Russia and Turkey as New Migration Hubs

Global political developments, economic growth and trade liberalization since the 1980s have changed the political and economic landscapes of most regions in the world. First, the collapse of the Soviet Union (and the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe) led to the movement of large segments of populations. For example, the dissolution of the Soviet Union alone left tens of millions of people divided into several countries. Second, the gravity of global economic power traditionally centered on North America, Western Europe and Japan shifted to different parts of the world. Subsequently, we have witnessed the economic rise of countries such as Brazil, China, the Gulf states, India, Malaysia, Russia, South Africa, Turkey and many others. These regions, owing to their improved economic conditions, began receiving increasingly large numbers of migrants. As the International Organization for Migration (IOM, 2019) reported, 12 of the top 20 destinations of international migrants in 2019 included countries not belonging to the club of “traditional countries of immigration” (i.e., countries in North America, Western Europe and Australia), which included such new migration hubs as India, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates. Another factor contributing to the emergence of new migration hubs necessitated liberalizing visa policies within such states given their need for a cheap, docile and legally unprotected labor force (Duvell, 2020; İçduygu, 2015; Jain & Oommen, 2017; Killias, 2010; Schenk, 2018; Urinboyev, 2020).

These developments indicate that the international political economy of migration continues to undergo significant transformations. In light of these trends, we can no longer confine the analysis of global migratory trends to the traditional countries of immigration. Rather, we must also extend our analysis to the aforementioned new migration hubs in studies of international migration. These considerations informed our approach in this book, which focuses on a comparative analysis of Russian and Turkish migration regimes. Therefore, in this chapter, we comparatively analyze immigration laws and policies developed by Russian and Turkish authorities over the last three decades, discussing the differences between and commonalities across Russian and Turkish migration regimes. We begin with a brief overview of historical events and factors shaping the current immigration policies in the two countries. As we show in this chapter, Russian and Turkish immigration laws and policies have carried unintended consequences: a significant gap exists between migration policies and laws (migration outputs) and their actual implementation on the ground (migration outcomes). Due to complicated legalization procedures, authorities’ tacit acceptance of legally unprotected and cheap migrant labor alongside legal uncertainties, many migrants resort to working in the informal economy where they can work without documents. Thus, we argue for the necessity of considering these peculiarities when comparing the Russian and Turkish migration regimes, which manifest in the workings of state officials in charge of migration management, in the practices of employers and migration intermediaries and in the experiences of migrant workers.

The Russian Migration Regime

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 as well as the political and economic instability in the newly independent republics transformed Russia from a country of emigration to a country of immigration (Laruelle, 2007). Thus, two dominant trends emerge when analyzing Russia’s post-Soviet immigration history. In the 1990s, migratory flows to Russia were largely characterized by forced migration, where more than 10 million people, predominantly ethnic Russians and other Russian-speaking communities, returned to Russia (Pilkington & Flynn, 2006). However, in the mid-2000s, large-scale labor migration dominated, whereby Russia received millions of migrant workers from other post-Soviet republics (Demintseva, 2017) due to the rapidly growing Russian economy, on the one hand, and economic decline in other post-Soviet republics, on the other (Denisenko & Chernina, 2017). Another contributing factor to the massive labor migration was the visa-free border regime under a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) agreement, allowing the citizens of most post-Soviet republics to enter Russia without restrictions (Abashin, 2014).

Accordingly, Russia has emerged as a key migration hub worldwide, host to the more than 11 million foreign-born individuals residing within its territory (IOM, 2020). However, undocumented migrants are not included in these official statistics. Accordingly, no consensus exists among migration scholars and experts regarding the actual number of migrants living in Russia. That is, the figures provided vary, placing the number of migrants living in Russia somewhere between 9 and 18 million individuals depending on the source used (Abashin, 2016; Reeves, 2015; Schenk, 2018). Large Russian cities, such as Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Krasnodar, Tyumen and Yekaterinburg, serve as the primary magnets for migrants (Streltsova, 2014). The vast majority of migrant workers enter Russia from three Central Asian countries—Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan (Malakhov, 2014). Because Russia maintains a visa-free regime with the CIS states, nearly all migrants from Central Asia enter Russia legally and become undocumented only after failing to obtain a work permit and residence registration.

The development of immigration laws and policies in Russia can be divided into two periods: (a) the 1990s and (b) the 2000s to present. The first migration laws adopted in the 1990s (the “Federal Law on Refugees and the Law on Forcibly Displaced Persons”) primarily aimed to facilitate the return of forced migrants and refugees (predominantly “ethnic Russians”) to Russia through the introduction of simplified procedures for receiving refugee status or a permanent residence permit in Russia. Another key legislative action in the 1990s focused on passing several decrees and laws on “compatriots abroad.” These decrees and laws aimed to support individuals who formerly held USSR citizenship and resided in countries once a part of the USSR, and who wished to maintain their ties and loyalty to post-Soviet Russia. The immigration laws of the 1990s were thus ad hoc, piecemeal and liberal in the sense that they primarily served to regulate the return to Russia of ethnic Russians and other Russian-speaking communities from the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union (Schenk, 2018).

Following the onset of the massive labor migration from Central Asia to Russia characteristic of the 2000s, Russian migration policy and the official rhetoric toward citizens of former Soviet republics shifted significantly. Given that Russia received millions of migrant workers from Central Asia and Caucasus during a relatively short period of time, both the Russian public and politicians appeared largely unprepared to face the new reality of becoming a country of immigration (Malakhov, 2014). The adoption of a new law in 2002, “The Law on the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens in the Russian Federation,” represented one of the first serious attempts by Russian authorities to regulate the flows of immigration based on a preferred versus non-preferred migrants rationale (Abashin, 2016). That law significantly tightened ethnic and cultural requirements for foreign citizens seeking to secure a permanent residence permit and Russian citizenship. New migration management mechanisms, such as a migration card, visa procedures, quotas for temporary residence permits and work permits for foreigners from visa-requiring countries as well as requirements for registration at a place of accommodation were introduced. These legislative changes clarified the migration status of foreign citizens and unified procedures for registering and issuing work permits (Denisenko & Chernina, 2017).

Yet, despite Russian authorities’ attempts to coherently regulate labor migration, these new procedures for obtaining work permits emerged as too complex, unclear and contradictory for visa-free migrants from CIS (post-Soviet) countries. While the law clearly described the procedures employers must follow in order to hire a worker from a visa-requiring country, no separate procedure was described for the hiring of migrants from visa-free countries. This meant that all migrant workers from CIS countries remained completely dependent upon their employers to submit the documents required to secure legal work status (Schenk, 2018). Furthermore, this ambiguity explains why millions of migrant workers from CIS countries resorted to the shadow economy, where they could work without any type of work permit. Another factor enabling migrants to operate in the shadow economy was the possibility of crossing the border visa-free and remaining in Russia for up to 90 days, which could be easily prolonged by leaving the country and immediately returning. Thus, before the expiry of their 90-day stay, migrants typically traveled to the Russia–Ukraine or the Russia–Kazakhstan border to renew their migration card, thereby allowing them to stay legally in Russia for another 90 days in accordance with the “Law on the Rules of Entry and Exit from the Territory of the Russian Federation of 1996” (revised in 2012 and 2013). According to expert estimates, 3–5 million migrants worked in the shadow economy from 2002 through 2005 (Ivakhnyuk, 2006; Krasinets, 2009; Tyuryukanova, 2008), while the number of undocumented migrants reached less than 1 million individuals in the period between 1999 and 2000 when labor migration remained largely unregulated (Zayonchkovskaya, 2000).

These developments sent shockwaves rumbling across Russia and led to the widespread perception both among state officials and the general public that immigration was out of control. As a result, several amendments were made to the “Law on the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens” in 2006. On the one hand, the amendments simplified the legalization procedures for migrants from CIS countries in terms of registering where they lived or worked, applying for a work permit on their own and moving between different employers. On the other hand, new restrictions regarding work permit quotas were introduced, which applied to citizens of post-Soviet countries. Under this new legal immigration environment, CIS migrants had two options available to them for acquiring a work permit. The first option relied on securing a work permit through an employer, who applied for a quota allocation during the previous year. The second option required migrants to obtain a work permit independently, either by applying for a permit on their own or through an intermediary. These aspects of the law were viewed as a shift toward liberalizing the Russian immigration policy, since migrants could obtain work permits on their own and move freely between employers (Schenk, 2018). Owing to the quota of 6 million work permits for 2007, many migrants legalized their status and the number of documented migrants increased from 570,000 in 2006 to 2.4 million in 2008 (Denisenko & Chernina, 2017). More than half of these work permits were issued to citizens of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan (Zayonchkovskaya & Tyuryukanova, 2010).

However, following the 2008–2009 economic crisis, the Russian migration regime again shifted dramatically. That crisis led to a decrease in the total flow of migrant workers by approximately 15% to 20% (Zayonchkovskaya & Tyuryukanova, 2010). Consequently, Russian authorities also reduced the work permit quota from 6 million in 2007 to 3.4 million in 2008 (Denisenko & Chernina, 2017). Apparently, the decision to reduce the quota was made without carefully evaluating the shifting demand for a foreign labor force. Because Russia quickly recovered from the economic crisis, the total flow of migrants again returned to its previous levels. Yet, despite these trends, the quota steadily decreased year-by-year (standing at 1.6 million in 2014 in its final year), thereby pushing increasing numbers of migrants into the shadow economy (Schenk, 2018). This decrease was largely due to the legal requirement that every employer must submit applications to regional authorities by May of each year, indicating their need for a certain number of foreign workers with specific skills and qualifications. Thus, the size of the yearly quota was determined in accordance with the number of applications submitted by employers. Many entrepreneurs, however, particularly small business owners, were ineligible within such quotas due to the complicated bureaucratic procedures and legal restrictions. Even the introduction of “out-of-quota” work permits (known as “patents”) in 2010 did not significantly improve the situation, since patents were only valid for migrants entering into employment with individual citizens for personal, household and other nonbusiness purposes. As a result, many were forced to operate in the shadow economy, hiring migrants without any work documents (Denisenko & Chernina, 2017). From their side, millions of CIS migrants—predominantly Central Asian migrants—continued their established practice of prolonging their stay in Russia by renewing their migration card at a nearby border before the 90-day grace period expired.

In an attempt to reduce the scale of undocumented migration, Russian authorities further tightened the laws, strengthened the border infrastructure and introduced highly punitive measures. Consequently, between 2012 and 2015, Russian authorities adopted more than 50 laws and regulations aimed at reducing undocumented migration through severe administrative and criminal penalties for violating migration laws (Denisenko, 2017). The most visible evidence of these new tendencies accompanied the introduction of an entry ban (zapret na v’ezd). In 2013, Russian authorities introduced the entry ban as an immigration legal sanction and began applying it to foreign citizens who violated the conditions on the length of stay, migration and employment. In July 2013, more severe amendments were added to the entry ban legislation, according to which a three-year entry ban was issued to foreign citizens who committed two or more administrative offenses within a period of three years (Kubal, 2016). Administrative law violations included offenses such as speeding or parking tickets, violations to highway codes, living in a place not indicated in the official residence registration or not being able to present a valid form of identification when stopped by the police. The three-year entry ban could be issued to a foreign citizen who committed two administrative law violations during their stay in Russia. An entry ban was typically issued by a staff member of the Main Directorate for Migration Issues of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (formerly the Russian Federal Migration Service) after cross-referencing police databases for petty administrative offenses with the database containing information about foreign citizens’ residence status in Russia (Kubal, 2016).Footnote 1 In addition to the entry ban, another new law, known as the “90–180 rule,” entered into effect in January 2014, stipulating that foreigners can remain in Russia for only 90 days within any 180-day period. These restrictions made it impossible for migrants to cross the border every three months and re-enter Russia to begin a new grace period. In addition, additional sanctions were introduced to ensure migrants’ compliance with the “90–180 rule.” Accordingly, migrants who illegally stayed for more than 270 days were subsequently banned from entering Russia for 10 years, those who overstayed for 170–270 days could not enter the country for 5 years and those who overstayed less than 170 days were not allowed to enter Russia for 3 years (Denisenko, 2017).

The Russian migration regime underwent a further significant transformation in 2014 and 2015. One of the key changes included abolishing the system of work permit quotas for citizens from visa-free countries in 2015, and the introduction of a single patent system that covered all forms of migrant employment. Until 2015, migrants could use the patent only for entering into employment with individual citizens for personal, household or other similar purposes. However, as of January 1, 2015, patents became the primary channel for legal employment among all foreign workers (including CIS citizens) entering Russia under the visa-free regime, regardless of whether they worked for an organization, individual entrepreneur or individual. Patents are typically issued for a period of 1–12 months, after which they can be renewed for another 12 months. However, the new patent system became more problematic than the previous quota system. Despite its liberal nature, it introduced complicated bureaucratic procedures and substantial legalization fees that further pushed migrants into the shadow economy (Urinboyev, 2020). Within 30 days of arrival, migrants are required to navigate lengthy, expensive and cumbersome legalization procedures, which require obtaining, among other items, language competency test results, a medical examination, health insurance and residence registration alongside the payment of various fees. Thus, it is exceptionally difficult to complete all of the procedures within the required 30-day period, both from a bureaucratic and a financial point of view. On average, the cost of all these items and the general fee for the patent reach approximately 25,000 rubles (about US$400), placing a heavy financial burden on migrants who have just arrived with little or no money (Nikiforova & Brednikova, 2018). Furthermore, after obtaining a patent, migrants must pay a monthly fee for the patent, the amount of which depends on the region in which the migrant works [e.g., 5000 rubles (US$80) in Moscow].Footnote 2 In addition to paying a monthly fee, migrants must renew their residence registration every three months, costing approximately 3000 rubles (US$30–45) each time. All of these legalization expenses fall well beyond the financial capacity of migrants given their meager incomes. Even those migrants who received a patent find it difficult to remain “legal” and eventually resort to the shadow economy, largely because a migrant’s average monthly salary is 25,000 rubles (US$400), a sum significantly lower than the salary of Russian citizens. Consequently, these expensive legalization procedures further pushed migrants into the shadow economy where they can work without any documents (Kuznetsova & Round, 2018; Schenk, 2018). In the next section, we discuss the brief history and current developments in Turkish migration regime, where we can also observe the “legal production of migrant illegality” (De Genova, 2004).

The Turkish Migration Regime

Since its foundation in 1923, the Turkish Republic (hereafter, Turkey) has experienced several stages to its immigration and emigration processes. For the last three decades, Turkey has transformed from a traditional country of emigration to a country of immigration and transit. During the first half of the twentieth century, people of Turkish origin from territories formerly belonging to the Ottoman Empire were encouraged to immigrate. For example, from 1923 through the end of World War II more than 840,000 people of Turkish origin from Bulgaria, Greece and other Balkan countries moved to Turkey (Kirişci, 2000). At the same time, the non-Muslim (mostly Greek and Armenian) population in Turkey, many of whom had already left in the years following World War I and during the establishment of the republic, was discouraged from remaining in the country in the decades that followed.

