and much opportunity, migrants feeling more independent, free and self-confident as women than in Turkey. They felt they could be assimilated relatively easily, aided by their high educational level and English proficiency. In contrast, Turkey was defined as almost wholly discouraging, overwhelmingly patriarchal and male-dominated, rigid in attitudes and sharply gendered. Such comparative assessments, no matter how naively idealized, provide insight into why the reasons (some) migrants settle are not always directly explicable from logics underpinning initial relocation. Migration, in other words, must be acknowledged as continuous relational process more than one-off act of relocation.