Over the past few months, I’ve had the chance to unpack several key ideas and data points central to understanding migration. I explored why people immigrate and why their motivations cannot simply be divided into “voluntary” or “involuntary,” but instead fall along a complex continuum. I clarified the differences between asylum seekers, refugees, and internally […]
Signed in March 2016, the Türkiye–EU border externalization deal included benefits but also required actions from both parties involved. It established that the European Union (EU) would waive visa requirements for Turkish citizens and aimed to advance Türkiye’s EU accession process, facilitate the resettlement of certain asylum seekers from Türkiye to EU member states, and […]
As the 2016 Türkiye–EU border externalization agreement nears its 10th anniversary, this post and the next explore its origins, implementation, and the enduring impact it continues to have on migration and human rights. To grasp its roots, we need to travel back several decades into Syrian history. From 1961 until the end of 2024, the […]
I recently had the privilege of attending the EU Values Conference hosted by Sabanci University in Istanbul, and I wanted to share a bit of its content with you. I presented a working paper on the Migration and Human Rights panel, where all the speakers were discussing border externalization. But what does that mean? In […]
Welcome back! In the last post, I mentioned two facts about forced migration that challenge common assumptions. One was that Syria was once among the top countries welcoming refugees. This happened shortly before the civil war began in the country, which later made it one of the main countries of origin of refugees worldwide. Another […]
In the previous post, I explored how motivations for migration can fall anywhere along the spectrum between voluntary and forced movement. Now, let’s take a closer look at forced migration, which affects 122.6 million people worldwide. This number has grown steadily over the past 15 years. Here’s a way to picture it: if we gathered […]
As noted in my previous post, people migrate for many different reasons, a reality that dates back to the earliest days of human history. Since ancient times, people have moved across regions and continents in response to seasonal changes and environmental shifts like droughts. As history unfolded, new drivers of migration emerged—from the expansion of […]
In recent decades, the world has become increasingly interconnected, and the migration phenomenon, which has been occurring for centuries, is gaining more attention as it reaches record highs. Around 281 million people are international migrants, representing almost 3.5% of the global population. If they were grouped in a single country, it would be the 5th […]