In the 1960s, in line with agreements with post-war European countries experiencing labor shortages, Turkey began exporting its labor force in large numbers, with Germany standing as the largest recipient of a Turkish labor force. Turkey officially sent nearly 800,000 migrant workers to Europe between 1961 and 1974 (Içduygu, 2009), while the actual figures given family reunification may be several times higher than official figures indicate. In the 1980s, a large number of Turkish migrants also worked on infrastructure and construction projects in the oil-rich countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Simultaneously, Turkish people continued moving from rural to urban areas, transforming cities like Istanbul and Ankara into megacities.

In the decades that followed, the geographic location of Turkey in many ways predetermined its transformation from a country of emigration to an immigration/transit country from neighboring countries. Several geopolitical transformations in Turkey’s surroundings in the last three decades combined with economic changes in the country contributed to its transition to both a transit and receiving state. The collapse of the Soviet Union served as one of those important factors, triggering a shift in the migration landscape not only in the post-Soviet space, but also in neighboring areas including Turkey. The fall of communism and the introduction of market economy reforms in former Soviet and communist states created mass unemployment and pushed people, especially women, to seek trade opportunities and temporary employment in Turkey (Kaşka, 2009).

To the east of Turkey, political unrest in Syria, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq (the war in Syria, the war in Afghanistan, the Iran–Iraq war and the Gulf crisis) pushed hundreds of thousands of people to move to safer places, whereby Turkey served as both a passageway and a destination in which to seek asylum. The Turkish authorities’ reluctance to receive asylum seekers led to the rise of irregular migration. As a result, a large number of irregular, or “illegal” according to Turkish law, migrants became “entrenched in urban poverty in the peripheral squatter settlements, together with internal migrants (İçduygu & Aksel, 2015, p. 124).

İçduygu and Aksel (2015) maintain that several factors in the early 2000s accelerated Turkey’s transformation from a country of emigration to one of immigration: the globalization of world trade, its impact on Turkey’s liberal market economy and, last but not least, political liberalization reforms due to Turkey’s ambition to become a member of the European Union (EU). During this period, Turkey implemented four legislative changes in order to harmonize its legislation with EU standards. First, the country’s penal code criminalized the trafficking of human beings and migrant smuggling levying severe penalties to perpetrators. Second, the “Law on Work Permits for Foreigners” (No. 4817, 2003) and its accompanying regulations simplified the employment of foreigners within Turkey with work permits, accompanied by hefty fines for illegal employment to be paid by both employees and employers. According to the law, the Ministry of Labor and Social Security is the sole authority responsible for issuing work permits. Although the law simplified the employment of foreigners in the Turkish economy, hiring a foreigner remains a complicated and expensive procedure. Unlike the situation in Russia, it is not the foreign employee, but the employer who applies for a work permit in Turkey, who then must pay employment tax and social security contributions, a requirement that increases the employment costs and, thus, discourages the legal employment of foreigners. Work permits are granted for one year, then for three years and only subsequently for six years provided the employee continues working in the same industry. Because hiring a foreigner is more expensive and associated with burdensome bureaucratic procedures, employers often hire foreign workers informally without any formal employment contract.

Another change in legislation in 2003 was the precondition of three years of cohabitation among Turkish and foreign nationals following their marriage which would allow a foreigner to obtain Turkish citizenship. Previously, many female migrants obtained their residence and work permits via fictitious marriages to Turkish men (İçduygu, 2009). In reality, this change in law rendered migrant women more dependent on their husbands and vulnerable to intimidate partner violence in their first years of married life since divorcing before the obligatory marriage period ended meant losing the chance to obtain Turkish citizenship (Ekiz Gökmen 2011, cited in Williams et al., 2020).

