Birth of a virtual community: Supporting Turkish couples' migration during COVID‐19

• Published date: 01 April 2023
• Author: Gizem Kolbaşı‐Muyan,Helga Rittersberger‐Tılıç
• Date: 01 April 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12832

RESEARCH

Birth of a virtual community: Supporting Turkish

couples’migration during COVID-19

Gizem Kolbas¸ı-Muyan

1

| Helga Rittersberger-Tılıç

2

1

Independent researcher, Ankara, Turkey

2

Department of Sociology, Middle East

Technical University, Ankara, Turkey

Correspondence

Gizem Kolbas¸ı-Muyan, Aziziye Mah Cinnah

Cad. No. 48/14, Ankara 06690, Turkey.

Email: gkolbasi@gmail.com or

gkolbasi@yahoo.com

Abstract

Objective: This research aimed to understand legal and

bureaucratic intricacies couples from Turkey and the

Netherlands had to face in their marriage migration pro-

cesses during the COVID-19 pandemic by analyzing the

role of a virtual community in developing coping strategies

of multiple agents (partners, as well as lawyers and moder-

ators as third parties).

Background: The restrictive requirements for family migra-

tion in the Netherlands, which reflect a nation-state–

centered point of view, had consequences on the marriage

migration of Turks.

Methods: Legal and policy analysis between the years 2004

and 2021 and a netnography covering March 2021 through

April 2022 are used. Dutch and EU case law analysis,

participant observation in the Facebook group “Hollanda

Aile Birles¸imi/Gezinshereniging”(The Netherlands Family

Reunification), and semistructured interviews with the

members of the group are employed.

Results: The interactions in the Facebook group went

beyond simple information dissemination and led to the

emergence of a virtual community. It served for the devel-

opment of intimacy and informal expertise and constituted

a venue for developing strategies to cope with bureau-

cratic, legal, and personal hurdles.

Conclusion: During COVID-19, the virtual community

enabled individuals involved in marriage migration to

counter the legal and policy framework.

KEYWORDS

autonomy of migration, COVID-19 pandemic, EU law, Turkish

marriage migration in the Netherlands, virtual community

Marriage migration remains a hot issue because it is one of the areas where private life meets

national policy. Couples intending to unite across national borders must fulfill several

Received: 31 May 2022 Revised: 19 December 2022 Accepted: 23 December 2022

DOI: 10.1111/fare.12832

© 2023 National Council on Family Relations.

478 Family Relations. 2023;72:478–494.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fare

prerequisites and procedures to join each other. Family migration among spouses or partners

from Turkey and the Netherlands, which is referred as marriage migration in this article, is an

interesting case. The most recent data show that for 2021, family migration was the motivation

for more than one third of all migrations. If we exclude the migration of children from family

motivation and only concentrate on migrants aged 18 and older who could be considered mar-

riage migrants, this represents 27.7% of all migration from Turkey to the Netherlands

(Statistics Netherlands, 2022a).

The Turkish community in the Netherlands (429,978, as cited in Statistics Netherlands, 2022b),

which emerged from the mass migration after the labor recruitment agreement of 1964, now con-

stitutes the largest immigrant population from outside the European Union (EU) and European

Free Trade Association (EFTA; Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland). Turkish citi-

zens living in the Netherlands hold privileged rights based on EU law. It could be argued that the

“family”gets caught up into the interplay between Dutch and European law. We will reflect on

these facts in more detail, but it can be stated that the securitization and criminalization of (mar-

riage) migrants became a common tool to govern migration. In this context, we are interested in

how migrants cope with the difficulties in reuniting with their partners. We discuss the different

strategies Turkish citizens develop, such as the use of the “Europe route,”and the shift from mar-

riage to parent migration (which relies on children’s Dutch citizenship). What makes these issues

even more critical to study are the pressures that have resulted from the C OVID-19 pandemic.

The pandemic prevented face-to-face contact and interrupted people’s movement. This had

consequences on how people handled legal requirements, such as securing appropriate housing,

finding adequate employment to meet the income criterion, and passing integration tests. Major

legal changes were proposed in the Netherlands in February 2020, almost in parallel to the

emergence of the pandemic. After two postponements (January 1, 2021, and July 1, 2021), the

proposed act came into force on January 1, 2022. Potential marriage migrants were under pres-

sure to start their family migration procedures before the implementation of the more restrictive

regulations.

National and international mobility restrictions during the pandemic (Martin &

Bergmann, 2021) led to changes in social networking and collective actions; thus, virtual commu-

nities in cyberspace became more widespread (for data on the increase in social media use, see

DataReportal, 2021,2022). Virtual space turned into an important arena for communication, dis-

semination of information, and emotional support. The Facebook group that we studied filled

such gaps. This research aimed to understand the legal and bureaucratic intricacies that couples

from Turkey and the Netherlands faced in their marriage migration process during the

COVID-19 pandemic by analyzing the role of a virtual community in developing coping strate-

gies among multiple agents (partners, as well as lawyers and moderators as third parties).

We employed two data sets: (a) an analysis of legislation and related case law and (b) a net-

nography. First, we studied Dutch legislation on family migration covering the period from

2004 through 2021. We also analyzed case law of the Dutch Central Appeals Tribunal and the

Court of Justice of the EU (ECJ) on family reunification of third-country nationals (nationals

from outside the EU) and Turks. Second, in the netnography, which encompasses the March

2021 through April 2022, we collected data on the experiences of couples engaged in marriage

migration and their involvement in the Facebook group “Hollanda Aile Birles¸imi/

Gezinshereniging”(The Netherlands Family Reunification) through participant observation

and semistructured interviews with members of the group.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Policies and many studies on family and family migration reflect a perspective on society and

family from the nation-state–centered point of view and are thus trapped in methodological

BIRTH OF A VIRTUAL COMMUNITY 479