Refugees' onward migration decisions and the EU-Turkey deal

Abstract

Adopting a bottom-up approach, and taking the EU‒Turkey deal as a case study, this Ph.D. thesis provides empirical evidence about the impact of externalisation policies on refugees’ daily lives and on their onward migration decisions. Chapter 1 briefly introduces the topic and the conceptual and contextual background. Chapter 2 focuses on the daily experiences and coping strategies of those who have been contained on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios. Chapter 3 explores the onward migration aspirations of Syrian men with precarious legal status living in Istanbul. Chapter 4 analyses the impact of humanitarian aid on Syrian refugees’ aspirations to move on from Turkey. And finally, Chapter 5 summarizes the contributions and limitations of the Ph.D. thesis as well as providing pathways for future research. In sum, this Ph.D. thesis constitutes an effort to highlight the harm that these policies inflict on refugees and to bring refugees’ own voices into the dialogue about immigration policy.