Book Review: ‘Migration and Turkey: Changing Human Geography

‘Migration and Turkey: Changing Human Geography,’ By Deniz Şenol Sert and Deniz Karcı Korfalı (eds.) and ‘Migration To And From Turkey: Changing Patterns And Shifting Policies,’ 
By Ayşem Biriz Karaçay and Ayşen Üstübici 

Turkish Review - 01 September 2014

SEDEF ERDOĞAN GIOVANELLI, ÖZYEĞIN UNIVERSITY, İSTANBUL

Literature on migration continues to grow in relevance as global social, political and economic developments keep the topic high on the international agenda. The volumes “Migration and Turkey: Changing Human Geography” and “Migration To And From Turkey: Changing Patterns And Shifting Policies” look at migration with a particular focus on internal and international migration to Turkey. These edited, multi-author volumes offer significant potential for integration of the study of internal and international migration as a cohesive and combined system, rather than studied in isolation. While the editors of the first book expresses the aim of the volume as being “to examine the diverse aspects of human mobility of Turkey and beyond with the aim of locating various types of migration within a single framework of migration,” the second book deals more with the politics of migration in and beyond Turkey.
The first book, “Migration and Turkey: Changing Human Geography,” is introduced under the two subheadings of internal and international migration, and compiles seven research reports by scholars from various disciplines. In the first chapter of the book’s first section, “Rural-to-Urban Migration in Turkey during the Past Thirty-Five Years: 1965-2000,” Ayşe Gedik reviews shifts in Turkey’s human geography, as the population migrates from villages to cities, noting urban population growth and urbanization. Detailed and descriptive analyses, supported by spatial statistics and mapping, are utilized to describe the past 35 years of internal migration in Turkey. In other chapters, Utku Balaban’s research focuses on migrants’ contemporary industrial relations as a result of internal migration, while Ayşe Seda Yüksel looks at how different trajectories of cities under neo-liberal policies account for the variation in the modes of incorporation of migrant settlement. As seen with other authors of the book, Yüksel also tries to raise the possibility of whether the same analyses could apply to Turkish migrant entrepreneurs working abroad.

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