What do Turkish migrants think of family reunification procedures? Which strategies do they employ to be joined by their family members? How do they cope with changing policies? Classical legal research on family reunification does not take migrants’ perspectives into account, whereas in sociological research, laws and policies play only a marginal role. This socio-legal study adopts the perspective of the migrant ‘users’ of laws and policies. The research will yield much-needed insight in the interrelations between policy choices, legal change, rights perceptions and strategies of_migrants as regards family reunification. To that end, the cases of Belgium and the Netherlands will be carefully compared, with fieldwork in Ghent and Amsterdam respectively.