A new wave of “high-skilled” migratıon from Türkiye: Call centre workers in Athens

Date

2025-4

Author

Kavuş, Helin Kardelen

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This study examines a novel migratory trend in which university-educated young people from Türkiye migrate to Greece to work in global call centres in Athens. Existing research on migration from Türkiye has primarily adopted two perspectives: the brain drain approach, which focuses on the loss of skilled talent, and the new wave perspective, which highlights migrants’ higher education levels, secular orientation, socioeconomic status, and urban backgrounds. While extensive literatüre explores highly skilled migration from Türkiye, it predominantly focuses on top-tier professionals—such as software engineers, finance specialists, medical doctors, academics, and students—who migrate to preferred Western destinations, particularly Germany. Addressing this gap, this study sheds light on an overlooked component of Türkiye’s recent migration trends: young, educated individuals who employ a distinct migratory strategy, involving temporary work in call centres in cities like Athens, Greece, from which they can access Europe. The study explores how call centre employment in Greece functions as a migration strategy for Türkiye’s educated youth and the strategies they employ when confronted with immobility at various stages of their migration process. To answer these questions, five months of ethnographic fieldwork were conducted in Athens between October 2021 and February 2022, including in-depth interviews with 31 migrants. Findings reveal strong parallels between new European youth mobilities and Türkiye’s new wave migration. However, while both trends are largely motivated by non-economic factors, structural barriers impose distinct forms of immobility on Türkiye’s new wave migrants, shaping their migration trajectories at multiple stages.

Subject Keywords

Highly skilled migration, New wave migration, Migration of educated youth, Call centre industry

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/114114

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis