Some Remarks on the Migration Networks of Northwestern Anatolian Girls Employed in Domestic Services in Istanbul (1845-1911)

Delving into the question of how girls from Anatolia made their way to the Ottoman capital Istanbul for employment in domestic services during the 1845-1911 periods, this study focuses on the transformations and continuities in their migration patterns. In addition to official correspondences and newspapers of the late Ottoman period, the study draws upon the records compiled from the courts of the Ottoman capital. Beside the Istanbul court records, other registers used in study were retrieved from Anatolian districts that sent large numbers of migrants to Istanbul. The number of girls moving to Istanbul for domestic work witnessed a constant rise throughout the 19th century, which in turn resulted in a diversification of the migration patterns in question. Up until the 1880s the informal networks based on kin and countrymen played a decisive role in the transfer of girls to Istanbul. Yet, the mobility of these girls later gradually evolved into a dynamic sector in which middlemen came to take an active part. The centralization policies of the nineteenth-century Ottoman state brought about a remarkable growth in the number of civil servants in the provinces who also shaped the nature of girls’ labor mobility