International workshop: New Turkey beyond borders: Migration, diasporas, and states

Diasporas are increasingly important components of political processes in Western democracies.  Communities associated with third states, however, are seen to create tensions and insecurities in host-states. In the crucible of diasporas, the governing logics of home states and host states overlap and sometimes clash. The potential for conflict is all the more pronounced where migration is politicised in host-states and where home-states are non-democratic -often a prime reason for emigration in the first place- and employ diaspora governance to police immigrant communities. Such extra-territorialisation of security measures and the ensuing transnationalisation of non-democratic governance irritate host states and restructure the internal politics of already existing dias-poras. They shape the relations between groups favoured by the home-state and groups deemed as political enemies, between newcomers and those already present, as well as between host-states and the different strata of the diaspora community.
In Turkey, in Turkey-related diasporas and their host-countries, these phenomena are exceedingly  pronounced: The country has not only experienced a recent ‚exit from democracy‘ but has also undergone a regime change to a post-secular super presidency, a step that was possible in part thanks to the mobilisation and polarisation of segments of Turkey’s diasporas particularly in Western Europe.
This workshop‘s aim is threefold: It examines and attempts to map the current ‚new wave‘ of emigration from Turkey which began in the 2010s. It investigates the emergence and transformation of Turkey-related  diasporas through the analytical lens of the extra-territorialisation of governance by the Turkish state and the conflicts and opportunities it creates for the triangle of host-state, home-state and diaspora interactions on an ever-expanding global scale. Finally, it takes special interest in questions of political context, field access and methodology.