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Abstract
This paper discusses the gender dimension of human rights, labour rights and migration in North Cyprus. We focus on two groups of workers in order to facilitate a comparison of conditions across registered and unregistered women migrant workers. One group, Eastern European sex workers, enters North Cyprus with a six months work permit. Although they work in a highly regulated sector, these workers are highly vulnerable to human right abuses and are often considered victims of trafficking. The other group, cleaning workers, is primarily composed of Anatolian Turkish women with or without work permits. Our previous work on migrant sex workers and state regulations in North Cyprus provides some of the initial findings for the study. We have updated and collected new data through a survey of domestic workers and the collection of government information from the labour and migration offices. Having established the employment conditions faced by migrant workers in both sectors, we proceed to evaluate their compliance with North Cypriot legislation and international human rights protocols. We conclude with an assessment of how to improve human rights protections for migrant women in North Cyprus. It should be noted that although North Cyprus represents a very small fragment of migratory movement in the Mediterranean region, it is highly representative of migration movements to Europe (i.e. from Eastern Europe and Turkey). The confined nature of North Cyprus also makes it an excellent location for the collection of data.
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