Unpacking the State from the Inside Out:Emerging Spaces and Actors of Diaspora Governance in the Border Province of Edirne

This chapter unpacks the notion of diasporic state from a multi-scalar approach with a focus on diasporic engagements in the Turkish border province of Edirne. Based on a historically informed ethnographic fieldwork on the Greek-Turkish borderland in Thrace, the chapter portrays the encounters between Thrace-based state institutions and the kin population of the Balkans, a key target group of Turkey’s diaspora policy. Seeking to grasp the power and reach of the diasporic state and challenging the assumption of a monolithic state, the chapter examines the roles in diaspora governance of both conventional diaspora policy actors, such as consulates, and non-conventional actors, namely universities. Beyond the Turkish case, the chapter suggests that turning our analytical gaze to diasporic sites and actors at home is necessary to fully account for the emerging modes and means of diaspora governance and how they operate on the ground

Broken lines of Il/Legality and the reproduction of state sovereignty: the impact of visa policies on immigrants to Turkey from Bulgaria

After the granting of citizenship to the 300,000 Turkish migrants from Bulgaria in 1989, the Turkish state has proceeded to enact a series of visa regime changes concerning more recent migrants from Bulgaria, who, according to the most recent modification, are only allowed to stay for ninety days within any six month period. This paper argues that the arbitrariness sustained by Turkish immigration policies partakes, on the one hand, in more global trends to increase the vulnerability of the dispensable workforce required by neoliberal market economies and, on the other hand, the arbitrariness enhances the political power of the state within and outside of its borders. The temporary legalization of Bulgarian Turkish migrants in return for voting in the Bulgarian elections reveals that the state consolidates its transnational political power by drawing and redrawing the broken lines of legality/ illegality. Moreover we demonstrate not only the ways in which the migrant population from Bulgaria is managed but also the strategies deployed by the migrants themselves in the face of such sovereign acts