Abstract

This paper analyses the impact of moral values on the meaning of the concept of territorial borders and the membership status of migrant workers through the lens of the moral constructivist approach. It suggests that shared values sit at the core of the states’ migration policies and law-making processes. States are not merely random collections of people that become a collective being but are communities of value that are consist of individuals who have shared values. Migrant workers’ status is determined by their membership to ‘community of value’ which arguably comprise of persons who use ‘porous values’ and/or ‘impermeable values’ to shape the legal terminology at the state level. The paper focuses on the case study of Turkey for the analysis of migration policy which concludes that socially constructed values influence the state policies and define borders and membership status of migrant workers. For the analysis, it uses primary data from interviews and participant observation; and secondary data from official legal documents collected in Turkey.