Research focus: Turkey

Establishing a migration regime in Turkey is inextricably tied, both politically and discursively, to the process of accession to the European Union. As a transit country, Turkey does not appear to have migration policies of its own. Rather, all of the government’s migration policies appear to have been dictated by factors related to Turkey’s desire to join the EU.

Although there is significant immigration to Turkey from the countries of Eastern Europe, the migrants end up working in what is, for the most part, an informal economy and are strangely absent from the Turkish discourse on migration. Sabine Hess and Serhat Karakayali focus on this discrepancy in their research. How has it come to pass that migration in the transitory space of Turkey is almost exclusively articulated from the perspective of imperial migration regimes? Which patterns of representation make this possible? And what are the conditions for the "presence" of migration in the political discourse of the administration and the public?