Six years after the EU-Turkey Agreement: A quantitative assessment of the living conditions of Syrians in Turkey

"According to the German Federal Statistical Office, 2.9 million people in Germany had a Turkish migration background in 2022. Thus, Turkey represents one of the most important countries of origin for migrants in Germany. In the last decade, however, Turkey has also become an important transit and destination country for migrants itself. Since 2011, when war broke out in Syria, more than 3.7 million Syrians have sought refuge in Turkey. Starting in 2014, Turkey's initial open-door immigration policy increasingly gave way to restrictive measures with the goal to limit migration from Syria. Following a German initiative, the European Union (EU) and the Turkish government agreed on a migration agreement in 2016. The EU-Turkey agreement aimed at limiting irregular migration to the EU and, in turn, improving the humanitarian conditions for refugees in Turkey by providing 6 billion Euros in aid. In this research report, we examine the living conditions, well-being, and socio-economic participation of Syrian refugees in Turkey compared to the Turkish host society in 2022, six years after the EU-Turkey agreement. We make use of the comprehensive longitudinal data infrastructure that was created as part of the TRANSMIT project in cooperation between IAB and the Berlin Institute for Empirical Integration and Migration Research (BIM, Humboldt University Berlin). This report relies on wave 2 of the TRANSMIT Turkey survey conducted in December 2021 and January 2022. The structured survey of equal numbers of Syrians and Turks (1250 respondents each) enables us to compare the living conditions of Syrians in Turkey with those of the Turkish majority population. The findings indicate that the living conditions, well-being and participation of Syrian refugees in Turkey remain precarious despite the EU-Turkey agreement. For example, in 2022, roughly one third of the Syrian respondents report that their income does not cover food, another third cannot afford other basic necessities. Despite an average length of stay of 8 years, more than two-thirds of Syrian workers are employed as day laborers. The majority of employment is irregular and involves manual, often physically demanding work such as construction or agriculture. Similar to the situation of refugees in Germany, there is a strong gender gap in the labour market, but the overall level of employment for Syrians in Turkey is higher. 39 percent of the Syrian women and 79 percent of the Syrian men are in paid employment. Women furthermore provide most of the unpaid household labour and carework. Participation in education remains low, with a total of 7 percent of adult respondents having attended or currently attending school at the time of the survey. Men are more likely to participate in education than women. We attribute the relatively high labour market participation and the low educational participation to the fact that Syrians in Turkey do not have systematic access to social security and childcare, apart from EU-funded emergency programs. Similarly, language classes are not systematically available for Syrian refugees in Turkey. Turkish language proficiency increases moderately from 47 percent after 5 or less years of residence to 63 percent after 10 or more years of residence. This upward trend in language skills is mostly driven by Syrian women. The educational participation of Syrian children is much more comprehensive: 85 percent of the 6- to 15-year-olds are attending school. This success can in part be attributed to the respective EU support. We also examine the aspirations and concrete plans of Syrian refugees to leave Turkey. A quarter of the Syrians interviewed in 2022 would like to leave Turkey. Germany is most frequently mentioned as the preferred destination. However, only a small share (7 percent) of those with migration intentions actually have concrete plans to emigrate in the next 12 months. The most prominent reasons to stay are children currently in education, a lack of financial resources and the wish to stay with the family. Among Syrians with social networks abroad, the proportion with concrete plans to emigrate is even lower. This underscores the hypothetical nature of the migration aspirations that we measured in the TRANSMIT surveys." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))