Turkey-EU Migration: The Road Ahead

About five percent of persons born in Turkey, or born to Turkish parents outside Turkey, some four million people, are in the EU-15 countries. Migration was the major relationship between Turkey and Western Europe for most of the past half century. Recent trade and development policies seem to have substituted trade for migration between Turkey and the EU. Turkey is a net immigration country, and net migration between Turkey and Germany has been negative in recent years, meaning that more German residents move to Turkey than Turkish residents to Germany

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  • Refik Erzan, Umut Kuzubaş, and Nilüfer Yıldız, “Growth and Immigration Scenarios: Turkey-EU”, in Michael Emerson and Senem Aydın (eds.), Turkey in Europe Monitor, January 2004-February 2005, Nos. 1-14, p.115.
  • Seçil Paçacı Elitok and Thomas Straubhaar, “Turkey, Migration and the EU: Potentials, Challenges and Opportunities”, Econ Papers, Vol. 5 (2012), p. 264, at http://econpapers. repec.org/bookchap/zbwhwwied/5.htm. [last visited 21 March 2012].
  • Migration News, “UK: Population, Tiers”, Vol. 19, No. 1 (January 2012), at http://migration. ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=3732_0_4_0 [last visited 12 April 2012].
  • The Economist in March 2011 reported that only the acquis chapter dealing with science had been concluded, and that there were no negotiations on 18 chapters.
  • Elitok and Straubhaar, “Turkey, Migration and the EU”, p. 11.
  • Nermin Abadan-Unat (ed.), Turkish Workers in Europe, Leiden, EJ Brill, 1976.
  • International Labour Organization, Some Growing Employment Problems in Europe, Report II, Second European Regional Conference, Geneva, 1974, pp.98-99.
  • Ali Gitmez, “Turkish Experience with Work Emigration”, Yapı Kredi Economic Review, Vol. 3, No. 4 (July 1989), p.7.
  • Philip L. Martin, The Unfinished Story: Turkish Labour Migration to Western Europe, Geneva, International Labour Office, 1991.
  • The TES registered Turks wanting to work abroad, and German or other foreign employers selected the workers they wanted to hire from TES recruitment lists. Over time, foreign employers were more likely to specify the Turkish workers they wanted to hire by name.
  • Ahmet Akgündüz, Labour Migration from Turkey to Western Europe, 1960–1974: A Multidisciplinary Analysis, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2008. Despite protests from some Turkish employers, the Turkish government restricted only the emigration of Zonguldak miners. See, Nermin Abadan-Unat, “Turkish Migration to Europe and the Middle East”, in Laurence Michalak and Jeswald Salacuse (eds.), Social Legislation in the Contemporary Middle East, UC Berkeley, Institute of International Studies, 1986, pp. 361-362.
  • Martin, “Germany: Managing Migration in the 21st Century”.
  • Foreigners seeking asylum were required to apply in the first-safe country they reached, and its decision was binding on other countries, and foreigners from “safe-countries” were deemed generally not in need of protection.
  • Martin, “Germany: Managing Migration in the 21st Century”, in Cornelius, Tsuda, Martin and Hollifield (eds.), Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective.
  • “EU: Migrants, Economy”, Migration News, Vol. 19 No. 2 (April 2012), at http://migration. ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=3750_0_4_0 [last visited 5 May 2012].
  • Philip Martin, Importing Poverty? Immigration and the Changing Face of Rural America, New Haven & London,Yale University Press.
  • Philip Martin, “Good Intentions Gone Awry: IRCA and U.S. Agriculture”, The Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 534 (July 1994), pp. 44- 57.
  • “Mexico: Labor, Elections”, Migration News, Vol. 19, No. 2 (April 2012), at http://migration. ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=3748_0_2_0 [last visited 5 May 2012].
  • The OECD puts the 2009 population of Mexico at 108 million and of Turkey at 71 million; PRB (www.prb.org) puts the 2010 population of Mexico at 111 million, and increasing by 1.5 million a year, and the population of Turkey at 74 million and increasing by 890,000 a year. About 29 % of Mexicans are under 15, and 26 % of Turks are under 15.