As mentioned above, Turkey’s desire to become a part of the EU served as an important driving force behind harmonizing its migration policies with international—more specifically, European—standards. The Action Plan on Migration and Asylum adopted by the Turkish government in 2005 and the Roadmap Towards a Visa-Free Regime with Turkey agreed upon with EU officials in 2013 laid out the legislative and policy changes Turkey was obliged to adopt as a precondition to accession negotiations. However, uncertainty over Turkey’s EU membership prospects in the years that followed dissuaded Turkish authorities from implementing these changes (İçduygu & Aksel, 2015). Looking ahead, even the refugee deal of 2016 did not help to improve EU–Turkish relations, which further deteriorated due to growing authoritarianism in Turkey and Ankara’s active foreign policy, which brought the EU accession process to a standstill.

Notwithstanding these developments, Turkey’s legislation and policies continued to evolve, reflecting the changing environment in the Turkish labor market and sociopolitical developments in the region. The new “Law on Foreigners and International Protection” adopted in April 2013 (LFIP, No. 6458) brought together formerly scattered regulations and by-laws governing the entry, stay and deportation of foreign nationals. This law also institutionalized the governance of immigration and asylum in Turkey. As such, the General Directorate of Migration Management (GDMM), established under the Ministry of Interior, became the government body responsible for immigration affairs. Along with politico-legal aspects, the Turkish authorities were also economically motivated, reflecting the country’s growing economic development and further globalization in the world economy. Thus, the law recognizes the presence of irregular migrants and shifts away from a security approach to one concerned with international mobility in general, while, simultaneously, “provid[ing] no rights for irregular migrants, aside from procedural guarantees in cases of detention and deportation” (Üstübici, 2018, p. 80).

İçduygu and Aksel (2015) list four categories of migrants in Turkey: irregular labor migrants; transit migrants; asylum seekers and refugees; and regular migrants. However, the distinction between the first three categories of migrants in particular remains blurred: asylum seekers or transit migrants, waiting for their journey to third countries, are often engaged in the informal labor market in order to sustain themselves in Turkey, thus join the Turkish labor market as undocumented migrants.

Another significant factor contributing to a growing number of undocumented migrants in Turkey is the country’s asylum regime. Although Turkey is a signatory to the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, it held a closed-door approach to asylum seekers from non-European countries. In other words, Turkey would not grant refugee status to individuals fleeing countries other than those which are European. This was the case when people fled conflict zones en masse in the 1980s and 1990s (i.e., Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq). The geographic limitation clause had its roots in Turkey’s long-standing citizenship and naturalization regime. As İçduygu and Aksel (2015) maintain, despite liberalizing policies related to migration governance, Turkey continues to limit the formal immigration to individuals of “Turkish descent and culture,” an approach closely related to the concept of “Turkishness” dating to the 1930s and even extending to the Ottoman period. By applying a geographic limitation to asylum seekers, Turkey hoped to discourage large groups of individuals from economically and politically unstable Asian and African countries from settling within its border. In reality, however, hundreds of thousands of people from the Middle East found a “home,” albeit temporary and unstable, in Turkey (İçduygu, 2009). For example, in addition to the mass movement of 500,000 Kurds from Iraq during the first Gulf War in 1991, more than 100,000 asylum seekers arrived in Turkey in the 1990s and the 2000s (İçduygu & Aksel, 2015).

In addition, the Civil War in Syria and the concomitant mass influx of a Syrian population marked a critical juncture in Turkey’s governance of asylum seeking and irregular migration. The first groups of Syrians began arriving in Turkey just weeks after violence erupted in April 2011. Because Syrians could enter Turkey without a visa at that time, increasing numbers of people continued arriving until Turkey announced that asylum seekers would be granted a “temporary protection” status (Makovsky, 2019). The number of new arrivals kept rising as the conflict continued, eventually making Turkey the most likely destination for asylum seekers in the world. Today, Turkey hosts close to 4 million Syrians, including 3.6 million individuals with “temporary protection” status. At the same time, Turkey has not officially lifted the geographic limitation to the Geneva Convention. While only around 320,000 Syrians live in designated accommodation, the remainder are scattered throughout the country, including 500,000 people in Istanbul alone (DGMM, 2021). Given their precarious legal status, a large number of Syrian refugees resort to informal employment (Caro, 2020). For example, about 1.5 million people were estimated to be employed in the informal economy in 2018 (Kirişci et al., 2018). Given that up to 1.5 million Syrians with temporary protection status consist of children 0–14 years of age, we can imagine the scale of informal employment among Syrian refugees (DGMM, 2021).

