Date

2008

Author

Çetinkaya, Özgür

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The general subject of this thesis is about farm labor intermediaries who are important not only because they are transferring and organizing seasonal agricultural work but also they have social relations and interactions with other actors of seasonal agricultural work. This analysis elaborates multi dimensional relations of farm labor intermediaries and construction and reproduction of these relations. These social relations which can be accepted also as social capital and their nature are important for both understanding farm labor intermediaries and seasonal agricultural work in Turkey. Adana is determined as research field because of its long history about seasonal agricultural work. Moreover, changes and transformations in terms of social and agricultural structure taking place in Adana for 20 years are very important factors with regard to understand how farm labour intermediaries reproduce social relations. Labor intermediaries are the people who are providing and organizing seasonal labor force demanded by employers in labor intense agricultural production in different regions of Turkey. Delegate, backer, or sarge is the some local names of intermediaries using in Turkey. As it can be understood from the function of labor intermediary, it is arbiter between employer and worker. Family, relatives, friends and neighbors are seen as the labor force resources of intermediaries. From the eyes of the seasonal agricultural workers, intermediaries are not only the people who are finding job for them but also they are the people who meet their basic needs. This is very crucial point, since seasonal agricultural labor force is supplied from very poor regions in Turkey. At the same time intermediaries are important actors for employers due to their controlling functions of agricultural work process. However, the relationship between intermediary and employer is simply defined as business where mutual interests are important. In this context labor intermediation in Turkey has lots of meaning other than finding job for workers and worker for employers. Labor intermediation is a legal job which is controlled and regulated by law. However, both pervious researches and this study demonstrate that this job is mostly executed as informal. The main determinant factor for this informal execution of the job can be related with working style of intermediaries, namely, face to face social relations that has been institutionalized within time.

Subject Keywords

Sociology.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12610284/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/18318

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis