The Post-Imperial Migration State: Turkey’s Evolving Migration Regime

• In Event: Migration States in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

This paper applies the “migration state” concept to the question of migration governance in Turkey. Taking a longue durée approach, it analyses Turkey as a post-imperial migration state. The paper begins with a discussion of forced migration as a feature of post-imperial nation-building, moving on to discuss the use of ethnic and religious immigration criteria during the early Republican period. It examines post-imperial continuities between patterns of labour circulation and migration in Turkey and the circulation of workers in the Ottoman Empire, as well as the role that both the Ottoman Empire and Turkey played as a destination for refugees and political exiles from Europe and elsewhere. Finally, it discusses Turkey’s diaspora policies in light of its renewed foreign policy ambitions under the AKP and Erdoğan, in which the use of diaspora politics as a means of projecting state power has emerged as part of a “neo-Ottoman” resurgence.

Author

• Fiona B. Adamson, University of London, SOAS