Kelsey P. Norman

MIGRATION AND REFUGEE POLICY-MAKING IN MODERN EGYPT, MOROCCO, & TURKEY¹

Abstract
While coverage of the 2015 refugee crisis highlighted the impact on Europe, countries of the Middle East and North Africa host approximately four times the number of refugees, in addition to millions of migrants. This paper asks: What options do host states in the Middle East and North Africa have for engaging with migrants and refugees residing semipermanently on their territory? It presents a new policy option, “indifference,” that allows us to understand the important transformations taking place in MENA host countries. To examine how indifference might be strategically selected and utilized by host states, the paper draws on data collected over two years in Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey. It finds that these states used a policy of indifference to manage their migrant and refugee influxes throughout the 1990s and 2000s, and also examines the security, diplomatic, and economic factors that led them to begin changing their policies in 2013.

INTRODUCTION

While coverage of the 2015 refugee crisis highlighted the impact on Europe, countries of the Middle East and North Africa host approximately four times the number of refugees, in addition to millions of migrants. Many migrants and refugees² arrive in countries like Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey while en route to Europe or other Western states, but most find themselves stuck in these “transit” states that are also de facto countries of migrant and refugee settlement.³ As this paper will explain, the Egyptian, Moroccan, and Turkish governments have been fully aware of the migrant and refugee groups residing within their territories. These countries have therefore unofficially permitted migrants’ and refugees’ continued presence through both their inability to successfully prevent migrants and refugees from entering the country, and the fact that the vast majority of these groups have not been deported. What benefits do these host states derive from permitting migrants and refugees to remain indefinitely?

In this paper I present a menu of policies from which states select an appropriate strategy for addressing migrant and refugee groups residing semipermanently on their territory. I also examine when and why countries switch from one policy to another, finding that states may pursue combinations of policies, or change policies over time, depending on perceived diplomatic or economic benefits. This can be due to the influence of neighboring states, domestic political pressures, or security concerns, as well as a host state’s relationship with the origin country of migrants or refugees.

The paper draws on interview data collected over two years in Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey and policy documents to examine the engagement strategy pursued by each host state in the post–Cold War era.⁴ Elsewhere I have introduced the idea of a policy of “indifference,”⁵ whereby host states allow migrants and refugees to integrate in a de facto sense through minimal government intervention and by relying on international organizations to provide primary services. In this paper, I demonstrate the use of indifference in Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey to mitigate the implications of new inward migration during the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s. I find that indifference is an ideal strategy for states if certain conditions are in place: migrants and refugees find ways to integrate into informal economies, international and domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) intervene to provide essential services, and the issue of migration is not so politicized that it gains prolonged traction in media or amongst the national population.

I argue that introducing indifference as a possible strategy allows us to capture host state engagement that might otherwise be missed by only examining host state policies already accounted for in the existing literature on migration and citizenship. This allows us to better understand the important transformations taking place in these increasingly significant migrant and refugee host countries.

DEFINING AND CLASSIFYING HOST STATE ENGAGMENT

In this section and throughout the paper, I use the term host state engagement to capture any interaction, direct or indirect, that a state has with the migrant and refugee populations residing on its territory. Engagement also takes into account both host state entry and integration policies. There are several theories advanced in the literature on migration and citizenship for why (1) a state chooses a relatively liberal or open strategy versus a relatively restrictive or closed policy for admitting migrants or refugees onto its territory, and (2) a state chooses inclusionary policies for bringing migrants or refugees into the national system versus excluding them. In this section I draw on both strands of literature (entry and integration) to extract theories for policy choice regarding engagement.

First, regarding entry, security interests impact migration-policy considerations and a state’s willingness to be relatively open or closed toward immigration.⁶ Christopher Rudolph argues that in the period following World War II, Western states have become increasingly open to cross-border trade, yet cross-border migration imposes security risks on states that sometimes lead to “highly symbolic policies that present a strong image of control.”⁷ Even before 9/11, Western states were moving toward further restriction with policies that rolled back the rights of asylum seekers, or that made it more difficult for migrants to naturalize.⁸ But James Hollifield argues that for Western liberal democracies, the security-influenced desire to remain closed to migration or to enact restrictive policies toward migrants already within a country’s border is generally mitigated by the liberal tendencies embedded within constitutions: “In the end, however, it is the nature of the liberal state itself and the degree to which openness is institutionalized and (constitutionally) protected from the “majority of the moment” that will determine whether states will continue to risk trade and migration.”⁹ States are limited in their ability to enact restrictive policies either by their economic need for further immigration (what Hollifield terms the “liberal paradox”), or by norms that are sanctified in constitutions, and legislation that can be used by migrants and active judiciaries to counter exclusionary policies.¹⁰

Second, regarding integration, there is an abundant literature in political science, sociology, and other social science disciplines that primarily uses comparison and typologies to examine why states have certain types of nationhood, formal rules for belonging, and approaches to inclusion versus exclusion. In his seminal study of the French and German citizenship regimes, Rogers Brubaker argued that despite presumed convergence among European states regarding citizenship, national systems for determining membership remain divergent.¹¹ Extending Brubaker’s analysis, Koopmans and Stratham arrive at three ideal-type citizenship regimes based on their observations of patterns within the European context: the ethno-cultural exclusionist, civic assimilationist, and the multicultural pluralist.¹²

The type of citizenship regime that a migration-receiving state has in place shapes its policies regarding integration measures, or measures for allowing the full participation of a migrant in a host society.¹³ Integration is a complex process, and host state policies are admittedly only one factor in determining social and economic integration outcomes for migrants and refugees.¹⁴ Dancygier and Laitin review existing literature to assess the extent to which state institutions can affect migrants’ integration outcomes and economic participation in a receiving state.¹⁵ They find that most studies have focused on a dichotomous comparison between multicultural policies that recognize and value group identities, and assimilationist policies that do not accord minority groups special privileges. The authors discuss several indices that have been developed to document the range of rights granted to migrants (the liberal aspect of integration) as well as the integration requirements put in place by various Western states (the republican aspect of integration): the Multiculturalism Policy Index (MCP),¹⁶ the Indicators of Citizenship Rights for Immigrants (ICRI) dataset,¹⁷ the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX),¹⁸ and the Civic Integration Index (CIVIX).¹⁹

A review of these four indices demonstrates that there is variation in terms of what it means for a host state to engage with migrants, through there are also overlaps in terms of broad policy areas.²⁰ These can be broadly divided into two categories: engagement that focuses on individual rights—access to legal status (residence or citizenship), access to employment, access to health care and education, political participation, family reunification measures, and protection against deportation—and engagement that focuses on group rights: ensuring cultural and religious rights, anti-discrimination measures, and allowing exemptions from dress codes or institutional requirements for ethnic minorities.

These indices primarily focus on Western liberal democracies, but the policy areas under question are applicable for examining host state engagement in other contexts as well. In order to broaden our understanding of how to capture and account for engagement beyond these “traditional” Western receiving states, I argue that we need to reconsider the types of engagement policies that are available to host states. Broadly speaking, we can group the policies described in the existing migration literature into a dichotomy. Accommodationist/multicultural policies and assimilationist policies both employ mechanisms such as education, employment, or legal structures in an effort to bring migrants into the national system, albeit with differences as to whether migrants are permitted to retain their cultural practices or group rights.²¹ I capture policies aimed at including migrants in the national system under the category of a “liberal” engagement strategy. Conversely, a “repressive” strategy constitutes exclusionary policies that aim to remove migrants from the state,²² and is characterized by high levels of policing, arrests, incarceration, and possibly deportation.

In addition to this liberal/repressive dichotomy, I argue that we need to also consider a third option: the idea of indifference-as-policy, which falls short of either liberal or repressive characteristics. Michael Alexander proposes the idea of a “‘non-policy’ of ignoring” a migrant presence used by local authorities in cities including Rome, Athens, and Tel Aviv when authorities assume that a migrant presence is transient or temporary.²³ While similar, indifference operates at the national level and refers to strategic inaction on the part of the host state government, even as the state allows other actors to carry out engagement on its behalf. I argue that this differentiates indifference from mere neglect in that a policy of indifference necessitates the action of non-state organizations—international migration bodies or NGOs—to step in and carry out engagement in lieu of governmental actors.²⁴ This alleviates the responsibility of the host state, while still ensuring that migrants or refugees are not excluded from basic services.

To examine how this concept can help us better understand engagement in Middle East and North African host states, the subsequent sections look at state engagement during the last three decades in Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey using data that was collected via interviews between September 2014 and June 2015. In total, 133 semi-structured interviews were conducted during this period using a two-tiered system.²⁵ First, interviews were conducted with elite interview subjects, including relevant government ministries, international nongovernment organizations (INGOs), local NGOs, international migration bodies like the UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and community-based migrant organizations. Elite interview subjects were asked about their role in engagement with migrants and refugees and, if applicable, how their organization interacts with the host state government. An elite interview matrix is included in Appendix A.

In addition to elites, interviews were also conducted with individual migrants and refugees in order to understand how interaction occurs between these groups and the state.²⁶ These interview subjects were asked about how they navigate life in the host state on a day-to-day basis: whether they are able to access certain services, and how they interact with organizations and state authorities. I attempted to make my sample of migrant/refugee interview subjects as diverse as possible in terms of nationality, gender, age and years spent in the host state. A migrant/refugee interview matrix is included in Appendix B.

