ABSTRACT
This chapter frames migrant illegality and patterns of incorporation in Turkey and Morocco within a comparative perspective. Focusing on the link between migration controls (governance), irregular migrants’ participation in society (migrant incorporation), and migrants’ access to rights and legal status, the comparison highlights two interlinked questions: First, how does the presence of irregular migrants, despite their lack of legal status, become legitimate within social, economic, and bureaucratic interactions? Second, what underpins the differences in the mechanisms through which migrants gain legitimacy? As promised in the introduction to this book, the comparison aims to explain why certain aspects of migrant illegality and incorporation gain legitimacy over others in particular contexts. Before engaging with the findings of this comparison at a more theoretical level in the Conclusion, this chapter provides preliminary explanations of contrasting mechanisms between the production of day-to-day legitimacy in the absence of a political voice in Turkey and the process of gaining political voice, hence legitimacy, given the very limited forms of daily inclusion in Morocco. In line with the structure followed in Chapters 3 and 4, the discussion in this chapter highlights common and different features of migrant illegality in terms of perceptions of deportability, economic participation, access to rights and to institutions, and in terms of mobilization for legal status that have emerged in both countries.
