KURSE

Information

About this course

This course covers the social welfare and labor relations dimensions of the ongoing transformation in Turkey. Neoliberal restructuring in Turkey since the 1980s has led to a fundamental transformation of social policies and labor relations. In addition to the state’s changing form of presence in the worlds of labor and welfare, Turkey’s deepening integration to global capitalism have also created fundamental shifts in the labor force structure in terms of its spatial, sectoral, occupational and employment-status distribution. Today, an increasing number of people who depend on paid-employment for their livelihood are forced to experience this transformation in an increasingly flexible, unregulated, unorganized, and insecure labor market settings.

What you'll learn

1. have a well-grounded understanding of the general trajectory of neoliberalism in Turkey and its significant social and political implications

2. identify the most crucial policy areas regarding the social welfare and labor relations throughout this transformation

3. critically discuss the relations between identity problems and welfare politics and labor relations,

Course outline

Click here for the full syllabus

Meet your instructor

Onur Can Taştan received his Ph.D. from the Labor Economics and Industrial Relations program at Ankara University and worked as a research assistance at the same university between 2005 and 2016. He worked as a post-doc researcher at the Institute of Sociology, Göttingen University between 2017 and 2019 and taught on-line courses on social policy and industrial relations in Turkey. Dr. Taştan is currently working on workers’ search for alternative organizations and new forms of struggles against the ongoing crisis of trade unionism in Turkey, with a focus on the relations between the changing welfare regime, the crisis of trade unionism, and rising authoritarianism.