POLITICS AND LAW IN TURKISH MIGRATION - Edited by Ibrahim Sirkeci, Doğa Elçin, and Güven Şeker - Increasingly more scholars and analysts argue that migration controls are deemed to fail simply because of the dynamic nature of human mobility. Nevertheless, migration remains to be a hot topic on political agenda as well as a key area of legislation. Turkey has recently implemented some serious structural changes through a new law of migration and creation of a specialist central general directorate responsible for handling almost anything and everything about migrants and foreigners in the country. On the other hand, politics and political participation of the Turks abroad is part and parcel of the integration debates strongly shaping the mainstream politics of immigration countries in Europe and beyond. This book offers a number of research accounts investigating the political participation and integration, new legislations, and implications of policy and law on migration practices.

There are more than 700,000 Bulgaristanlı migrants residing in Turkey. Immigrants from Bulgaria who are ethnically Turkish, they assume certain privileges because of these ethnic ties, yet access to citizenship remains dependent on the whims of those in power. Through vivid accounts of encounters with the police and state bureaucracy, of nostalgic memories of home and aspirations for a more secure life in Turkey, Precarious Hope explores the tensions between ethnic privilege and economic vulnerability and rethinks the limits of migrant belonging among those for whom it is intimated and promised--but never guaranteed. In contrast to the typical focus on despair, Ayşe Parla studies the hopefulness of migrants. Turkish immigration policies have worked in lockstep with national aspirations for ethnic, religious, and ideological conformity, offering Bulgaristanlı migrants an advantage over others. Their hope is the product of privilege and an act of dignity and perseverance. It is also a tool of the state, reproducing a migration regime that categorizes some as desirable and others as foreign and dispensable. Through the experiences of the Bulgaristanlı, Precarious Hope speaks to the global predicament in which increasing numbers of people are forced to manage both cultivation of hope and relentless anxiety within structures of inequality.

TURKISH MIGRATION POLICY, edited by Ibrahim Sirkeci and Barbara Pusch, aims to shed light on changes in migration policy, determinants beneath these changes, and practical implications for movers and non-movers in Turkey. Nevertheless, one should note that Turkey has only recently faced mass immigration and the number of foreign born has more than doubled in less than five years. Such sudden change in population composition warrants policy adjustments and reviews. Policy shift from "exporting excess labour" in the 1960s and 1970s to immigrant integration today is a drastic but necessary one. Nevertheless, Turkish migration policy is still far from settled as several chapters in this book point out. Despite the exemplary humanitarian engagement in admitting Syrians, Turkey is still at the bottom of the league table of favourable integration policies with an overall score of 25 out of 100. Turkish migration policy is likely to be adjusted further in response to the continuing immigration.

This insightful book discusses how policymakers define migrant workers’ status and rights at international and national levels. Assessing the evolution of the language of rights for migrant workers in international law; definition of migrant workers in Turkish legislation; key political and economic factors on Turkish migration policies; protection mechanisms that safeguard migrant workers’ rights, it critically examines the policymaking processes at international, regional and national levels and evaluates the impact of the ‘values’ such as universal or ethnocentric values, on the definitions of status and rights of migrant workers. The chapters evaluate the status and rights of migrant workers through the lens of cosmopolitan moral constructivism and examine the law making procedures and illustrate the dynamism of these processes with the inclusion of various conditions and actors. The book dissects the key universal and national values that impact on rights of migrant workers. This timely book challenges the rising right-wing ethnocentric policy approaches to (labour) migration to migrant workers’ rights, and problematises the existing legal definitions within migration policies that place the rights of migrant workers into a precarious policy sphere. By entering the controversial political debate for labour migration and the policy making realm, this book is ideal for scholars and researchers of political science, international relations and social policy, particularly those focusing on international (labour) migration and migration policies. It will further benefit the policymakers and practitioners working on migration, such as UN agencies, NGOs, civil societies and local authorities.

This open access book explores the new complexities and ambiguities that epitomize EU-Turkey relations. With a strong focus on the developments in the last decade, the book provides full access to a comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted relationship through three entry points: (1) Theories and Concepts, (2) Institutions, and (3) Policies. Part I brings together complementary and competing analytical approaches to study the evolution of EU-Turkey relations, ranging from traditional integration theories to novel concepts. Part II investigates the institutional machinery of EU-Turkey relations by analyzing the roles and perspectives of the European Council, the European Commission, and the European Parliament. Part III offers analyses of the policies most relevant for the relationship: enlargement policy, trade and macroeconomic policies, foreign and security policy, migration and asylum policies, and energy policy. In Part IV, the volume closes with a systematic survey of the conditions under which cooperative trends in EU-Turkey relations could be (re)invigorated. The systematic setup and the balanced combination of distinguished experts from EU- and Turkey-based institutions make this book a fundamental reading for students, researchers, lecturers, and practitioners of EU-Turkey relations, European integration and Turkish foreign policy. Wulf Reiners is Senior Researcher and Head of the Managing Global Governance (MGG) Program of the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut fur Entwicklungspolitik (DIE). Ebru Turhan is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Turkish-German University in Istanbul, Turkey.

The Turkish Migration Conference 2016 is the fourth event in this series, we are proud to organise and host at the University of Vienna, Austria. Perhaps given the growing number of participants and variety in scope of research and debates included at the Conference, it is now an established quality venue fostering scholarship in Turkish Migration Studies. Over the last five years, we have seen over 1000 abstracts submitted to the conference and year on year the number of accepted presentations grew. This year, the conference accommodates over 350 presentations by hundreds of academics from all around the World. The Migration Conference attracting such a healthy number of academics is a good indicator of the success and means the conference serving its purpose and offer a good opportunity for scholarly exchange and networking. Main speakers include Jeffrey Cohen, Ibrahim Sirkeci, Philip Martin, Gudrun Biffl, Karen Phalet, Samim Akgönül, and Katharine Sarikakis.

This study explores the relationship between migration and political 'development' and asks the question 'how are migration movements and the expatriate communities they create connected to the possibility of enhanced political voice or the preservation of illiberal politics in sending countries?'. The thesis of this work is that politics of origin may be better understood by their extensions into transnational public spheres, because civil society, as a discursive space, may be more liberally grounded in migrant-receiving countries than in sending societies.