Critical insights on irregular migration facilitation : global perspectives

The persona of the smuggler looms large in current narratives of migration worldwide. He—for the smuggler has been gendered as male – tends to be depicted as responsible for what has repeatedly been labelled as the European migration crisis; for the deaths of migrants in places as dissimilar as the Mediterranean, the Sahara, the Darien and the US-Mexico deserts and borderlands; and for the exploitation and suffering of migrant women and children. Smugglers are, in short, the masterminds behind the collapse of the efforts of governments to control irregular migration.

And yet, as many scholars have argued, the dominance of law enforcement perspectives in the definition and treatment of irregular migration facilitation practices has increasingly obscured the identities and experiences of the people whose efforts allow for the mobility of thousands of migrants around the world. And so a question emerges: who are those hidden by the smuggler label?

In this short collection of essays, a diverse group of scholars and practitioners sheds light on the experiences of actors widely spoken of but hardly ever included in the conversations around smuggling facilitation. These contributions challenge the monolithic perceptions of smuggling as merely exploitative, inherently criminal, violent and male, by documenting the experiences of the men, women and children whose actions facilitate migration along some of the most transited migration corridors worldwide. Hans Lucht narrates the devastating impacts that EU-driven control and confinement have had on Ghanaian migration brokers, known locally as connection men, and their communities. Kyunghee Kook describes the risks faced by the smugglers who facilitate the journeys of North Korean escapees. The authors demonstrate that those who facilitate migration processes are not exempt from stigma, criminalization, detention and violence, and are in fact often migrants themselves attempting to reach a destination, or residents along the migration pathway whose own possibilities of mobility are minimal at best. Wayne Palmer and Antje Missbach’s work examines the legal processes against young Indonesian men who participate in smuggling, while DHIA shares the findings of its study on the US detention practices involving circuit children, the boys and girls from the US Mexico border who are forcefully separated from their families as a result of their involvement in smuggling. Luigi Achilli also writes about children, providing an overview of the mechanisms that are developed for their specific protection in the context of smuggling journeys.

The authors are also cognizant of how irregular migration has given rise to specific forms of crime and violence. Stephanie Leutert and Caitlyn Yates write about migrant kidnapping in Mexico, while Conor O’Reilly outlines the challenges to conceptualizing and studying the same practice in the context of mobility. Tekalign Ayalew discusses abductions and the widely circulated representations of migrant ‘slavery’ in the African migration context. All the authors emphasize that violence targeting migrants in transit does not occur in a vacuum, having a strong connection to migration enforcement and controls, urging us as readers to reflect of how representations of migration are also shaped by colonial pasts and imaginaries and their long-lasting violent implications.

Along those lines, while Libya has been at the centre of the EU’s focus, knowledge of its actors is still limited to orientalist narratives of barbaric militias and tribes. Mark Micallef historicizes the processes that gave rise to the now challenging smuggling landscape in the country, while Alessandro Tinti examines the claims that have linked foreign fighters to migrant smuggling groups.

Paolo Campana and Gabriella Sanchez’s research challenges the dominant claim that smuggling is the domain of complex and hierarchical networks. Campana focuses on the Europe-bound smuggling market, while Sanchez describes the experiences of women prosecuted for smuggling in the United States, with similar conclusions. Both identify smuggling markets as having low barriers to participation, which allows for the participation of multiple actors, while also making these largely disposable. Sanchez also outlines the gendered impacts of smuggling criminalization, and the consequences of counter-smuggling operations on the children of women charged with the offense.

Sheldon Zhang closes this collection by posing a concluding question: can we dare to think the impossible? Are rational and realistic policies that focus on harm reduction while protecting the dignity of those traveling on the migration pathway worldwide – and those behind their journeys – a dream? Is a world without mobility restrictions possible or, in fact, merely unavoidable? We invite you to join the discussion, and to contribute to a much-delayed dialogue on the futures of mobility.

Read the full-text of this RSCAS Book edited by Gabriella Sanchez and Luigi Achilli within the framework of the Migrant Smuggling Observatory.