Looking at the EU-Turkey Deal: The Implications for Migrants in Greece and Turkey

Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in 2011, new migration governance strategies across the Mediterranean region have arisen with tightening border regimes and new laws on migration deterrence. The EU and Turkey felt the need to develop new migration governance regimes. Greece and Turkey were suddenly placed in the epicentre of managing millions of asylum-seekers and displaced populations, shaping European migration policies, and ‘protecting’ Fortress Europe. Upon its sixth anniversary, this chapter explores the effects and consequences of the EU-Turkey deal on the subjects it aims to govern. By problematising its implementation and consequences, this chapter demonstrates that the EU-Turkey deal has deep-rooted Eurocentric characteristics that perpetuate precarity through externalisation and selectivity of migration. More specifically, by adopting a Foucauldian lens, the chapter will scrutinise the deal’s implications on migrants’ right to seek asylum in Europe in the context of Greece; and, with a focus on migrants’ integration into the labour market, their right (or the lack thereof) to integrate within the host country in the context of Turkey.