3 Turkish emigration and its implications
for the sending and receiving countries
Ahmet İçduygu
3.1 Introduction
Social researchers have dealt with the effect of international migration at
three different levels: sending countries, receiving countries and migrants.
Generally speaking, the tendency has been to address this issue from a rather
limited perspective, focusing largely on the receiving countries, sometimes
on the sending countries, and occasionally on the migrants themselves,
but only rarely on these three actors of migratory f lows together. Some
refocusing would therefore seem to be in order. We need to know more than
we do about the consequences of migration on the individual countries
(both sending and receiving) and on migratory systems in general. This
current study is an effort of this type, although it also focuses on a single
country case – Turkey – but locates it in the wider context of a migration
system that relates to the European migratory regime.
Several studies have shown that a negative perception of immigration,
or even emigration, prevails in public opinion and governments in most
countries (Burns & Gimpel 2000; Fitzgerald, Amber Curtis & Corliss 2012;
Lahav 2004). It is argued that, caused by economic or political hardship
or unrest in countries of origin, migration would threaten well-being and
identity in countries of destination, and sometimes endanger political secu-
rity. At the same time, social scientists recognise that, being a part of global
circulation and integration, human mobility bears a tremendous potential
for human progress (de Haas 2005; Levitt 1998; Özden & Schiff 2006). This
view is increasingly shared by scholars and policymakers, who argue that
adequate policies could make migration a genuine instrument for economic
and social development. Therefore, we have to study the conditions under
which, and the mechanisms through which, migration can transform
individual benef its into an aggregated prof it for the wider society. From
this perspective, Turkey, as a country of emigration, provides us with an
interesting case study; f irstly because of its high rate of emigration over time;
secondly because the country has already gone through the migration cycle;
thirdly, because Turkey is an important player in the totality of the European
international migration regime; and fourthly because this migration cycle