One difficulty in ascertaining the presence or absence of a certain strategy in a host state is measuring state intentions as opposed to actual policy or actions.²⁷ If a state claims to be enacting a liberal strategy, but in reality, very few services are offered, is this because the state is actually implementing an indifferent or repressive strategy, or is this due to an implementation failure or a lack of state capacity? Because I was conducting a contemporaneous analysis, I had the advantage of interviewing both state officials involved in policy processes as well as non-state actors. I thus used the data collected from interviews to differentiate between state actions and intentions. For example, if a state official claimed that a specific intention guided a particular policy or action, I was able to triangulate this information with other data gained from non-state actors. By interviewing migrants and refugees I was able to learn whether a policy is actually in place and functioning as intended, and by interviewing intermediaries—international organizations, NGOs, and human rights groups—I was able to learn whether state officials had been forthcoming with their intentions behind the policy.

EGYPT

Egypt has historically received migrants from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, although since the 1980s it has primarily been considered a country of emigration in the academic and policy literature. For example, Egypt has a long, intertwined history with the geographic area now covered by Sudan and South Sudan, and up until 1994 Sudanese nationals enjoyed relative ease of travel to and residence in Egypt. Additionally, Greeks resided in Egypt from the Hellenistic period until many were forced to leave after the 1952 revolution that overthrew the monarchy and established a republic. Immigrants that would now qualify for refugee status also fled to Egypt after the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917, the Armenian massacres in Turkey in the 1920s, and during both World Wars.²⁸ Several tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees arrived between 1948 and 1967, and numerous African nationalist politicians or their families—notably those of Kwame Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba—also found sanctuary in Egypt during the 1960s.²⁹

Yet following the end of the Cold War, Egypt experienced new influxes of migrants and refugees from both other Arab states and sub-Saharan Africa. Individuals from Horn of Africa countries—Sudanese and South Sudanese refugees and migrants in particular—have been arriving in Egypt since the 1990s.³⁰ Conflict in the Middle East beginning with the Iraq War and followed by unrest after the Arab Spring also led to influxes of migrants and refugees from Iraq, Libya, and most recently, Syria. Most migrants and refugees arriving in Egypt reside in Cairo, though other coastal cities such as Alexandria have become popular locations for migrants and refugees hoping to be smuggled to Europe by boat, and for Syrian refugees due to historical connections between Syrian and Egyptian merchants in the area.³¹

Part of what draws asylum seekers and refugees to Egypt is the existence of a large resettlement system operating in Cairo, both through the UNHCR presence as well as private sponsorship programs to Canada, Australia, and the United States.³² International organizations have expressed concern that the existence of generous resettlement opportunities might be acting as a pull factor that draws asylum seekers to Egypt in increasing numbers.³³ In reality though, only a small fraction of refugees in Cairo are successfully resettled to third countries: an average of only 3,000 individuals per year.³⁴

The total number of both migrants and refugees residing in Egypt is uncertain, and the number of refugees who officially register for status with the UNHCR is acknowledged to be an underestimate of the actual total. For example, while the UNHCR had registered 250,000 Syrians in late 2014 at the time of interviewing for this project, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimated that 100,000 Syrians remained unregistered yet residing in the country.³⁵

As acknowledged in the introduction of this article, there is an important legal distinction between refugees and migrants, yet differentiating between these groups in practice is more difficult. In the Egyptian case in particular, those arriving and applying for refugee status from the UNHCR are given a “yellow card” which designates them as asylum seekers who receive temporary protection until they undergo refugee-status determination (RSD).³⁶ At the time of interviewing in 2014, RSD interview dates were being allocated to asylum seekers for 2019, meaning that individuals would have to wait five years before potentially receiving official status. Because of this lengthy delay, it was to any migrant’s benefit, even if they suspect they will not qualify as a refugee, to apply for refugee status and to receive temporary protection benefits for up to five years.³⁷

The Egyptian government is aware of its sizeable migrant and refugee population. As an individual at the Ministry of the Interior stated, “Of course we know about them [migrants and refugees]. We let them stay. Even those without papers or who come illegally.”³⁸ Yet these groups are often treated as a low-priority issue that the Egyptian government would rather not have to deal with. The chairperson of the National Coordinating Committee On Combating and Preventing Illegal Migration—a governmental body formed in 2014—stated bluntly during an interview,

[We are] not so much concerned [with] the people coming, the infiltrators or illegal migrants; it’s not my primary concern. I can tackle it with cooperation with the African Union. And we are working with the African Union in that regard. We don’t love having extra people in detention. We don’t like this, it’s costly, it’s a headache, a responsibility with human rights and anything can happen to the detainees so we’ll be having additional problems.³⁹

What does Egypt gain from permitting the long-term presence of migrants and refugees? I argue that there are several benefits for the Egyptian state from this type of approach.

