Rights of migrant workers and state responsibility: the case of Syrian migrants as involuntary migrant workers in Turkish labour market

The forces which cause labour migration into developing and developed countries can both be economic and political. Migrants make a life choice of resettling into a host country which is regarded as economically sensible and socially acceptable option. Voluntary migrant workers make this choice willingly who are usually skilled migrants and are desired by the destination countries; therefore they can mobilise easier and have more rights in the host country than the involuntary migrant workers. Involuntary migrant workers who do not have the privilege of the same choice, migrate into a country for various reasons, such as the ones fleeing from a conflict zone and environmental disasters who somehow participate into the labour market in the country they moved into. The knowledge of the core motivation of the labour migration is important as it determines the status of migrant workers in the labour market. Migrant workers from both regular and irregular statuses live under the law of the host country. The status of the migrant workers defined under the jurisdiction of the destination country is crucial in terms of determining their legal rights, and enjoying these rights. Migrant workers are granted economic, social, political and civil rights by the states drawn by their immigration policies which make the migrant workers as right holders and the states as duty bearers. In other words, the states have the full responsibility on making their own immigration policies and laws and decide on which rights migrant workers will receive. Syrian refugees fled from the conflict zone to Turkey and working in Turkish labour market are considered as involuntary migrant workers as their main motivation for migration was not economic migration. They somehow join the labour market and become migrant workers. Hence, this paper will look into the Syrian Migrants in Turkey; and their impact on the Turkish labour market; and how Turkish immigration policy is affected by this extraordinary number of migrants. The first half of the paper will discuss the concept of state responsibility based on Human Rights approach to migration. The second half of the paper will discuss the case study of Syrian migrant workers in Turkey based on the analysis of empirical study including analysis of the National Laws and the findings of the fieldwork that I carried out in Turkey