Navigating borders and danger: the use of smugglers

Abstract

Discussion of smuggling dominated the media airwaves and policy pronouncements during the ‘migration crisis’ of 2015. The European response emphasised the predominance of ‘transnational smuggler networks’ in facilitating people into Europe with proposed expanded military action to ‘smash the trafficking gangs’1 and ‘disrupt’ the smuggler’s business model.2 In this story, smugglers were the ‘villains’ who were responsible for the exploitation and the loss of life of refugees and migrants in exchange for profit. But, as this chapter will show, this perspective is an over-simplification and obscures the reasons why people engaged the services of smugglers.

Every single one of the 500 people we spoke to had utilised the ‘services’ of a smuggler for at least one stage of their journeys from their place of origin to the place where we interviewed them. We know that migrant and refugees’ interactions with smugglers shape the routes, lengths and dangerousness of journeys (Salt and Hogarth, 2000; Van Liempt, 2007; Hernandez-Leon, 2008; Sanchez, 2015; Belloni, 2016; Tinti and Reitano, 2016). Our data presents an opportunity to elaborate on the use of smugglers across the different migration routes taken by the respondents (described in Chapter Three) to reach Greece, Italy, Malta and Turkey. Our findings also point to the need for policymakers to consider far more carefully the nuances of who smugglers are and what they do, as well as the, often intricate, relationships they develop with the people they are smuggling.