Paper short abstract:

Amid an ongoing "migrant crisis" in Istanbul, many shopkeepers feel obligated to help migrant waste pickers by giving them recyclable materials for free. For both parties, this transaction generates new moral perspectives on generosity, social otherness, and the limits of hospitality.

Paper long abstract:

Amid ongoing migrant and economic "crises" in Istanbul, migrant labourers in the informal recycling sector are often subjected to accusations of immorality. From local scrap metal dealers to the Istanbul Governor, those who leverage this accusation claim that the informal recycling sector, which employs many foreign migrants, generates "unjust profits." However, my research shows that many Istanbul residents regard encounters with migrant waste pickers as opportunities for realising moral commitments. For example, many local shopkeepers consider it a moral obligation to help waste pickers by giving them recyclable waste for free, knowing that this generosity facilitates their work. By transferring waste to them, shopkeepers enact a variety of moral and political convictions that respond to the presence of poor, hardworking non-citizens in their neighbourhood. Here, moral economic thought is a product of transactions between two parties who see the other as both a partner in exchange and an idealised other — citizen host and foreign guest. Waste transfers are not only a form of hospitality that occurs outside of formal institutions but also a relation that prompts participants to reconsider the morality of work, migration, and citizenship. The moral economic thought that emerges from waste transfers is thus widely diverse, suggesting a need to study morality in the economy as a dynamic and varied product of social interaction. In Istanbul, such an approach reveals the limits of migrant hospitality, as the moral judgments of those with political power triumph over popular understandings of who should profit from the city's waste.