ABSTRACT
A journey begins with determination, readiness to leave behind a familiar world and eagerness towards new adventures. This chapter sets the stage for a thorough exploration of the migrants’ individual trajectories. It pursues the aim of unravelling the mobility/migration nexus by developing the notion of mobility as a fundamental aspect of social life that is embedded in the migration decision. The chapter is structured around the main reasons for migrants deciding to leave Turkey. However, simultaneously, it draws attention to the intertwined nature of these motives that escape easy categorizations. It shows that a human-capital perspective alone does not describe the full extent of the migration phenomenon. Although professional and educational reasons are evidently at play, there is more to this decision: self-development, fleeing the pressure, breaking away from routine, or in short an embedded sense of mobility that is seen as a means to achieve all these desires. The chapter also detects general facilitators and constraints that impinge on the decision of the migration such as networks and immigration policies, both of which are often neglected in the literature on highly skilled migration.
