Migration and the formation of transnational economic networks between Africa and Turkey: the socio-economic establishment of migrantsin situand in mobility

Abstract

Turkey is often perceived as a transit place for migrants and refugees from the African continent. While many indeed continue to other countries and the country still precludes official local integration, the past decade has witnessed a growing number of African migrants settling in Istanbul. This article draws attention to the opportunity structures that enable this type of settlement. The article presents the argument that it is the presence of small-scale transnationally embedded traders from the same countries that enable the socio-economic stability of their co-nationals both locally as well as transnationally. The concept that is able to account for this development is establishment in situ and establishment in mobility, which is seen as exactly the definitional barrier between transit and settlement.

From Center to Periphery and Back Again: A Systematic Literature Review of Refugee Entrepreneurship

“…This pattern concerns publications by authors who enjoy at least one professional affiliation with a central academic institution, who nevertheless chose to publish in peripheral outlets, including unranked journals, unranked publishing houses, and C-publishers. These 'central-peripheral' sources account for 30 of our total pool (44%) and encompass works by, chronologically listed: Basok [89]; Moore [90]; Gold [66,69] [110]; Omata [111]; Suter [112]; as well as Sandberg, Immonen and Kok [63]. Three of these can also be counted in the third pattern-peripheral affiliation, peripheral outlet ( [79,98,108]).…”

“…The majority that deal with refugee entrepreneurship in developed CORs (see Tables 2 and 3 for waves 1 and 2) lean upon theories from the field of migrant/immigration studies such as ethnic entrepreneurship and social networks, ethnic enclaves, diaspora theories, mixed embeddedness, and disadvantage theory (e.g., [25,[32][33][34][66][67][68][69][70]92,93,97,98,104,114,115,119,126]. Only three-and recent-contributions consider such theories in developing COR contexts: Raijman and Barak-Bianco [81], in their study of refugees from Africa to Israel, using a mixed embeddedness approach; Suter [112] who draws upon transnationalism and social networks to analyze refugee entrepreneurship in Turkey; and, Bizri [26] who draws upon social capital theory, in her case study examination from Lebanon.…”

“…In a second prevailing thematic cluster emerging from the literature, factors influencing refugee entrepreneurship highlight the interplay of institutional factors and human, cultural, and social capital factors (e.g., [25,31,32,[66][67][68][69][70][71][72]77,108,112,126]). Such challenges are country-specific and very much depend on the particular status (e.g., legal) of refugees [118].…”

“…In terms of personal factors, Smith-Hefner [93] and Halter [92] have discussed how refugees' histories of being part of a minority population (or "twice" minority [92]) influence-sometimes positively-their propensity to self-employ. The main personal motivations for entrepreneurship highlighted in the literature center around the desire to lead a better life and integrate in CORs [63,71,[95][96][97]104,107,108,112,119,121], and the desire to be independent [63,95], or, in Wauters and Lambrecht's [71] words, having an "appetite for entrepreneurship", denoted by Tömöry [97] as a "strong entrepreneurial spirit", and "risk-taking" by Hugo [31]. Mamgain and Collins' [119] study on women refugee entrepreneurs reveals a desire to forge relationships with hosting CORs (American in their study), stressing the importance of strengthening the refugee community via entrepreneurship.…”

New contested borderlands: Senegalese migrants en route to Argentina

“…Simultaneous to the influx of West African migrants to the shores of the Spanish Canary Islands in the mid-2000s, although in much smaller numbers, Argentina emerged as a destination for West African migrants, in particular from Senegal, along with other new destinations in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America (see, for example, Bertoncello & Bredeloup, 2009;Haugen, 2012;Maffia, 2010;Pelican & Tatah, 2009;Schans, 2012;Suter, 2017;Zubrzycki, 2009). The dislocation of Europe as the centre, the acceleration and spatial diversification of African migration beyond former colonial links seemed to be partly driven by shifts in Western migration governance (Flahaux & de Haas, 2016) but also new opportunities.…”