ATTORNEYSHIP IN TRANSITION TOWARDS DE-PROFESSIONALIZATION: OCCUPATIONAL GENERATIONS, EMPLOYMENT STYLES, AND GENDER PERSPECTIVES

Date

2025-5

Author

Özten Koyuncu, Ezgi

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This dissertation explores the structural transformation of the legal profession in Turkey, with a particular focus on the de-professionalization of attorneyship and its intersection with occupational generation, employment style, and gender. Drawing on both traditional theories of professionalization and Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of field, capital, and habitus, the study provides a sociological analysis of attorneyship within an evolving legal, political, and technological context. It examines how these transformations shape the professional identities and experiences of attorneys, offering insight into generational differences in career paths and professional perspectives. Empirical data were collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 28 attorneys who began their careers in the 1990s and 2010s, enabling a comparative analysis across generations. Thematic analysis reveals growing intra-professional fragmentation, diminishing autonomy and symbolic capital, rising competition, and increasing economic precarity. The findings also illustrate how attorneys navigate the tension between their roles as public actors and private service providers within a localized, low-mobility profession. While senior attorneys highlight the erosion of symbolic prestige and legal standards, junior attorneys report greater job insecurity, de-skilling, and bureaucratization. By focusing on attorneyship, as a highly institutionalized yet increasingly precarious profession, this dissertation contributes to sociological debates on professional transformation, intersectionality, and the evolving relationship between intellectual labor and state power in contemporary Turkey.

Subject Keywords

sociology of professions, legal profession, attorneys, de-professionalization, occupational generations

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/114539

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis