Gypsies and informal employment: The case of Istanbul

As the subject of this study, the Gypsies are an ethnic group that has existed for centuries both in our country and in world. Numerous scientific studuies have been conducted on Gypsies. The subjects of these studies were generally related to the language, culture, socio-economic structure and educational of Gypsies. In addition, these studies generally aimed to recognize and learn Gipsies. However, it has beeen observed that there are no comprehensive and useful studies about the working life of Gypsies. Therefore, the subject of the study was chosen as Gypsies. Informal employment was chosen as the action of the study. There have been academic and scientific studuies on informal employment both in Turkey and in world literature. The reason for this situation is that informal employment is one of the important problems of both our economy and the world economy. When the studies are examined, it is seen that the types, causes and result of informal employment are examined extensively and it contains various suggestions and regulations for this problem. The difference of this study from other studies is that the relationship between informal employment and Gypsies which is an ethnic group in our country that is examined. In the study, a hypothesis was established that Gypsies had a negative impact on informal employment rates. The hypothesis establihed to determine the relationship between Gypsies and informal employment was made possible to test, demographic questions, questions to understand their socio-economic structure and questions to measure their effects on informal employment were prepared. Since the Gypsies were an introverted and closed ethnic group, the interview technique was found suitable for the study. Thanks to the technique used, both the declarations of the participants and observations of the researcher were effective in the results of the research. İstanbui was chosen as a cosmopolitan city with 39 districts. In the preliminary studies, it was learned that Gypsies living in İstanbul worked in about 15 diffirent professions. Individuals working in these professions were reached in Beylikdüzü, Esenyurt, Büyükçekmece, Şişli, Ataşehir, Bağcılar, Kağıthane and Gaziosmanpaşa districts of İstanbul. Since similar occupations were done in the remaining districts, the selected districts were sufficient to avoid repetition. The researcher was interviewed by the participants in Beylikdüzü and Büyükçekmece districts through Gypsises associations. In the other six districts, it provided interviews with the participants through its own efforts. When the findings of study are considered, Gypsies prefer to work or informal work for many diffirent reasons such as their occupation, education level, family structure, low income levels, exlusion and marginalization due to their ethnic identity, disinterest of public institutions and organizations aganist Gipsies and life philosophies. In addition, while they consider factors such as independent worrking conditions, not being bound to employer and desire to work arbitrarily as the advantage of unregistered work, they state d that such as pension, insurance and compensation is a disadvantage. These statements of the parcipants also determined their attitudes towards informal employment. Based on these findings, the hypothesis that Gypsies have negative on uinformal employment rates is confirmed. According to the results of the study, Gypsies play an important role on uinformal employment rates which is one of the important problems in working life.