Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that the primary aim of the amendment the Turkish government made to the Law on Residence and Travel of Foreigners in Turkey #5683 in 2012, was to govern the velocity of the mobility in and out of the migrant domestic workers market in Turkey and to create temporal borders for the migrants.

Paper long abstract:

Effective from Feb 1st 2012 on, the Turkish government made an amendment to the Law on Residence and Travel of Foreigners in Turkey #5683, which made the maximum length of legal time a tourist would be granted a visa for from "90 days" to "90 days in 180". This in fact revealed a policy change concerning the migrant domestic workers in Turkey. Until then for the twenty years in its existence, the migrant domestic workers market had established itself on the velocity of circular migration the the migrant workers pursued between their home countries and Turkey, partly to stay in a "semi-legal" status to avoid deportability. Now with this policy change, the Turkish government was insulating the gateways the migrant domestics have used for years for purposes of practical regularization so that they would be compelled to file for work permits. Enforcing work permits on the migrant domestic workers as the new norm of the market was not an attempt to pull them out of the predicament of undocumented but to reclaim the governance over the velocity of mobility in and out of the market. In doing so, the Turkish government has turned expiry dates of temporary legal statuses into temporal borders that now encircle the bodies of migrant domestic workers.