The precarious lives of migrant workers in de facto states: A case of Pakistani workers in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus

Pakistani labour migration to the Mediterranean is usually studied along the routes leading towards Europe through the Gulf, Turkey and North Africa. This article examines a destination rather than a corridor. In the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a de facto state recognised only by Turkey, construction- and services-led growth has made migrant workers more than half the labour force, with Pakistanis the second largest group after Turkish nationals. Drawing on twenty-five interviews conducted in 2022–2023, we document deceptive recruitment, an employer-tied permit regime, the withholding of passports and wages, uncompensated overtime, substandard employer-controlled housing, and racial discrimination. We argue that these mechanisms are not peculiar to unrecognised states: they recur across labour-intensive sectors in the Mediterranean and the Gulf, generated by segmented labour markets rather than by contested sovereignty. What non-recognition alters is the availability of remedy. Extending Norman’s concept of ‘strategic indifference’ to regular, permit-based labour migration, we show that persistent non-enforcement of protective legislation is better understood as a governance strategy than institutional incapacity. Where workers have neither treaty-based protection nor a consulate to turn to, nothing external offsets that choice. Domestic pluralism surfaces extraordinary abuse, while the lawful mechanisms of everyday control pass largely unremarked.