Özet:

Historically the international immigration experience of Turkey has been shaped by the settlement of immigrants who came from the former lands of Ottoman Empire. From the 1990s on, immigrants having different identities from the different countries of Asia, Middle East and Africa started migrating to Turkey, incorporating into the labor markets, and settling permanently. In these two different periods, the experiences of immigrants were mostly shaped by the citizenship and immigration regimes that categorize immigrants based on their supposed identity. With the changes in the citizenship and immigration regimes after 2000s, it became possible that immigrants who have different identities from the traditional understanding of acceptability could gain some legal rights. However, although these new laws are more inclusive in terms of identity, they created new discrimination and differences in the labor markets. This article argues that the immigrants experiences were not only related to their identities but also to their class positions. In the last two decades, the mode of interactions of immigrants with Turkish state is affected by their labor markets positions, and these interactions affect directly their positions. By drawing on the existing academic literature and fieldworks, the impacts of citizenship and immigrant regimes on the immigrants and their strategies are analyzed in the domains of “border”, “labor markets” and “naturalization”.

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