Experiences of Uyghur Migration to Turkey and the United States: Issues of Religion, Law, Society, Residence, and Citizenship

<p dir="ltr">At least one million Uyghurs now live outside their homeland Xinjiang, also known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and East Turkistan. The experience of migration has been a reality for many years for these Diaspora Uyghurs. They reside in about 50 different countries around the world, but two locales where Uyghurs reside, Turkey and the US, will be the focus of this paper. First, I will describe the migrations to Turkey—when, why and how they were treated. Then I will focus on the US. Following that, I will describe and analyze the differing experiences of the various waves of migrants in light of five topics. The first topic is religion, where I will compare the traditional dichotomy of migration to a Muslim and/or a non-Muslim state, the<i> Dār al-Islām and Dār al-Kufr</i>. The second topic will be the issue of law and the implementation of changing laws during the periods of migration. The third topic is society, specifically the integration of migrants into their new home cultures. The fourth is residence, which encompasses both legal and illegal means of staying or residing in a country and how this impacts the fifth topic, citizenship. At every juncture, the relationship with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), looms large, affecting integration, legal status, business and political factors that impact the Uyghurs in the Diaspora. In the concluding remarks, I will address the issues of identity and the maintenance of Uyghur culture in the Diaspora and how this has been affected by the factors above.</p><h2>Other Information</h2><p dir="ltr">Published in: Migration and Islamic Ethics<br>License: <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0" target="_blank">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0</a><br>See chapter on publisher's website: <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004417342_011" target="_blank">https://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004417342_011</a></p>