Irregular Migration at Two Borders: The Turkish-EU and Mexican-U.S. Cases

to announce the release of a new German Marshall Fund policy brief as part of the Immigration Paper Series titled “Irregular Migration at Two Borders: The Turkish-EU and Mexican-U.S. Cases.” The paper was written by Ahmet İçduygu and Deniz Sert, and is a product of two workshops held in November 2008 and May 2009 at Koç University in Istanbul, focusing on irregular migration at two borders: the Turkish-EU and Mexican-U.S. The paper explores three central points. The first focuses on the Mexican-U.S. and Turkish-EU borders, and how they can be analyzed and compared via two interrelated aspects of the recent politicization of the international migration systems: securitization and economization. The second highlights the variance in perceptions of irregular migration, and how current debate revolves around the security-versus-human rights tradeoff: while the policy world emphasizes mostly the security aspects of irregular migration – with a focus on border protection, terrorism, and criminal networks – academia and civil society highlight the fact that there are basic human rights that even the irregular migrants are entitled to. The third covers the difficulties associated with researching irregular migration. In the Turkish-EU case, the problem lies primarily with policymakers and implementers not sharing their data with academics. The Mexican-U.S. case is characterized by conflicting research findings, especially in economic arenas, which allow for different groups to cite studies that suit their own interests.

KJ