Turkic states integrate migrants on paper but stop short of building real institutions, study finds

A comparative study of the five member countries of the Organization of Turkic States—Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Türkiye—finds that migrant integration appears in national legislation and policy documents, but mostly as a thin, economically focused add-on to migration management rather than as a fully built institutional regime. The research, published in the journal Comparative Migration Studies, examines how integration is positioned across different policy areas in these countries and proposes the concept of “uninstitutionalized regional integration” to describe the pattern it uncovers.

The study, conducted by Barış Demirel, Fatma Rümeysa Taşbaş, and Ömer Faruk Cantekin, is based on directed content analysis of national legislation and policy documents that were in force or formed the relevant policy framework during the 2010–2026 study period. The authors supplemented this national-level material with documents from the Organization of Turkic States itself and from international organizations, which they used for contextual analysis. Because the analysis rests on written law and policy texts rather than on surveys or interviews with migrants, the findings describe the formal architecture of integration governance, not the lived experiences of migrants navigating it.

To compare the five countries systematically, the researchers used the eight policy areas of MIPEX—the Migrant Integration Policy Index—as their analytical reference framework. On top of that framework, the team built a qualitative evaluation scheme with three dimensions: normative recognition, meaning whether integration is acknowledged in law; administrative mechanisms, meaning whether institutions and procedures exist to implement it; and rights-based scope, meaning how far the rights granted actually extend.

The results show a clear asymmetry across policy areas. Integration policies are relatively more visible in the area of labour market access, where the legal recognition of migrants’ economic participation is comparatively strong. By contrast, institutional intensity remains lower in areas such as political participation, long-term residency, and combating discrimination. In other words, the states in the region are more willing to write migrants into their labour codes and migration regulations than to grant them durable political membership, secure long-term status, or explicit protection against discrimination.

The authors interpret this uneven pattern as evidence that integration in the OTS countries is not positioned as an autonomous, multidimensional membership regime. Instead, it functions as a complementary element of regulatory and economically focused migration management. Integration language enters policy where it serves economic goals—such as enabling migrants to work—but does not develop into the broader institutional apparatus of rights, participation, and status security that characterizes more established integration regimes elsewhere.

To explain why this happens, the study points to a governance logic formed by the intersection of three elements: an assumption of transience, security-based governance, and economic instrumentalization. The first of these elements is the assumption of transience. The second is security-based governance. The third is economic instrumentalization.

A notable implication of the findings is that the level of integration institutionalization is not determined simply by migration intensity or by administrative capacity. A country with substantial migration and functioning bureaucracy could still leave integration thinly institutionalized if its governance rationality defines migrants as transient economic actors. The study suggests that what matters is how the state defines migrants’ position within the political and social order—a question of political rationality rather than of resources alone.

The concept of “uninstitutionalized regional integration” is presented as the study’s original contribution to the migration governance literature.

The study’s method has limits that readers should keep in mind. The assessment is qualitative and document-based, so it captures the intensity of institutionalization as written into law and policy, not how those rules are enforced in practice or how migrants experience them. The authors describe their framework as a qualitative evaluation rather than a numerical scoring exercise, which distinguishes their approach from strictly quantitative MIPEX comparisons. Still, the core finding stands on the evidence presented: across five Turkic states and eight policy areas, integration is most visible where it serves the labour market and weakest where it would confer political membership, long-term security, or protection from discrimination.

For scholars of migration governance, the study adds a conceptual tool for describing regimes that acknowledge integration without institutionalizing it. For the region itself, it highlights a gap between the economic role assigned to migrants and the political and social position they are granted. The authors’ broader claim is that integration institutionalization is shaped by governance rationalities—assumptions about transience, security, and economic utility—that define migrants’ place in the political and social order, and that these rationalities, not migration numbers or administrative capacity alone, explain why integration in the Organization of Turkic States remains uninstitutionalized.

Subject of Research: Comparative analysis of migration governance and the institutionalization of migrant integration policies in the five member countries of the Organization of Turkic States

Article Title: Uninstitutionalized regional integration: a comparative analysis of migration governance and migrant integration in the Organization of Turkic States

Article References: Demirel, B., Taşbaş, F. R., & Cantekin, Ö. F. (2026). Uninstitutionalized regional integration: a comparative analysis of migration governance and migrant integration in the Organization of Turkic States. Comparative Migration Studies. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-026-00595-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40878-026-00595-8

Keywords: migration governance, migrant integration, Organization of Turkic States, MIPEX, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Türkiye, labour market access, political participation, uninstitutionalized regional integration