A Multi-level and multi-sited analysis of the European Union’s immigration and asylum policy concerning irregular migration and its implications for Turkey : Edirne and İzmir as two major gateway cities

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2013
Gökalp Aras, Ela Nefise
In order to control migration movements and its external borders, the European Union (EU) has been implementing different policies and policy instruments. In particular, concerning irregular migration, delocalization is used for controlling and supported by securitization and economisation discourse. Within this framework, the EU uses the external dimension of its immigrant and asylum policy as a mode of governance and adopts different policy instruments and tailor-made measures for each country for operationalization. While the EU imposes different measures on the Member States and the non-EU countries through Europeanization and externalization channels; consequences and reactions are also diverse in those countries. As a sending, receiving and most importantly transit as well as both a candidate country; but also still a third country, Turkey provides an excellent settlement to analyse the implications of the externalities of the EU’s immigration and asylum policy concerning irregular migration. This study analyses the implications of the EU’s immigration and asylum policy with a special focus on irregular migration for Turkey by adopting a multi-level and multi-sited approach. Within this framework, this dissertation focuses on the implications concerning normative and institutional changes as well as the implementation dimension in Turkey at macro level; on the irregular migration related social networks in specific gateway cities (multi-sited ethnography in Edirne and Izmir) at meso and local levels and finally, examines the policy implications on the migration experiences and lives of irregular transit migrants at micro level. Within this study mainly the ‘interpretative approach’ is adopted along with qualitative research methods, in particular ‘ethnography of policy analysis’ is employed to understand how the relevant actors and institutions receive, interpret, implement and are affected by the policies concerned. During the data collection, secondary sources and existing statistics are intensively used; however the main method that led to the findings of this research can be seen as the multi-sited field research, which was realized from August 2011 to March 2013 in Ankara, Edirne and Izmir, where at macro level 18, at meso level 78 and at micro level 11 (in total 107) semi-structured interviews were conducted with policy implementers and policy receivers and supported with participant observation as well as in-depth interviews.

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Citation Formats
E. N. Gökalp Aras, “ A Multi-level and multi-sited analysis of the European Union’s immigration and asylum policy concerning irregular migration and its implications for Turkey : Edirne and İzmir as two major gateway cities,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2013.