First, international migration organizations like the UNHCR and IOM, in addition to smaller migrant-focused international NGOs, bring in international funding that also translates into development funding for the broader Egyptian populace.⁴⁰ For example, the UNHCR provided the Egyptian government with 1.4 million dollars in 2014 for rehabilitating Egyptian schools, which some nationalities of refugees are also able to attend.⁴¹ An individual at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained how the government views this type of funding model:

We prefer that the IOs [International Organizations] help us in enhancing the infrastructure of the local communities that receive refugees and immigrants. That way, in the sense of building new schools, building new hospitals, you’re benefiting the local society, so you’re killing or you’re undermining the xenophobic tendencies that exist naturally in any society toward the arrival of refugees or illegal immigrants. And you’re benefiting both the refugees and the local communities at the same time. And you’re assisting the government in alleviating part of the challenges that it is facing in dealing with the issues.⁴²

International organizations, sometimes through funding local NGOs, also provide essential health and educational services for migrants and refugees that the Egyptian government might otherwise have to provide itself.⁴³ As the interim director of a refugee school noted, “All the international money goes to the UNHCR. But in a sense, it’s like this is going to Egypt, because it’s money that Egypt doesn’t have to spend on refugees and migrants.”⁴⁴

The Egyptian government does provide some services directly though. At the time of interviewing in 2014, specific nationalities of Sudanese and Syrian refugee children were permitted to attend Egyptian primary school for free. In the case of the Sudanese, this was due to the Four Freedoms Agreement signed in 2004,⁴⁵ and in the case of Syrians, an exceptional decree was issued by the Egyptian Ministry of Education in 2012.⁴⁶ For other nationalities, refugee children have the option to either attend NGO-funded “community” schools, or private Egyptian schools. If an individual with children has refugee or asylum seeker status, they can apply via Catholic Relief Services (CRS), an international organization operating in Cairo, for funding to attend a community school or private school.

Migrants and refugees also directly benefit the Egyptian economy. According to representatives at the UNHCR and IOM, some migrants and refugees have found jobs in the garment, restaurant, artisanal, and industrial sectors, in addition to others who do domestic work in wealthy Egyptian households as cleaners, nannies, and drivers.⁴⁷ Refugees technically have the same right to formal employment as other foreigners in the country, but they must prove that an Egyptian is not more qualified for the same job, which is a difficult requirement for most refugees.⁴⁸ However, in a country such as Egypt that has a large informal economy, many migrants and refugees have been able to secure employment without official authorization.⁴⁹

Additionally, Egyptian landlords benefit from the presence of migrants and refugees because they are able to charge them inflated rental prices.⁵⁰ As the director of a refugee school noted, “For landowners it’s a great opportunity to make more money because a lot of the Egyptians are under the old Nasser system where they’re paying fifteen pounds a month [in rent].”⁵¹ A Sudanese migrant explained that Egyptian samāsira, or housing brokers, will size up migrants or refugees based on nationality and show them neighborhoods accordingly. Alluding to this informal system, one Sudanese migrant stated, “They know each type of customer, they know how much they have in their pocket.”⁵² A representative from the IOM confirmed this, saying, “I remember it starting with the Sudanese when I was living here in 2003 or 2004. There’s lots of demand anyway, and there’s a shortage of housing. So with increasing numbers of Sudanese refugees the rent kept increasing.”⁵³

When asked to characterize the Egyptian government’s treatment of refugees and migrants in a general sense, the director of an international NGO said that the Egyptian state “wants to do as little as possible. It knows they’re there of course, but it doesn’t want to expend the effort to do anything with them. So it just turns a blind eye.”⁵⁴ This mentality was confirmed by other NGOs that offer essential services such as legal aid, schooling, health care, psychosocial services, or community meeting spaces to refugees and migrants.⁵⁵ Although the government is highly aware that a large migrant and refugee service sector exists, it has little incentive to interfere with the activities of organizations that are willing to provide services that the government might otherwise have to provide directly.

There is an important caveat, however. The same director that described Egypt’s indifferent approach above added, “The Egyptian government’s not going to do anything with refugees and migrants—good or bad—unless it considers them a security threat. And if it considers you a security threat, it doesn’t matter if you have a yellow card or a blue card. Nothing comes before security.”⁵⁶

In the pre-2013 space, Egyptian security generally refrained from policing irregular migrants or refugees without identification and would not intentionally enter communities or neighborhoods known to house foreigners.⁵⁷ However, following the military coup d’etat on 30 June 2013 that brought current president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to power, the Egyptian government began moving from indifference toward a repressive policy that aims to actively exclude migrants and refugees. Syrian refugees came to be viewed as a security threat due to alleged links with the previous Islamic regime of former president Mohammed Morsi. ⁵⁸ At the time of interviewing in late 2014, concerns over “terrorism” in Egypt and its alleged links with migrants and refugees were becoming the primary driver of engagement policy choice. A representative at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained that while current measures were not indicative of long-term policy, the alleged association between migration and possible terrorist activities was the government’s priority at the time.⁵⁹

NGOs had already noticed this securitization shift,⁶⁰ whereby migration has come to be viewed solely through a security lens and deemed important enough to require further resources for the purposes of policing, detention, and even deportation. As an employee who focuses on migration issues at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) explained:

Nowadays it’s the first time that the Egyptian intelligence [is] involved with the migrant situation. There are one hundred and thirteen migrants arrested in Abu al-Kheir, west of Alexandria. They’re always detained in some police station or some detention place, and after that national security searches their papers. [Last week is] the first time that the intelligence [mukhābarāt] searched their papers, not the national security.⁶¹

The handling of migrant affairs by state intelligence signaled that the issue of migration had become increasingly securitized for the current el-Sisi regime, shifting Egypt’s engagement strategy from indifference closer toward a repressive policy.

