The Emergence of the Transnational Middle Class in Turkey

Mustafa Yavas, Johns Hopkins University

Critical globalization studies make the case for a transnational capitalist class (Sklair 2001), which mainly consists of the owners and executives of transnational corporations (Robinson 2004), and highlights an emerging network of interlocking ownerships (Carroll 2010). If globalization can give birth to a transnational capitalist class, how about its working and middle class counterparts across the globe? This article examines the intertwined process of globalization and middle-class formation in semi-periphery economies. Focusing on the differentiating stratum of Turkish professional-managerial employees, this article contributes to global and transnational sociology by emphasizing the role of transnational processes in class formation and by proposing an employment-based definition of transnational middle classes that centers transnational corporations (TNCs). Through a historically grounded analysis, I highlight that, parallel to other semi-periphery countries, the Turkish economy’s global integration and increasing embrace of neoliberalism since the 1980s constitute the key macro-level processes that undergirded the transnational middle class in Turkey. Particularly, the increasing prevalence of TNCs in Turkey and their emergence as the primary employer of its most educated and qualified labor force marked the rise of Turkish yuppiedom vis-à-vis its old middle class whose primary employer was the Turkish state. In addition to their transnational cultural capital—made of English language skills, prestigious educational credentials, and cosmopolitan taste, which enable them to secure employment at TNCs, the most distinctive features of this ascendant fraction of new middle class consist of not only consumerism but also careerism with aspirations of global mobility. Putting Turkey and other semi-periphery economies including India and South Korea in a comparative context, this article expands our understanding of middle classes beyond consumption-centered middle-class analyses; it extends our focus to employment in general and TNCs in particular, conceptualizing them as key agents of middle-class formation in semi-periphery countries.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 204. Classes and Politics: Contemporary Case Studies from the Global North to South