Turkey hosts more refugees than any other country in the world, with forced migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and other countries converging, either with hopes to settle in Turkey or to continue onwards to the European Union (EU). This volume addresses the specific experiences and trajectories of forced migrants in Turkey in the context of local and national contexts and the future of EU-Turkey relations. It presents the demographics of forced migrants, the biographies and future plans of refugees, and their interactions with civil society, states, and international agencies. A focus is on organized violence and corresponding experiences in countries of origin, during transit, and at current places. Based on extensive quantitative and qualitative research, this book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in the fields of migration, human security, and refugee studies, as well as of sociology, political sciences, and international relations.

This book compares the life courses of forced migrants in two of the world’s most important transit countries: Turkey and Mexico. It examines the local, regional, and global contexts of their experiences, trajectories, and biographical projects, caught between return, stay, and forward movement. Forced migration has increased rapidly around the world in recent years, with Mexico and Turkey experiencing particularly high numbers of migrants, as conflict, violence, authoritarian regimes, environmental disasters, economic instability, lack of opportunity, and generalized violence have driven people to leave their homes in search of a better life. With a special focus on organized violence, this book analyzes the specific impact of organized violence on the trajectories and biographies of forced migrants, situating these life courses in the political, economic, cultural, and social contexts of the countries of origin (Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria; El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) and in the country of transit (Turkey and Mexico). Using extensive original empirical data and analysis, it argues that forced migration is a long-lasting social process based on everyday actions and social practices throughout the migration trajectory. Systematically comparing two of the world’s most important transit countries, this book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of migration, politics, international relations, and sociology.

This powerful book explicates the many ways in which colonial encounters continue to shape forced migration, ever evolving with times and various geographical contexts. Bringing historians, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists and criminologists together, the book presents examples of forced migration events and politics ranging from the 18th century to the practices and geopolitics of the present day. These case studies, covering Europe, Africa, North America, Asia and South America, are then put in dialogue with each other to propose new theoretical and real-world agendas for the field. As the pervasive legacies of colonialism continue to shape global politics, this unprecedented book moves beyond critique, ahistoricity and Eurocentrism in refugee and forced migration studies and establishes postcoloniality and forced migration as an important field of migration research.

The size and scope of the global forced migration crisis are unprecedented. Almost 66 million people worldwide have been forced from home by conflict. If recent trends continue, this figure could increase to between 180 and 320 million people by 2030. This global crisis already poses serious challenges to economic growth and risks to stability and national security, as well as an enormous human toll affecting tens of millions of people. These issues are on track to get worse; without significant course correction soon, the forced migration issues confronted today will seem simple decades from now. Yet, efforts to confront the crisis continue to be reactive in addressing these and other core issues. The United States should broaden the scope of its efforts beyond the tactical and reactive to see the world through a more strategic lens colored by the challenges posed—and opportunities created—by the forced migration crisis at home and abroad. CSIS convened a diverse task force in 2017 to study the global forced migration crisis. This report is a result of those findings.

This book examines the migration of women as gendered subjects to and from Turkey, using feminist research practices to explore a range of diverse experiences of migrant women as refugees, asylum seekers, undocumented or documented migrants. The collection includes contributions from researchers, practitioners, and migrants themselves to present a nuanced analysis that challenges binary divisions between ‘forced’ and ‘voluntary’ migrants and highlights the political and social agency of refugee and migrant women in Turkey. Drawing on a rich body of original empirical and theoretical research the volume explores recent policy change in Turkey, the political and social influences that have shaped migration policy (both internally and globally), and how women migrants have been positioned within its changing refugee and migration regimes. Analysis of the Turkish experience of redesigning migration policy in a country with weak civil protection against gender discrimination provides important lessons, in particular for countries in the Global South that are under pressure from the Global North to control and manage migrant flows. This interdisciplinary volume offers gender-sensitive recommendations for policymakers and practitioners and will advance global debates on migration management and governance across the fields of sociology, social policy, anthropology, labour economics and political science.

This book is a collection of selected papers presented at the 3rd Turkish Migration Conference (TMC). TMC 2015 was hosted by Charles University Prague, Czech Republic from 25 to 27 June 2015. The TMC 2015 was the third event in the series that we were proud to organise and host at Charles University Prague. This selection of papers presented at the conference are only a small portion of contributions. Many other papers are included in edited books and submitted to refereed journals in due course. There were a total of about 146 papers by over 200 authors presented in 40 parallel sessions and three plenary sessions at Jinonice Campus of Charles University Prague. About a fıfth of the sessions at the conference were in Turkish language although the main language was English. Therefore some of the proceedings are in Turkish too. The keynote speakers included Douglas Massey of Princeton University, Caroline Brettell of Southern Methodist University, and Nedim Gürsel of CNRS.

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 book examines the changing demographic situation of Syrian refugees and the host community in Turkey, one of the major refugee hosting countries in the world, relying on a recent representative dataset. Conflicts and the resulting unrest force people to flee their countries and take refuge in foreign lands. Such refugee movements across the world have increased significantly in recent times. Turkey accounts for the greatest refugee population in the world today. This has drastically impacted the Turkish demographics, leading to different demographic situations in refugee communities in the country. This book presents an in-depth research on the impact of forced displacement on the demographic behaviour of Syrian refugees in Turkey in general, and more specifically the way transformed family structures, unregistered children, fertility behaviours and early marriages impacted their lives. The book also contributes to the existing knowledge and discourse on refugee integration by shedding light on their experiences related to access to labour market opportunities and education opportunities, wellbeing and mobility. It also helps in linking demography of Syrian community to the socio-economic challenges in Turkey by means of incorporating crucial demographic variables into the analysis. Offering valuable insights into various dimensions of life, this book has an interdisciplinary appeal and will thus be a key resource for academics and scholars of demography, refugee studies, migration studies and sociology. It will also be a valuable and unique reference work for people in governments, international agencies and non-governmental organizations.

Exploring the divergent aspects of the rule of neoliberalism in Turkey since 1980s, each chapter in this book highlights a specific dimension of this socio-economic process and together, these essays construct a thorough examination of the whirlwind of changes recently experienced by Turkish society. With particular focus on the new ways in which social power operates, expert contributors explore new discourses and subjectivities around environmentalism, health, popular culture, economic policies, feminism and motherhood, urban space and minorities, class and masculinities. By questioning the primary influence of the state in these micro-political matters, they engage with concepts of neoliberalism and governmentality to provide a fresh, grounded and analytical perspective on the routes through which social power navigates the society. This sustained examination of the new axes of power and subjectivity, with a particular eye on the formation of new political spaces of governance and resistance, deepens the analysis of Turkey’s experiment with neoliberal globalization.

In early 2011, the Syrian civil war erupted. Numerous militias emerged. Civilians died. People fled. In the past decade, Syrians have become the biggest group of refugees in the world. Most of the displaced Syrians live within the Middle East region. This book asks two big questions: first, what are the challenges for Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey toreturn to Syria and how can they be overcome? Second, what are the livelihood challenges for Syrian refugees in these countries and how can they be overcome? The Syrian Forced Displacement in the Middle East is an exhaustive essay based on more than two hundred days of fieldwork in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey through interviews with more than a thousand refugees and locals, as well as officials from government, nongovernment, and international organizations between 2019 and 2023. It narrates Syrians' refugeehood and suggests steps to move forward in the issues of refugee protection and refugee return.