Policy Change in Turkey's Local Migration Regime

• Applicant: Seda Rass-Turgut
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 548066830

My study examines the negotiation of policy change in Turkey's migration regime using the example of institutional and programmatic adaptation processes in local governments due to forced migration from Syria since 2011. On the one hand, its findings make an empirical contribution to understanding migration policies in one of the currently most significant host countries for refugees. On the other hand, it develops and tests an innovative methodological approach to study the adaptation of policy patterns. To this end, the analysis combines text mining, Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), and the analysis of interviews into a method triangulation. Text mining in the programming language R addresses a corpus of 1,118 administrative documents of 81 local Turkish municipalities from 2006 to 2022 to identify argumentation patterns starting from keywords. Examining the topoi formed on this basis enables conclusions to be drawn about the characteristics of changes in the migration regime and the repertoire of migration governance in these cities. The result is a phase model of policy change in the Turkish migration regime. The positioning of the cities in the resulting migration governance matrix allows for selecting cases for a qualitative comparative study. As a result, the QCA identifies pathways of migration governance production for 16 selected cities. This comparative analysis proves that the presence of international NGOs is driving inclusive approaches under certain conditions. On this basis, interviews were conducted in five selected cities where municipal experts were questioned regarding the results of the first two steps of the analysis. This reflection on the findings underlines that cities are particularly dissatisfied with the tight corset of many funding programs. The interviewees would like to see more freedom in designing projects to meet local needs arising from internal migration and the presence of refugees. A robust result of this methodological triangulation is the finding that in Turkey, the influence of international NGOs on the development of policies for dealing with refugees at the municipal level is to be assessed as vital: (1) In the Turkish migration regime, a lack of coherence of the policy framework can be observed at the municipal level. This situation creates an area of tension at both the national level and the level of international programs. (2) How opportunities for cooperation are opened at both levels proves to be a decisive factor in policy change. (3) Crucial here is access to financial support for refugee programs and the associated transfer of knowledge, approaches, and methods.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants