Migration and Development: The Case of Turkish Migration to Germany

Abstract This article reviews empirical research and studies to investigate the impact of international migration from Turkey to West Germany on economic development of Turkey. The paper is organized in three sections. The first section provides a theoretical background for the complex relationship between migration and development. The second section presents the size and nature of the international labor migration from Turkey to Western Europe and, specifically, to West Germany. The last section includes discussions of the potential effects of labor recruitment, remittances and return migration, and the extent that these potentials are realized. Overall impacts of the migration flow on development of Turkey are also presented. INTRODUCTION The main phase of labor migration from Turkey to Germany was initiated with bilateral labor recruitment agreements between two governments in the early 1960s. Given both countries' economic and social conditions, labor recruitment seemed a viable solution. Germany expected to receive a temporary labor supply and, therefore, get away with the high costs of incorporating migrant workers, while sustaining economic growth without the pressure of raising wages. Turkey, on the other hand, hoped for an impetus for economic development and modernization resulting from remittances and return of the migrant workers. A decade later, in 1973, the German government abruptly halted labor recruitment. At the same time, it provided incentives to encourage return migration. Despite these incentives, volume of return migration remained low while Turkish population in Germany increased as a result of family reunion and high fertility rates. The number of Turks in Germany stabilized in the course of time, with more than two million Turks living in Germany today. While the more visible economic and social effects on Germany have received increasing scholarly interest, effects of this migration on Turkey remains less studied. There have been studies, tracking return migrants and investigating impact of remittances and return migration on specific villages or towns. However, there has not been enough work evaluating macro scale economic and social consequences of this migration on Turkey. In fact, migration's effect on economic development of sending countries remains "unsettled" according to many scholars. In the first section of this paper, I review theoretical approaches to the complex relationship between international migration and economic development. In the second, I discuss the conditions for the initiation and continuation of Turkish migration to West Germany. I review empirical research and studies that investigate the effects of Turkish labor migration to West Germany on development efforts of Turkey in the last section. Rather than micro level effects of migration, I concentrate on macro scale effects of migration on national economy of Turkey. In doing so, I focus on the expectations of economic development and the extent to which these expectations have been accomplished with a dynamic perspective. I include in the discussion, the maturity of the migration flow and related social and economic changes, which in turn effect expectations and their realization. The role of the government policies is also discussed. INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Out-migration affects development of sending countries in three major ways: through export of labor, return migration, and remittances. Therefore, to determine overall impact of migration on the sending countries, it is crucial to evaluate its effects on these three grounds. When the effects are positive it is implicitly assumed that economic laws will operate and automatically lead to economic development and growth. Literature focuses on determining positive and negative effects of migration through export of labor, return migration, and remittances, but largely ignores the assumption that once the conditions are satisfied, "take off" is inevitable for the sending country's economy (Penninx 1982). …