MOROCCO

Like Egypt there is a well-documented literature on Morocco as a sender of migrants abroad,⁶² but Morocco also has a long history of inward migration that has significantly shaped its demographics, culture, religion, and language. In the 1000s, Arab invasions led to the Islamization of Saharan Berbers and of the southern Sahel region, not only through militant activities but also through contact, trade, teaching, and intermarriage.⁶³ In the 1200s the Marinid dynasty that ruled Morocco increased the use of sub-Saharan slaves from West Africa, which continued until the end of the nineteenth century. The lasting effects of this are visible through the presence of certain groups, particularly the Gnawa, who were originally slaves from West Africa.⁶⁴ Another important timeframe for demographic change is the French colonial period. As a result of the establishment of a French protectorate between 1912 and 1955, a large French community immigrated to Morocco, and tens of thousands of French nationals continue to reside in the country.⁶⁵

Beginning in the late 1980s, Morocco also began serving as a host country for migrants from surrounding regions, particularly West Africa.⁶⁶ Since the creation of the European Union in 1985, Morocco has been a popular penultimate stop on the migration route from Africa to Europe. Before the year 2000, there were many migrants who would travel by sea via the route through Tangier or via the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the northern coast of Morocco. But beginning in the 2000s, the EU and individual European states began pressuring North African countries, including Morocco, to bolster border security in order to curb irregular migration, in exchange for increased trade and the loosening of visa entry requirements for their nationals.⁶⁷

For Morocco this translated into particularly violent policing measures toward migrants near the Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta. Between 2000 and 2006, the Spanish authorities enhanced the border fortifications between Spain and Morocco, and the Moroccan, Spanish, and EU governments collaborated to make it more difficult for migrants to successfully reach Spanish territory.⁶⁸ Due to increased fear of arrest or detention from Moroccan authorities, migrants began living clandestinely in forests on the northern coast before preparing to go to Spain. In 2005, authorities in Morocco started raiding these areas and arresting migrants they found living there.⁶⁹ Authorities would also periodically raid urban locations known to be housing migrants in Morocco’s major cities—primarily Casablanca, Rabat, and Tangier.⁷⁰ Once arrested, migrants were usually taken to Oujda, a Moroccan town on the eastern border of the county, and forcibly deported into the no-man’s-land separating Morocco and Algeria.⁷¹

Despite the deterrents in place during the 2000s, migrants and refugees continued to depart from their home states, though few were able to reach Europe or their desired destination country due to prohibitive financial cost, potentially fatal danger, or limited resettlement spots in the case of refugees.⁷² Additionally, the price of a return journey via the same migratory route was often too high, or the opportunities available in a migrant’s home country were too limited. Consequently, many migrants chose, or were forced to choose, the best available solution: remaining in Morocco for an indefinite period of time.⁷³

Migrants and refugees live throughout Morocco in both cities or—for those still hoping to travel onward to Europe—in remote areas such as the forests near the Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta. In cities, migrants tend to reside in traditionally low-income areas otherwise populated by poorer Moroccans, and many find work in Morocco’s informal economy. The head of migration-focused advocacy at the Association Marocaine des Droits Humains (AMDH) explained why irregular migrants are often favored by employers.

[Migrants] can do some work, for example in food markets, in construction, domestic work. But it’s very difficult, sometimes they don’t pay them. . . . Every morning, they take twenty or ten people, they work for them for two or three or four days of the week, and then the next week, they take other people. So that they don’t have to do work papers for them.⁷⁴

While Morocco has high levels of unemployment, many Moroccan youth no longer want to work in physically demanding, low-paying positions. The Secretary General of the Organization Démocratique du Travail (ODT), which now has a subsection devoted to promoting migrants’ rights, explained that

Morocco has economic difficulties: poverty and unemployment. But Moroccan youth have changed. The ones who were living in the countryside moved to cities and refused to do some types of work. They don’t want to work in agriculture anymore. They don’t want to work in construction anymore. . . . Work that is hard like building or agriculture, in the sun and heat, this is the kind of work that Africans search for.⁷⁵

