Abstract

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, outward migration has become structurally

embedded in Central Asian societies. Existing scholarship has largely interpreted these

movements through remittance economies and labor market differentials, while paying

comparatively limited attention to the symbolic and relational conditions that render migration

economically viable. In particular, the role of historically grounded narratives of cultural

affinity and gendered constructions of care in shaping processes of economic incorporation

remains underexamined.

This paper conceptualizes migration among Central Asian women to Türkiye as a strategic and

relational process of capital conversion. Shared linguistic, religious, and historical ties,

amplified through post-1991 discourses of Turkic affinity, intersect with the gendered

organization of domestic and care work to constitute a distinct field of opportunity and

constraint. Within intimate household labor settings, perceived cultural proximity mitigates

social distance and facilitates trust-based employment relations. At the same time, care work

is structured around the naturalization of women’s emotional labor, which is treated as inherent

rather than socially produced and cultivated.

Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, the paper demonstrates that migrant women are neither

passive recipients of these narratives nor merely positioned by gendered expectations. Through

experience, peer exchange, and ongoing relational negotiation, they develop practical

repertoires for mobilizing culturally legible forms of familiarity while regulating the scope and

intensity of emotional engagement. Boundary-setting, recalibration of affective investment,

and selective withdrawal emerge as learned practices. Capital conversion, understood as the

transformation of cultural, social, and emotional resources into economic stability, therefore

unfolds as a temporally evolving and dialectical process in which women participate in both

the reproduction and subtle transformation of gendered labor regimes.

By foregrounding agency within historically constituted and relationally enacted structures,

this paper contributes to scholarship on migration as social strategy, affective labor, and the

reconfiguration of mobility systems in Central Eurasia.