Furthermore, transit migrants entering Turkey hoping to reach European countries also constitute a large proportion of irregular, or undocumented, migrants in the country. Between 1995 and 2009, more than half of the roughly 800,000 irregular migrants who entered the country with the help of smugglers were irregular transit migrants (Iraqis make up the largest proportion of these) (İçduygu, 2011). As Turkey increased its commercial and investment relationships with its neighboring countries, it shifted to a “trading state” with flexible visa policies (Toksöz, 2020). In other words, Turkey’s open-door (visa-free) policies aimed at boosting its tourism and trade sectors in the early 2010s and the resulting economic development in the country have attracted increasing numbers of migrants. This in turn contributed to growth in informal employment. Figures on the apprehension of irregular migrants during a 15-year period provide evidence of the growing number of irregular migrants. For example, as Table 2.1 shows, on average up to 50,000 irregular migrants were apprehended between 2005 and 2014, while in 2015 that figure nearly tripled to 146,485 increasing tenfold to 454,662 in 2019. The steep drop in apprehensions in 2020 coincides with the closure of borders and restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Interestingly, of 24,578 irregular migrants apprehended in the period from January through March 2021, 886 were from Uzbekistan and 637 were from Turkmenistan (DGMM, 2021). The rise in the number of irregular migrants and their apprehension can be partly attributed to the growing number of apprehensions at Turkey’s borders with European countries; however, those caught attempting to cross through the Aegean Sea consisted of around 13% of all apprehensions in 2019 (IOM, 2020). Thus, the increase can only be explained by Turkish authorities’ intensified struggle against irregular migration, which again indicates the growing number of irregular migrants in the country.

Table 2.1 The number of irregular migrants apprehended by year (2005–2020)
Full size table

Despite ever-increasing irregular migration, the Turkish immigration regime continues to remain comparatively liberal against that in Russia. Naturally, according to Turkish immigration legislation, irregular migration needs “to be controlled, prevented and combatted and irregular migrants are to be removed” (Genç, 2018, p. 75). However, Turkey’s policies indicate the country’s tacit acceptance of irregular migration. According to Turkish legislation, an undocumented migrant is defined as an individual who enters or leaves Turkey or is present in Turkey while breaching immigration law (i.e., via passport, visa, residence permit and work permit legislation). Yet, unlike Russia, where foreigners who overstay and violate immigration laws face severe penalties, migrants in Turkey can work without documents, suffer less from police corruption and enjoy relatively unimpeded mobility in the city given Turkish authorities’ tacit acceptance of undocumented migration. Occasional raids at workplaces in search of undocumented migrants do not, in general, decrease the level of irregular migration and informal employment.

As shown above, both Russia and Turkey share many common features in terms of nondemocratic rule, weak rule of law, poor human rights record, weak civil society, widespread corruption and large informal economies, which do not allow migrants to engage in legal claim-making and collective mobilization. As a result, informal work, non-payment of wages, discrimination in the form of unequal pay for equal work, and long working hours and exploitation are common working life experiences of Uzbek migrants in both Russia and Turkey. These hardships are often accompanied by poor housing, lack of access to public healthcare and exposure to general discrimination and xenophobia. Notwithstanding these similarities, the Russian and Turkish migration regimes differ from one another considerably when we attend to migrants’ experiences in various migration arenas, a migration outcome which will be illustrated through empirical case studies of four migration arenas (parallel worlds of migrants, documentation and legalization, migrant labor market and the street world and shadow economy) in the subsequent chapters.