Doğuş Şimşek
This chapter investigates the employment experiences of African migrants in Türkiye, highlighting how legal status, class, gender, and race intersect to shape access to work and exposure to precarity. Drawing on ethnographic material, it demonstrates the diversity of labour trajectories, from those facing exploitation and insecure temporary jobs to self-employed migrants who run businesses and hire others. By examining these varied positions, the chapter shows how racialised and gendered inequalities operate within the labour market, producing hierarchies not only between migrants and Turkish citizens but also within migrant communities themselves. It situates these dynamics within Türkiye’s neoliberal economic context, illustrating how structural constraints and labour market regulations generate uneven opportunities and precarious temporalities. I argue that what might appear as inactivity or idleness among migrants is often a consequence of restricted access to work and opportunities, reflecting broader racialised temporal regimes. These insights set the stage for the following chapter’s focus on waiting as a central dimension of migrant precarity.