Afghan (Re)Migration from Pakistan to Turkey: Transnational Norms and the ‘Pull’ of Pax-Ottomanica?

Abstract:

Many Afghans, often male, in Pakistan are migrating (again) and increasingly toward ‘new’ destinations such as Turkey. Transnational lives are not unusual for Afghans as a method of survival, as well as a space for ‘self-making’. However, these migrations are also the result of Turkey’s own regional ambitions and projection of itself as a modern neoliberal ‘Muslim’ state. Moreover, increased migration is also a result of the historic role that cheap labor migrants, particularly from Central/South Asia, have played in the development of rising neoliberal economies. Thus in the 2000s and 2010s, as Turkey’s ‘star’ rises, so too does Turkey find itself shifting from a migrant sending to a migrant receiving state.