Additionally, the Moroccan government is aware of the pervasiveness of migrant participation in the informal economy. The head of the Department of Immigrants at the Ministère Chargé des Marocains Résidant à l’Etranger et des Affaires de la Migration⁷⁶ informed me, “The young people who come now from Africa and other areas, many of them are overqualified and all of them work. . . . They work with hard conditions, in the non-formal sector.”⁷⁷

Morocco’s official approach to migration changed from indifference to a more liberal policy very suddenly in September 2013. King Mohammed VI called for the drafting of a new “comprehensive policy on immigration” with the intention of providing a path to regularization for irregular migrants in Morocco, whether from sub-Saharan Africa or elsewhere. Ministries were subsequently mobilized alongside the National Human Rights Council (CNDH) to develop an implementation plan for the unfolding of the regularization process and subsequent integration measures.⁷⁸ The policy changes also involved the government agreeing to take on responsibility for refugees and asylum seekers whose claims had previously been handled solely by the UNHCR. Lastly, informal policies of policing and mass arrests were minimized, though not eradicated,⁷⁹ after the King’s announcement in 2013,⁸⁰ which at the time signaled that perhaps the Moroccan government was sincere in its commitment to cultivating a new relationship with migrants.

After the regularization process ran for one year, 16,180 migrants had successfully received their residency permits, and 10,950 had either been rejected or were still waiting to hear the results of their applications.⁸¹ The CNDH assisted migrants who had their applications rejected to appeal their claim, and in November 2016 all remaining applications were approved. Hailing the first regularization campaign as a success, the government also instituted a second campaign in 2016.⁸²

The Moroccan government has displayed the 2013 reform process as inclusive of and—according to some individuals—instigated by civil society. Yet civil society actors are critical of this narrative, instead attributing the reform to international shaming and Morocco’s interest in developing stronger economic and diplomatic relationships with West African countries.⁸³ This highlights how policy changes may occur depending upon the origin state of migrants or refugees. Like the case of Syrians subjected to a repressive policy in the post-2013 Egyptian space due to perceived links between Syrian opposition forces and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (al-ikhwān), the case of West African migrants in Morocco instead coincided with a more liberal policy due to the Moroccan state’s interest in better relations with countries of origin.

While pre-2013 Morocco is thus characterized by a general policy of indifference with elements of repression near Morocco’s borders, post-2013 Morocco has moved closer to a liberal engagement strategy. Morocco continues to utilize securitized policies in specific regions of the country, thus exhibiting repressive tendencies, and also continues to rely on civil society and international organizations as intermediaries, but its current strategy is predominantly liberal at the policy level.

TURKEY

Turkey is most often characterized in the political science literature on migration as a country of emigration and has indeed sent large numbers of migrants to Europe, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s through guest-worker programs and family reunification processes.⁸⁴ However, Turkey also has a long history as a receiver of migrants, though this fact has been overshadowed in recent years by its emigration narrative. Historically, Muslims from lands surrounding Anatolia that had been conquered or reconquered immigrated to the Ottoman Empire during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.⁸⁵ Following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey’s leaders also sought to encourage the migration of Muslim Turks—including through the use of population exchanges—from surrounding countries as part of the state’s nationalization project.⁸⁶ Migration continued throughout the twentieth century, though since the 1980s and increasingly after the end of the Cold War, Turkey has witnessed new forms of migration involving refugees from neighboring states, EU nationals, and irregular migrants.

Turkey hosts as many as one million irregular and transit migrants,⁸⁷ including “suitcase traders,” circular migrants, and clandestine workers from Iraq, Iran, and the former USSR, mainly regular migrants from Europe, and migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa.⁸⁸ In particular, since 2011, Turkey has hosted a mass influx of refugees from Syria, with estimates of over three million Syrians at the time of writing in 2018. While some migrants come to Turkey intending to pass onto Europe, others come with Turkey as their intended destination. Many individuals come as tourists or students and then overstay their visas, finding work in the informal economy to support their continued stay in Turkey or as they prepare and save for an onward journey.⁸⁹

Individuals who would be recognized as refugees in other countries are not granted full status in Turkey due to the geographical limitation that Turkey maintains in regard to the 1951 Refugee Convention: meaning that only refugees originating from Europe are considered full refugees in Turkey that will one day be able to obtain residency permits and apply for Turkish citizenship. At the time of interviewing in 2015, this meant only refugees from Russia or the Caucasus states. All other refugees from anywhere outside Europe that arrive in Turkey and successfully undergo RSD procedures are granted either conditional status or temporary protection by the Turkish government.⁹⁰

The primary legislation governing engagement with migrants and refugees in Turkey since 1950 has been the Passport Law and the Law on the Residence and Travel of Foreigners in Turkey, which provide regulations for the entry, stay, and deportation of foreigners.⁹¹ While Turkey signed the 1951 Convention in 1960, it did not enact domestic legislation on international protection until 1994, and implementation in this area was regulated through secondary legislation and administrative regulations.⁹² The regulation effectively restated the refugee definition set forth in the 1951 Refugee Convention in establishing who can benefit from temporary asylum protection in Turkey, but it also left significant room for administrative discretion in the processing of applications for temporary asylum.⁹³

After increased refugee influxes from Iraq to Turkey in 1988,⁹⁴ the UNHCR began taking on further responsibility for determining refugee status, a task originally left to individual embassies, even though the UNHCR had no official country agreement with the Turkish government.⁹⁵ A former external relations officer at the UNHCR in Turkey explained, “Instead of going directly to the US embassy or the UK embassy, people were recommended to go to the UNHCR. Then the UNHCR became the filter for whether they have good claims.”⁹⁶ This informal practice effectively created a dual system for refugee recognition that continues today: one run by Turkish authorities and another run by the UNHCR.⁹⁷

In addition to the UNHCR procedure, individuals were required to file a separate “temporary asylum” application with the Turkish Ministry of the Interior (MOI) in order to determine whether he or she met the requirements for asylum as specified by Turkey’s national legislation.⁹⁸ After this procedure, refugees were granted a six-month residence permit that was automatically renewable for another six months, after which extension of residency fell under the discretion of the MOI prior to 2013,⁹⁹ and now falls under the Directorate General for Migration Management (DGMM).

Under the current procedure, once refugees have registered with Turkish authorities, they are then assigned to one of the approximately sixty “satellite cities” that have been appointed by the Turkish government as temporary residences for refugees.¹⁰⁰ Refugees are given access to health care and schools while they reside in a satellite city, and depending upon the province, they may be eligible for a modest stipend. Yet because this stipend is not usually enough to cover the cost of living in the satellite cities and because there are few work opportunities, many refugees decide to leave their assigned satellite city in search of work in Istanbul or one of Turkey’s other metropolises, thereby forfeiting their legal status.¹⁰¹

According to migration-focused NGOs operating in Turkey, the national government was almost entirely absent from migration affairs prior to the mid-2000s.¹⁰² The UNHCR took on responsibility for refugees, and access to basic services for irregular migrants, or refugees residing outside their satellite city, was managed by international and local civil society organizations often funded by the UNHCR or European embassies.¹⁰³ Referring to the period between 2000 and 2007, the director of an advocacy-focused NGO in Istanbul explained,

Basically, our assessment was that refugees were arriving in Turkey, they had zero access to any kind of legal information, counseling, and assistance. And a lot of them actually didn’t know where to go, how to apply, [and] a lot of times they were having problems with the UNHCR procedure at the time.¹⁰⁴

International and domestic NGOs stepped in to fill this information and service-provision gap, and between 2009 and 2010 the organizations operating in Istanbul formed a network and began to cooperate via an online platform and monthly in-person meetings.¹⁰⁵ This included secular and religious NGOs like Caritas, Union Church, the Human Resource Development Foundation, and the UNHCR, and then expanded to include the Turkish Humanitarian Assistance Foundation (IHH), in addition to others.

Refugees technically have access to the Turkish labor market, but in a de facto sense refugees face legal, administrative, and language barriers associated with receiving work permits.¹⁰⁶ Nonetheless, refugees as well as irregular migrants have found work in informal sectors, including construction, domestic work, agriculture, sex work, and employment in restaurants and shops,¹⁰⁷ though the ability to access informal work varies by geographic location, gender, and nationality.¹⁰⁸ Access to employment has been somewhat unique for the Syrian refugees following a policy change in 2016,¹⁰⁹ but most Syrians also survive via informal methods.

While migrants and refugees are somewhat confined in their movement and ability to access informal employment due to a system of policing and checkpoints, a spokesperson for the UNHCR in Istanbul notes that this is the same system that Turkish citizens are subject to.¹¹⁰ In his opinion,

[Turkey] is not a country that is really working on, it’s not really hard on irregular migrants, it’s not really hard on their access to services, or access to labor market. If they really want they could develop a better supervision system, but it’s not what’s happening in Turkey.¹¹¹

The lax approach to internal policing had not drastically changed by the time of interviewing in mid-2015. This is abundantly clear from a trip to Aksaray, a neighborhood located just past Sultanahmet, Istanbul’s tourist center. While Sultanahmet is packed with tourists of all nationalities that come to Istanbul to marvel at historic mosques and palaces, Aksaray is populated with migrants that come to Turkey looking to make a profit or to find a way to Europe. One young man I met in Aksaray, originally from Senegal, explained that he had been living in the neighborhood for two years. He returned to Senegal one time during this sojourn so that he could obtain a new visa, but found that it was too expensive (five or six hundred euros per trip) to do so more than once. When I spoke with him in mid-2015 he was residing in Turkey on an expired visa, selling watches on the street. I asked whether that led to problems with the authorities, but he told me, “No, I don’t have trouble. There’s this one type of car that you have to watch out for. But not the regular police.”¹¹²

While Turkey’s engagement policy is best characterized as indifferent throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, initial efforts toward EU accession that began in 1999 spurred discussion of reshaping existing legislation related to migration and refugees. In order to be considered for candidacy, the EU insisted that Turkey remove the geographical limitation to the 1951 Convention and transfer all asylum matters to a civilian authority, among other matters. Yet reform in this area continued even after EU accession negotiations were stalled and shelved indefinitely in 2006. Kamal Kirişçi notes that it is difficult to judge the extent of the EU’s impact on Turkish migration reform, since the EU came on to the scene at a time when a “paradigmatic shift” was already occurring among Turkish officials. ¹¹³ In 2008 the Turkish government tasked two inspectors from the MOI with conducting a needs assessment regarding migration. Once the MOI inspectors began collecting testimonials and information from civil society groups, they decided that piecemeal reform would not be sufficient to address all the existing gaps surrounding international protection and migration management and that instead, a systemic overhaul was needed.¹¹⁴

Law No. 6458 on Foreigners and International Protection was adopted on 4 April 2013. Importantly, the new law transferred responsibility over migration affairs, including refugees, from the Turkish police to a newly-created civil body: the Directorate General for Migration Management (DGMM). Turkey has invested substantial manpower and financial resources into the new DGMM, which the director of a prominent civil society organization described as “ambitious.”¹¹⁵ The official transfer of responsibility from the police to the DGMM occurred on 18 May 2015, and the DGMM now has an office in each governorate of the country.

Yet since the passage of the new law, civil society organizations have become weary of movement toward a repressive policy, partially due to the mass influx of Syrian refugees over the last several years. As one IOM employee told me, in the wake of the Syrian crisis, the DGMM has regressed toward viewing migration solely through a security lens.¹¹⁶ When the new law was passed in 2013, Syrian refugees had already been arriving in Turkey for two years via an open-door policy.¹¹⁷ Yet the number of Syrians in the country at that time (approximately 400,000)¹¹⁸ pales in comparison to the more than 3,000,000 Syrians in Turkey at present. The situation with Syrians is still very much in flux, partially due to Turkey’s 2016 deal with the European Union. Turkey negotiated an up to six billion euro aid package coupled by the reinvigoration of EU accession negotiations and visa liberalization for Turkish nationals, in exchange for agreeing to accept Syrian refugees returned to Turkey from Europe.

The 2016 EU-Turkey deal may yet fall apart. The failed military coup of July 2016 and Prime Minister Erdoğan’s increasingly authoritarian response to those he believes were involved threatens to dismantle any progress toward accession talks and enhanced EU relations, though cooperation at some level will likely continue so long as Europe fears increased irregular migration arrivals. Yet the domestic situation in Turkey is increasingly unsettling for Turkish citizens and non-nationals alike. Since declaring a state of emergency after the failed coup attempt, President Erdoğan has dismissed tens of thousands of academics, teachers, and civil servants, purged the armed forces, detained journalists, and shut more than a dozen media outlets.¹¹⁹

Like Morocco, post-2013 Turkey has taken steps away from indifference toward a more liberal engagement strategy, though current security and geopolitical pressures threaten to increase the use of repressive measures toward migrants and refugees.

CONCLUSION

The examination of the cases of Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey presented in this paper shows that we can better understand the migrant and refugee engagement strategies of Middle Eastern host states if we include indifference as a policy option. Since the 1990s, Egypt has used indifference, and the international funding that accompanies this type of approach, to manage its migrant and refugee population with tangential benefits for the host government and Egyptian nationals. However, in the post-2013 space, indifference has given way to a more repressive policy that reflects the general state of securitization in the country and an increasingly authoritarian situation for citizens and noncitizens alike. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s Morocco utilized an indifferent strategy, coupled with repressive measures near its borders and in certain cities. Since 2013 it has taken measures toward implementing a more liberal policy, though it continues to rely on civil society and international organizations for elements of service provision. Turkey also changed its strategy in 2013 from indifference toward a more liberal strategy, prompted partly by EU incentives. The current impact of the Syrian crisis on Turkey and the turn toward a more authoritarian governance structure is pushing the country toward a repressive strategy, yet its new legal framework remains liberal.

Through these three cases I show how indifference necessitates the action of international migration bodies and NGOs to step in and carry out engagement in lieu of governmental actors, providing economic and diplomatic benefits for the host state. The empirical analysis in this paper makes it clear that states may pursue combinations of policies, or change policies over time, depending on perceived diplomatic or economic benefits. Sometimes this is due to the influence of neighboring states, other times this can result from domestic pressures or security concerns, and changes in policy may also occur depending upon the origin state of migrants or refugees. By placing recent migratory patterns to Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey in historical context, and by analyzing state approaches to engagement at the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first, this paper builds the concept of indifference and demonstrates its application in Middle Eastern host states.

NOTES