  • Most Mexicans migrate to the US, which had 310 million residents in 2010, a population growing by 1.9 million a year, and 20 % of residents under 15. Germany, the EU country with the most Turkish and Turkish-origin residents, had a 2010 population of 82 million shrinking by 160,000 a year; 14 % of residents are under 15. Austria had a stable 8.4 million residents, and 15 % were under 15.
  • In all OECD countries including Mexico and Turkey, employment in 2009 was 540 million, including 26 million in agriculture.
  • World Bank, “Turkey Labour Market Study”, 14 April 2006, p. iii; More recent data suggest that 9.4 million of the 21.1 million Turkish workers in 2009 were not registered with the state social security system called Sosyal Güvenlik Kurumu (SGK).
  • It was reported that total employment in Turkey rose from 16 million to 22 million between 1980 and 2004; employment in agriculture fell from 8.4 million to 7.4 million during these years. See, Ibid., p.v.
  • According to the OECD, 84 % of the 154 million-strong US labour force were wage and salary employees in 2009, while 81 % of the 42 million strong German labour force were wage and salary employees.
  • Volatility in economic growth and inflation are associated with slower growth in jobs and per capita GDP growth.
  • OECD labour force data suggest that Turkey’s labour force was stable between 2004 and 2009 at about 25 million, but the number of wage and salary employees rose from 11 million to 13 million.
  • Assar Lindbeck and Dennis Snower, The Insider-Outsider Theory of Employment and Unemployment, Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press, 1989.
  • World Bank, “Turkey Labour Market Study”, p. i.
  • Turkish workers with 20 years of employment are entitled to 20 months of severance pay, versus an average six months in OECD countries. See, Ibid., p.x. However, not all workers who should receive severance pay in fact receive such pay, including requiring new hires to sign undated resignation letters and negotiating with workers to pay them a fraction of the severance pay due; public sector workers and those employed in the largest firms normally receive stipulated severance pay. Employer-employee benefit costs averaged 36 % of wages in 2005.
  • The 2003 Labour Code allows temp agencies to operate, but restricts employers to using temp workers only when “objective” reasons exist, such as for seasonal work. See, World Bank, “Turkey Labour Market Study”, p. xi.
  • Employer pension contributions are based on days rather than hours worked, another factor encouraging long hours of work.
  • World Bank, “Turkey Labour Market Study”, p. ix.
  • Turkey had major devaluations in 1980, 1994 and 2000-01.
  • Crude oil production is expected to decline from 2.6 million barrels a day in 2010 to 2.1 million in 2015.
  • Mexican health, pension, housing and other social programs are financed by employment- related taxes, which increases the non-wage cost of hiring formal sector workers. Efforts to reform labour laws in 2010 stalled.
  • Philip Martin, Trade and Migration: NAFTA and Agriculture, Washington, DC, Institute for International Economics, October 1993.
  • Mercedes González De la Rocha and Agustín Escobar Latapí, “Choices or Constraints? Informality, Labour Market and Poverty in Mexico”, IDS Bulletin, Vol. 39, No. 2 (May 2008), pp. 37-47.
  • One reason for difficult school-to-work transitions for young men is military conscription, which is generally 15 months (12 months for university graduates). Most employers do not offer formal jobs to young men until they have completed their military service. Some argue that conscription contributes to the brain drain from Turkey. Turkey, a country with less than a fourth the US population, has over 500,000 active military personnel, compared with fewer than 1.4 million in the US.
  • Harry Flam, “Economic Effects of Turkey’s Membership on the European Union”, in Bernard M. Hoekman and Sübidey Togan (eds.), Turkey- Economic Reform & Accession to the European Union, Washington, DC, Co-publication of the World Bank and the Centre for Economic Policy Research, 2005, pp. 341-352.
PERCEPTIONS: Journal of International Affairs-Cover
  • ISSN: 1300-8641
  • Yayın Aralığı: Yılda 2 Sayı
  • Başlangıç: 1996
  • Yayıncı: T.C Dışişleri Bakanlığı