Bad Business: Human Smuggling Enterprises and Their (Dis)content

• In Event: Human Smuggling and the Criminalization of Rescue

Abstract

This paper asks, why do some migrants have positive experiences with their smugglers, while others describe dangerous neglect or even active abuse? To answer this question, I draw on 32 qualitative interviews with Gambian migrants, who have attempted to migrate illicitly towards Europe, and subsequently were either forced back or voluntarily repatriated. Previous academic literature uncovered social mechanisms structuring the migrant smuggler relationship in a way that protects the migrant from abuse. These mechanisms range from the reputation of the smuggler in the migrant community (Harney 1977; Salt, Stein 1997; Kyle, Koslowski 2011; Sorenson, Gammeltoft-Hansen 2013; Hérnandez-Léon 2013) to the embeddedness of smuggler and migrant in a social network (Bilger et al 2006; Icduygu & Toktas 2002) to a shared morality between migrant and smuggler (Achili 2018; Maher 2018). This paper explores the existence of these mechanisms in a new context: Gambian migration to Europe. I find that migrants trying to make it to Europe through this illicit ‘backway’ are vulnerable to a range of abuse from actors along the route. To help them pass, they hire smugglers to cross borders and inhospitable territory. There are different types of smuggling enterprises, and the type of smuggling enterprise determines the degree to which a smuggler has incentives to protect a migrant from dangers along the route. Additionally, recently, The Gambia, and West African transit countries through which migrants pass, have increasingly treated migrant smuggling as a crime. Consequentially, the secrecy in the process of searching for a smuggler increases, which undermines even those tenuous protective mechanisms. I thus identify several mechanisms which increase migrant vulnerability. I conducted these interviews across The Gambia in June 2022. The National Science Foundation funded this research.

Author

• Natalie Chwalisz, Middlebury College