Groundbreaking in its comprehensiveness, this book illuminates the migration of workers from Turkey to Western Europe with new perspectives previously overlooked in research. Indeed, this is the first study of its kind to cover the entire migration process, making extensive use of primary as well as secondary sources in four languages, and it draws on both the historiography and the social sciences of migration. It presents new analyses of the so-called 'push' factors behind this movement and explores the role of the sending state, the system and channels through which labour exits, the labouring population's attitudes towards moving to the West and the relevance of social networks in the migration process. The volume offers a critical assessment of the significance of Turkish labour migration with regard to the demand for foreign labour in Europe, with particular emphasis on the cases of Germany and the Netherlands.