{"word_count": 468, "character_count": 3306}
Selin Siviş (2020)Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Online firstAbstract. This article contributes to ongoing debates on the multiple dimensions of moral boundary-making processes particularly with respect to the perceptions of dominant groups. Based on ethnographic observations and thirty semi-structured interviews with employers in Adana, Turkey, this paper explores how distinct framing strategies are employed towards Syrian employees in workplaces, and how moral boundaries are negotiated and contested at different stages of employment in the informal market economy. It argues that attachment to morality in the workplace is distinctively (re)constructed by employers at different stages of employment: during the hiring process and then during employment itself. Results suggest that employers’ context-based understanding of morality is heavily concentrated on their moral construction of ‘self’ during hiring processes whereas their focus shifts from the ‘self’ towards the moral construction of the ‘employee’ after having different kinds of work experiences.Excerpt. "Inspired by cultural sociology (Lamont 1992, 2000; Lamont et al. 2016) and pragmatic sociology (Boltanski and Thévenot 1999, 2006), I argue that different moral justification strategies play a prominent role in how moral differences are imposed by certain group members upon others and in which ways such assigned certain moral values affect social actors’ everyday interactions. Addressing the plurality of moral justifications (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006) in shaping ‘insider-outsider’ relationship, this research contributes to the moral boundary-making literature in three ways. Firstly, the way how moral justifications are constructed does not only let employers construe their actions as morally worthy despite informal recruitment, but also appears as a form of inequality which feeds into poor working conditions and workplace specific expectations from Syrian workers. Secondly, there is no single way of moral boundary-drawing. Moral boundaries can be made and remade over time by the same social actors depending on in which context moral justifications are (re)produced. I support this argument by showing that there is a distinction in moral discourses and boundaries drawn between hiring and employment phases with regards to employers’ moral reasoning. More specifically, I show how employers portray themselves as moral individuals during hiring processes whereas employers’ moral justifications are attributed to their Syrian employees’ own moral incapacity to work after employment. Thirdly, there is a lack of research on employers’ role in boundary-drawing within informal market economies whereas there has been a growing attention on moral boundary work from perspectives of employees (see Purser 2009; Sherman 2005). I thus consider the role of moral justifications to understand the moral dimension of work life as well as structural factors. The claimed moral norms can be mobilised differently across social actors depending on local contexts. Social actors in different local contexts may prioritise different things to (de)value and shared moral understanding can be inter-subjectively circulated, consequently, they can come to enable and constrain behaviours." (p. 4)Link to the review