Activism in the European Court of Justice and Changing Options for Turkish Citizen Migrants in the United Kingdom

Since the early days of their recruitment as workers into Western Europe, Turkish citizens’ immigration and residence rights have been curtailed by EU Member States even though the migration of Turkish citizens has not abated. Despite restrictive trends in the Member States and the EU, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has interpreted the obligations arising from the Ankara Agreement between Turkey and the EEC (1963), and its Additional Protocol (1970), to enhance the security of residence and employment status for Turkish citizen migrants. The UK did not participate in large-scale recruitment of workers from Turkey, but has experienced predominantly asylum migration from Turkey since the 1980s.

The robust interpretation of the Additional Protocol’s ‘standstill’ provision which allows reliance on older rules for business persons and service providers (and receivers) has come to assume particular importance for Turkish citizens in the UK. This presentation examines the changing options available to Turkish citizen migrants in the UK within the broader EU context. In so doing, it discusses some recent decisions of the ECJ and analyses their importance in light of the UK’s immigration rules and immigration trends from Turkey to the UK. These developments are placed within a conceptual scheme which views the regulatory structure determining the legal status of Turkish citizen migrants as an example of complex legal pluralism.