Books, Volumes, and Special Issues by Luigi Achilli
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The ANNALS of the American academy of political and social science, 2024
Contemporary research shows that current migration policies and technologies produce criminality.... more Contemporary research shows that current migration policies and technologies produce criminality. It would be advantageous, then, to understand how migrants make sense of and respond to these criminalizing migration policies, technologies, and practices. This volume delves deeply into criminalization processes, focusing on how migrants perceive and react to the enactment and implementation of policy. The articles take a close look at the day-to-day experiences of criminalized migrants, advancing our understanding of some of the societal effects of migration policies and of the relationship between criminalization and migration. The collection of work presented in this volume seeks to inspire more critical scholarship, given that public narratives about migration tend to present narratives of tragedy and despair only. We argue that policy and public understanding of migration can improve if we understand more about how, exactly, migrants respond to their criminalization and how they manage to sustain their migratory projects and their lives.
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Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024
Migrant smuggling is now more entrenched than ever in many regions around the world, with efforts... more Migrant smuggling is now more entrenched than ever in many regions around the world, with efforts to combat it both largely unsuccessful and often counterproductive. This edited volume explores human smuggling in several nuanced forms across diverse regions, examining its deep historical, social, economic, and cultural roots as well as its broad political consequences. Spanning issues around the world, the essays in this collection cover topics such as global migrant smuggling networks, government responses, multinational initiatives against human trafficking for sexual exploitation, representations of human smuggling in mainstream narratives of migration, and more. With nineteen new contributors, the third edition of Global Human Smuggling represents the progress of human smuggling research on every continent and offers a rare research-based and conceptual framework for the study of this critical global issue.
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Public Anthropologist, 2021
Download the entire special issue here: https://brill.com/view/journals/puan/3/1/puan.3.issue-1.x... more Download the entire special issue here: https://brill.com/view/journals/puan/3/1/puan.3.issue-1.xml
Introduction: Luigi Achilli and Gabriella Sanchez
Facilitating Irregular Migration into Malaysia and from Indonesia: Illicit Markets, Endemic Corruption and Symbolic Attempts to Overcome Impunity
Gerhard Hoffstaedter and Antje Missbach
Human Smuggling from Wollo, Ethiopia to Saudi Arabia: Askoblay Criminals or Enablers of Dreams?
Authors: Fekadu Adugna, Priya Deshingkar, and Adamnesh Atnafu
Fusion Points: The Perceived, Performed, and Passive Merging of Criminality and Mobility in Mexico
Author: Caitlyn Yates
Hollywood and the Myth of Criminal Convergence. The Case of Sicario: Day of the Soldado
Author: Alice Massari
Coordinated Mobility: Disrupting Narratives of Convergence in the Irregular Migration of Youth from the Gaza Strip
Author: Caitlin Procter
Coda: Criminal Convergence Narratives and the Illicit Global Economy
Author: Peter Andreas
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CRITICAL INSIGHTS ON IRREGULAR MIGRATION FACILITATION: GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES, 2019
In this short collection of essays, a group of scholars and practitioners sheds light on the expe... more In this short collection of essays, a group of scholars and practitioners sheds light on the experiences of the men, women and children who around the world work in the facilitation of migrant’s journeys –a practice that has been legally and often narrowly termed migrant smuggling. Relying on ethnographic work, archival research, and conceptual analyses, authors challenge the monolithic perceptions of smuggling as merely exploitative, inherently criminal, violent and male, by documenting the experiences of the people whose actions facilitate migration into Europe and the United States, across Africa, the Americas and the Pacific, and shedding light on everyday practices and interactions of mobility and their criminalization by the state.
Read the full-text of this RSCAS Book edited by Gabriella Sanchez and Luigi Achilli within the framework of the Migrant Smuggling Observatory.
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In this volume of The ANNALS, we present a collection of empirically based research projects on m... more In this volume of The ANNALS, we present a collection of empirically based research projects on migrant smuggling, seeking to create a more nuanced understanding of the topic that supersedes perspectives that are often found in mainstream narratives of unscrupulous and ruthless criminal gangs preying on vulnerable and desperate migrants.
The contributing authors rely on field data to reveal the complex and often symbiotic relationships between migrants and the people behind their journeys. Often misunderstood in juxtaposition to narratives of security and control, the lived experiences of migrants describe smuggling facilitators as relatives or close friends, acquaintances or distant operators—all members of a social net-
work of varying relational proximity. Vulnerability in migration grows as the travel distance and transit points increase and the density of one’s own community ties decreases. The procurement of smuggling services is always situated within the collective wisdom and lived experiences of the migrants and their communities, and the strategies to increase the odds of success and to reduce the hazards and uncertainty of traversing foreign terrains.
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Ce volume s’inscrit à la suite de plusieurs publications récentes de réflexions collectives qui o... more Ce volume s’inscrit à la suite de plusieurs publications récentes de réflexions collectives qui ont traité, en totalité ou en partie, des réfugiés palestiniens au Proche-Orient, en abordant également la question des camps. Nous proposons ainsi de poursuivre les débats, en réfléchissant explicitement à la question du temporaire qui se prolonge, et qui a tendance à se normaliser, et sur ses différents impacts politiques, socioéconomiques et urbains affectant les camps et les réfugiés palestiniens au cours de la période récente. Les articles de ce volume vont ainsi aborder plusieurs thèmes essentiels à cette compréhension : la cristallisation du provisoire dans les camps, et de ses effets, les questions de l’organisation politique et de la gouvernance dans les camps, du développement urbain, de l’habitat et des conditions de vie dans les camps et leurs alentours. Au final, les articles mettent en évidence que « le provisoire qui dure » ne fait pas des camps de réfugiés palestiniens au Proche-Orient des espaces d’exception figés, que ce soit au niveau de leur gouvernance ou organisation politique, de leurs caractéristiques urbaines, démographiques et socioéconomiques, ou encore au niveau de l’engagement politique de leurs habitants.
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L’interesse nei confronti dell’etnografia è cresciuto in questi ultimi anni in maniera proporzion... more L’interesse nei confronti dell’etnografia è cresciuto in questi ultimi anni in maniera proporzionale all’importanza che essa ha assunto all’interno della ricerca sociale. Proponendo una serie di riflessioni sull’antropologia contemporanea, questo volume intende approfondire alcuni aspetti della disciplina, come il posizionamento assunto dallo studioso, la criticità dell’oggetto in analisi e la re-invenzione della ricerca in situazioni di violenza, di conflitto, ribadendo l’assunto critico della non neutralità dell’indagine etnografica. Le diverse testimonianze raccolte sottolineano le difficoltà epistemologiche e metodologiche che inevitabilmente segnano il “lavoro sul campo” nel tentativo di evocare la problematicità che caratterizza il discorso etnografico nel cosiddetto “mondo contemporaneo”.
Saggi di Alessandro Monsutti, Annamaria Rivera, Ugo Fabietti, Roberto Malighetti, Annalisa d’Orsi, Antonio De Lauri, Luigi Achilli, Carolyn Nordstrom, Fabio Dei, Amalia Rossi.
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This book analyses the reproduction of national attachments in the context of protracted exile an... more This book analyses the reproduction of national attachments in the context of protracted exile and displacement among young men and adolescents living in al-Wihdat. What forms does Palestinian nationalism take in a country that has granted full citizenship rights to the majority of refugees? More generally, how does nationalism operate, and how do claims of national belonging articulate with other, apparently conflicting, national identities? How does a Palestinian national loyalty affect the relative assimilation of Palestinian refugees within the Jordanian socio-economic tissue anyway? Finally, how should we understand the great discomfort of refugees toward Palestinian political elites and political parties? The objectives of this book are to specify the fragmented experience of Palestinian people and the multiplicity of resources employed by them in the constitution and reproduction of Palestinian nationalism; to assess the significance of ‘the ordinary’ as analytical category in the process of political self-fashioning; and to explore the ambiguities and contradictions related to their nationalist allegiance, which refugees have to face when are called upon to confront the inconsistencies of daily life. Yet bringing the Palestinian example to the fore allows not only deepening this analysis but also exposes the limitations of an approach too reliant on resistance studies. Finally I demonstrate how a critical approach toward certain post-structuralist accounts of the political can create a more nuanced understanding of Palestinian refugees’ everyday life.
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Articles and essays in books by Luigi Achilli
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2024
The article investigates the role of transnational criminal groups in migration governance. Altho... more The article investigates the role of transnational criminal groups in migration governance. Although this topic has attracted increasing global attention due to the intersection of migration management and crime, academic research remains limited. Most studies tend to view criminal groups merely as threats to migration governance or as peripheral actors. The article advocates for a significant paradigm shift in conventional debate on transnational governance. Rather than merely viewing criminal groups as global challenges for various actors to tackle, we should acknowledge them as pivotal actors influencing these challenges. Based on empirical research on migrant smuggling and human trafficking in the Greece and Libya, the article sheds more light on the complex relationships between these criminal actors, state actors and other key stakeholders in migration governance. It shows how criminal groups not only disrupt but also actively shape migration governance, and may even play a crucial role in the functioning and reproduction of its legal apparatus. In so doing, the article transcends both mainstream perspectives that view crime as a mere challenge to migration governance and critical studies that frame the role of crime in migration governance solely in terms of a state-driven process of ‘criminalization’.
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Anti-trafficking review, 2024
This paper investigates the experiences of children associated with Boko Haram in Northeast Niger... more This paper investigates the experiences of children associated with Boko Haram in Northeast Nigeria. The central argument posits that, within highly coercive environments, exploitation and agency are mutually constitutive. While acknowledging the prevalent exploitation of these children, it is crucial to recognise how such exploitation is intimately connected to their agency. As economic, social, and political pressures mount, children may perceive participation in Boko Haram (and self-exploitation) as the only viable means to achieve various goals-from protecting their families and communities to seeking self-significance. Consequently, exploitation-whether orchestrated by group leaders or members-may be consciously embraced by children as a means to create new horizons of possibilities. Simultaneously, by engaging in Boko Haram's activities, children reproduce a system aimed to their own exploitation and vilification. Neglecting the complexities inherent in children's associations with Boko Haram has potential implications for their reintegration and community healing processes.
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The American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2024
A widespread narrative in policy and media circles is that criminal organizations’ exploitation o... more A widespread narrative in policy and media circles is that criminal organizations’ exploitation of migrants amounts to “modern slavery.” The research presented here argues for a different understanding that includes migrant agency. I examine the interactions of migrants—specifically Syrian unaccompanied minors—within illicit economies in Lebanon. I use the notion of “markets of dispossession” to explain the intricate relationship binding migration policy, migrant agency, and crime formation. The term shows how, rather than stemming from extensive criminal enterprises, the “crime” associated with these economies often emerges from myriad micro-interactions, decisions, and acts of resilience by disenfranchised individuals, like unaccompanied minors, navigating restrictive policies and their subsequent criminalization. I go on to argue that acknowledging the agency of the minor migrants in criminalized systems underscores the importance of addressing the poverty, inequality, and social instability that compel their participation in these markets of dispossession.
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Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023
The study focuses on the visual depiction of smugglers in the two main Italian newspapers between... more The study focuses on the visual depiction of smugglers in the two main Italian newspapers between 2015 and 2016 – a key destination and transit country during the so-called migrant crisis”. What they show is that against a general hysteria about the smuggler in narratives on human and national security, the subject is rather absent at the visual level. The divergence between the narrative overrepresentation of the smugglers and their concomitant visual absence in mainstream channels of communication – the authors argue – ultimately fuels increasingly punitive migration regimes in Italy and, at large, the European Union.
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Elgar Handbooks in Migration, 2023
This chapter sheds light on the displacement of violence-torn communities across the Eastern Medi... more This chapter sheds light on the displacement of violence-torn communities across the Eastern Mediterranean and Central American routes. Global trends of insecurity and the shrinking of legal channels of migration along both routes have fundamentally shaped the everyday lives of migrants, prompting irregular journeys that have significantly increased people’s dependence on mechanisms of exploitation. At the crossroads of transnational flows and global connections, cities like Tijuana (Mexico) and Izmir (Turkey) have become “precarious transit zones” where migrants are often caught up in what scholars have called “regimes of mobility”, produced at the nexus of exclusionary state policies and increased circulation around the globe. Here, they live in a liminal state of transit for weeks, months, or even years as they attempt to cross borders, earn enough to live on, secure food and shelter, and find protection. This liminality and disconnection from core familial, spatial, and social networks opens the door not only to new types of exploitation but also novel avenues for agency. This is most immediately evident in the involvement of migrants in illicit markets – human smuggling, human trafficking and the drug trade – as a consequence of their protracted condition of immobility and vulnerability. It is in this context of protracted precarity and shrinking possibilities of legal, safe mobility that the boundaries between victims/exploiters, refugees/migrants, and pull/push factors blur. Not only do migrants’ journeys illustrate migrants’ limited capacity to navigate changing border-control scenarios but, more importantly, also problematize simplistic categorizations functional to the security apparatus.
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The Evolution of Illicit Flows: Displacement and Convergence among Transnational Crime, edited by Ernesto U. Savona, Rob T. Guerette, and Alberto Aziani. Springer, 2022
By building on a mixed-methods approach that combines the use of secondary sources with ethnograp... more By building on a mixed-methods approach that combines the use of secondary sources with ethnographic research, this paper compares two separate smuggling contexts-the Eastern Mediterranean route via Turkey and the Central Mediterranean corridor via Libya. While the analysis provides an overview of the phenomenon since its inception in the early 1990s, primarily it focuses on its evolution over the last five years. Comparing these two smuggling routes allows for a broader consideration of the nature of human smuggling and border controls, insofar as these two routes constitute the most important smuggling hubs in the world. Furthermore, European Union Member States' responses to human smuggling have hitherto been fairly homogenous-criminalizing clandestine migration, while, simultaneously, militarizing border control. However, human smuggling has been in a continual state of evolution within both these contexts, with smugglers employing a wide range of techniques along the Eastern Mediterranean route and across the Central Mediterranean corridor, respectively. This chapter identifies the similarities and differences in the organizational structures of these respective smuggling networks, provides profiles of human smugglers, and sheds light on the smuggler-migrant relationship. In so doing, the analysis presented in this chapter attempts to provide a nuanced and comprehensive understanding of how enforcement and policy interventions are primarily responsible for the convergence and displacement of smuggling activities within the region.
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JEMS, 2022
Child migration has generated shock, the global public appalled by photos of corpses of children ... more Child migration has generated shock, the global public appalled by photos of corpses of children washed ashore or abandoned in deserts. However, despite the growing visibility of child migration there has been scant research into the practices and interactions often associated with the smuggling of minors. We still lack a clear understanding of the interactions between minors and smugglers that go beyond a stereotypical predator/victim frame. This paper is grounded in the conviction that any understanding of the complex interactions between minors and migrant smugglers requires an epistemic reversal in conventional learning and debate. Instead of investigating the systematic exploitation of vulnerable migrants at the hands of criminal rings, we need to focus on the capacity of minors to exert agency and craft new spheres of possibility in situations characterized (also) by exploitation and extreme dependence. The article does so by investigating the day-today interactions between facilitators and Syrian minors who left their country following the outbreak of the civil war in 2011. What will be shown is that minors' interactions with human smuggling provide them with new forms of action, while contending with exploitation, constraints or dependency.
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MIWANA Series, Palgrave, 2021
Despite its small size and an initial appearance of homogeneity, Jordan provides an excellent cas... more Despite its small size and an initial appearance of homogeneity, Jordan provides an excellent case study for a dynamic, relational, historically contingent and fluid approach to ethnic, political and religious minorities in the context of the imposition of a modern state system on complex and variegated traditional societies. In this volume, the editors and contributors have sought to bind together a fluid, dynamic and relational approach to the status and historical process involving the creation and absorption of minority groups within the Jordanian case study. As such, the volume produces a double contribution. On the one hand, it provides a fresh set of contributions to empirically and conceptually enrich and diversify our understanding of the modern history of the state and societal groups in today’s Jordan, and on the other hand, it provides an example of why and how scholars can challenge the static and discursively governmental-minded approaches to minorities and minoritisation—especially with respect to the traditional emphasis on demographic balances.
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Forum on Crime and Society, 2021
According to much contemporary literature on the illicit global economy, there is a convergence b... more According to much contemporary literature on the illicit global economy, there is a convergence between different groups involved in transnational organized crimes such as drug trafficking, smuggling of migrants and trafficking in persons, as well as terrorism. This has increased the urgency of countries’ efforts to stem irregular migration, and some countries have militarized their border controls. However, a closer look at two prominent groups, the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), shows that neither group has consistently used smuggling of migrants as a source of revenue. Moreover, the organization and aims of these two groups are geared towards the acquisition of territorial control, which does not match the short timescales and operational nimbleness required of migrant-smuggling groups. The authors thus argue that the oftalleged link between organized crime, terrorism and human smuggling is largely artificial.
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Debunking the Smuggler-Terrorist Nexus, 2019
Amid increasing terrorist violence in and beyond European countries, concerns have been raised ab... more Amid increasing terrorist violence in and beyond European countries, concerns have been raised about connections between illegal migration and terrorism. Regional armed conflicts in the Middle East have led to the massive migration of people in search of safe heavens and better livelihoods, pressing upon frontline countries in the Mediterranean and throughout the EU. Multiple government and intelligence agencies report that human smuggling networks have been identified as providing a readily available conduit through which terrorist groups such as the Islamic State and Al-Qaida can enter Europe and the U.S. These criminal travel networks are said to rely on highly effective transnational alliances involving service providers within source, transit and destination countries. There is also widespread consensus in the intelligence circles that terrorist groups rely on the practice of smuggling for financing of terrorist activity. Nonetheless, despite the region’s geopolitical significance and its demonstrated potential for spillover effects, scant systematic field research has been conducted by independent researchers to understand the purported nexus between terrorism and human smugglers within the Middle East into the Mediterranean. This constitutes a severe gap in knowledge which our study will address. In this paper, we debunk the nexus human smuggling-terrorism by comparing the Islamic State’s logistics with human smuggling networks’ modus operandi and organizational structures. Based on a mixed research approach that combines the analysis of a unique date-set (U.S. Special Forces) and an empirical research carried out among smugglers and migrants in the Middle East and across the Eastern Mediterranean route over the past two years, this paper will tackle the alleged connection between human smuggling and terrorist groups. What will be argued is that smuggling networks and terrorist networks have fundamental operational and structural differences. These operational and structural differences need to be taken into account in order to deconstruct harmful stereotypes on irregular migration and, consequently, develop adequate responses to analytically distinct phenomena.
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Books, Volumes, and Special Issues by Luigi Achilli
Introduction: Luigi Achilli and Gabriella Sanchez
Facilitating Irregular Migration into Malaysia and from Indonesia: Illicit Markets, Endemic Corruption and Symbolic Attempts to Overcome Impunity
Gerhard Hoffstaedter and Antje Missbach
Human Smuggling from Wollo, Ethiopia to Saudi Arabia: Askoblay Criminals or Enablers of Dreams?
Authors: Fekadu Adugna, Priya Deshingkar, and Adamnesh Atnafu
Fusion Points: The Perceived, Performed, and Passive Merging of Criminality and Mobility in Mexico
Author: Caitlyn Yates
Hollywood and the Myth of Criminal Convergence. The Case of Sicario: Day of the Soldado
Author: Alice Massari
Coordinated Mobility: Disrupting Narratives of Convergence in the Irregular Migration of Youth from the Gaza Strip
Author: Caitlin Procter
Coda: Criminal Convergence Narratives and the Illicit Global Economy
Author: Peter Andreas
Read the full-text of this RSCAS Book edited by Gabriella Sanchez and Luigi Achilli within the framework of the Migrant Smuggling Observatory.
The contributing authors rely on field data to reveal the complex and often symbiotic relationships between migrants and the people behind their journeys. Often misunderstood in juxtaposition to narratives of security and control, the lived experiences of migrants describe smuggling facilitators as relatives or close friends, acquaintances or distant operators—all members of a social net-
work of varying relational proximity. Vulnerability in migration grows as the travel distance and transit points increase and the density of one’s own community ties decreases. The procurement of smuggling services is always situated within the collective wisdom and lived experiences of the migrants and their communities, and the strategies to increase the odds of success and to reduce the hazards and uncertainty of traversing foreign terrains.
Saggi di Alessandro Monsutti, Annamaria Rivera, Ugo Fabietti, Roberto Malighetti, Annalisa d’Orsi, Antonio De Lauri, Luigi Achilli, Carolyn Nordstrom, Fabio Dei, Amalia Rossi.
Articles and essays in books by Luigi Achilli
Introduction: Luigi Achilli and Gabriella Sanchez
Facilitating Irregular Migration into Malaysia and from Indonesia: Illicit Markets, Endemic Corruption and Symbolic Attempts to Overcome Impunity
Gerhard Hoffstaedter and Antje Missbach
Human Smuggling from Wollo, Ethiopia to Saudi Arabia: Askoblay Criminals or Enablers of Dreams?
Authors: Fekadu Adugna, Priya Deshingkar, and Adamnesh Atnafu
Fusion Points: The Perceived, Performed, and Passive Merging of Criminality and Mobility in Mexico
Author: Caitlyn Yates
Hollywood and the Myth of Criminal Convergence. The Case of Sicario: Day of the Soldado
Author: Alice Massari
Coordinated Mobility: Disrupting Narratives of Convergence in the Irregular Migration of Youth from the Gaza Strip
Author: Caitlin Procter
Coda: Criminal Convergence Narratives and the Illicit Global Economy
Author: Peter Andreas
Read the full-text of this RSCAS Book edited by Gabriella Sanchez and Luigi Achilli within the framework of the Migrant Smuggling Observatory.
The contributing authors rely on field data to reveal the complex and often symbiotic relationships between migrants and the people behind their journeys. Often misunderstood in juxtaposition to narratives of security and control, the lived experiences of migrants describe smuggling facilitators as relatives or close friends, acquaintances or distant operators—all members of a social net-
work of varying relational proximity. Vulnerability in migration grows as the travel distance and transit points increase and the density of one’s own community ties decreases. The procurement of smuggling services is always situated within the collective wisdom and lived experiences of the migrants and their communities, and the strategies to increase the odds of success and to reduce the hazards and uncertainty of traversing foreign terrains.
Saggi di Alessandro Monsutti, Annamaria Rivera, Ugo Fabietti, Roberto Malighetti, Annalisa d’Orsi, Antonio De Lauri, Luigi Achilli, Carolyn Nordstrom, Fabio Dei, Amalia Rossi.
À travers une analyse des camps de réfugiés palestiniens en Jordanie, cet article montre que, afin de rendre compte de la multi-dimensionnalité qui caractérise l’expérience des réfugiés dans les camps, il est nécessaire de s’intéresser aux processus complexes par lesquels ces espaces deviennent des lieux « exceptionnels », mais aussi « ordinaires ». Le fonctionnement des camps en tant qu’ « espaces d’ambiguïté » est ainsi le concept qui permet le mieux de saisir leur nature. En Jordanie, c’est le caractère ambigu des camps de réfugiés palestiniens qui permet de garantir une forme de stabilité politique. Afin de mettre en évidence cette ambiguïté, après avoir étudié son origine et sa mise en place, les auteurs analysent sa spatialisation dans les camps, en s’intéressant à la gestion de ces lieux. Il montre que la re-production de cette ambiguïté est le fait des acteurs en charge des camps, ainsi que des réfugiés eux-mêmes.
The COVID-19 pandemic challenges the ways in which we think about and perform mobility worldwide. Numerous scholars have started to think of the short and long-term implications the COVID-19 response will have on irregular migration, as the following weeks and months will be critical to document and understand the effects of the pandemic on mobility dynamics.
COVID-19 restrictions will not stop irregular migration nor smuggling activities. Evidence of migrants traveling irregularly during the contingency show that the coupling of the COVID-19 response with migration enforcement regulations has perhaps led to a temporary or seasonal suspension or reduction of smuggling activity, but has not eliminated the demand for services. Smuggling facilitators have simply adapted to shifts to the demand and enforcement restrictions (dynamics well known to them). Yet the closure of borders and other state-imposed mobility restrictions are effectively and intentionally redirecting migrants into more perilous landscapes where humanitarian support and rescue are often unavailable.
COVID-19 responses have furthered the precarity that migrants traveling irregularly face and will undoubtedly impact the facilitation of irregular migration. But claims of migrant smuggling undergoing radical changes or transformations must be taken with a grain of salt. The scholarship shows that state-sponsored efforts to dismantle or counter smuggling activity have greater impact on migrants, asylum seekers and refugees than on those who prey upon them. Narratives labelling the facilitation of irregular migration as hierarchical, mafia-like and inherently criminal have been used to justify stepped-up enforcement measures that foster the criminalization of those seeking to reach safety and those behind their journeys, yet leaving the reasons behind the demand for smuggling services intact.
Given the community-based nature of many migration facilitation practices, COVID-19 responses are also likely to impact the livelihoods of the communities that by virtue of being located on the migration pathway benefit from the presence of migrants and/or their journeys (shopkeepers, food vendors, renters of informal accommodation, etc.). Data show state-initiated efforts to counter irregular migration and its facilitation increase the levels of precarity and inequality of growing numbers of indigenous, tribal, pastoral and migrant communities around the world, which are increasingly confronted with the labelling of their community-based, long-standing forms of mobility, trade and solidarity under the migrant smuggling tag. There is a risk COVID-19 responses will further this process.
Any solutions to contain the reliance on irregular migration facilitation and to contribute to migrants’ safety under COVID-19 or any other future crises must recognize the systematic decrease of paths for safe, orderly and regular migration that motivate the demand for smuggling services, and the ways migration and border controls have systematically put migrants, asylum seekers and refugees and their communities at risk, leaving the structural reasons leading to the emergence of smuggling unattended. Otherwise, measures are likely to become further weaponized, and simply compound the uncertainty and danger those traveling and living irregularly already experience on the migration pathway, emboldening in the process all of those who benefit from their precarity.
UNHCR in Jordan. The protracted nature of the Syrian crisis has
been dramatic: both the Syrian refugees themselves and the host
communities in Jordan are paying a high price. Further political
and economic deterioration may follow as the number of refugees
is simply too great for Jordan to deal with. The EU and its member
states have been actively involved in responding to the Syrian crisis
both in political and humanitarian terms. The European approach
has primarily consisted in providing support to the countries
bordering Syria, in order to contain the crisis within the Middle
East. However, as of 2014 and early 2015, worrying changes in the
Jordanian Government’s attitude towards Syrian refugees show how
such an approach is becoming unsustainable.
In this volume of The ANNALS, we present a collection of empirically based research projects on migrant smuggling, seeking to create a more nuanced understanding of the topic that supersedes perspectives that are often found in mainstream narratives of unscrupulous and ruthless criminal gangs preying on vulnerable and desperate migrants.
The contributing authors rely on field data to reveal the complex and often symbiotic relationships between migrants and the people behind their journeys. Often misunderstood in juxtaposition to narratives of security and control, the lived experiences of migrants describe smuggling facilitators as relatives or close friends, acquaintances or distant operators—all members of a social net-
work of varying relational proximity. Vulnerability in migration grows as the travel distance and transit points increase and the density of one’s own community ties decreases. The procurement of smuggling services is always situated within the collective wisdom and lived experiences of the migrants and their communities, and the strategies to increase the odds of success and to reduce the hazards and uncertainty of traversing foreign terrains.
Media and authorities conceive the fight against clandestine migration as a war, a war where the evil is represented by the smuggler. The question is: is this a worthy war? Human smugglers certainly bear responsibility for many of the tragedies we are currently witnessing in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. However, our knowledge of irregular migration facilitation is often plagued with fragmented perspectives on the socio-cultural dynamics of the migratory journey, the facilitator-traveller relationship and their community dimensions. This is hardly surprising. Scholarship on the facilitation of irregular migration often draws exclusively from the experiences of government or law enforcement entities, or of the migrants, refugees and asylum seekers who were the unfortunate target of threats, scams or violence during their clandestine journeys, further obscuring the perspectives of those playing a role in their transits.
In light of the necessity of elaborating an adequate policy response to human smuggling, a better comprehension of the phenomenon is pivotal to ensuring the stability of the receiving state and the security of the migrant/refugee. With this task in mind, this workshop aims to problematize the figure of the smugglers beyond overly simplistic generalizations and representations. There is a growing corpus of empirical and critical work on the facilitation or brokerage of irregular migration within migration regimes that deserves to be fostered and strengthened. We are proposing critical and empirical engagements on the topic of the facilitation and brokerage of irregular migration as witnessed regionally and comparatively.
The workshop is co-organised by the Migration Policy Centre of the European University Institute, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, and the National Security Studies Institute, University of Texas in El Paso.
All this has allowed for political leaders and authorities to frame clandestine migration processes as a war, a war where the evil is represented by the smugglers. But who are the smugglers? And to what extent does human smuggling actually jeopardise the security of the receiving state and that of the migrant? For those who have followed migration flows over the years, such doomsday narratives are far from new. The smuggler has long been the quintessential predator of late modernity, with his exploits occupying, and at times even dominating, media headlines via the display of graphic images of victimisation and death.
The emphasis on smuggling networks’ transnational ties, the smuggling/trafficking nexus, and the conceptualisation of human smuggling as fundamentally coercive have been endlessly mobilised to justify immigration enforcement operations. Yet, empirical evidence shows that human smuggling across the world is largely the sum of highly heterogeneous organisations operating on small scales and in short time frames; that these groups are characterised by a lack of solid hierarchies and the existence of interchangeable figures; that they provide a service that is in great demand without necessarily exploiting clients; and that the smuggler and the customer may, at times, be the same person. An effective eradication of these organisations without addressing the causes of clandestine migration may thus prove difficult, for smuggling networks are deeply enmeshed within migratory flows.
Nonetheless, nation states all over the world tend to remain overwhelmingly focused on implementing a security-based policy. The recently signed EU-Turkey agreement is in fact another clear step in this direction. The strategy has proven difficult – if not dubious – for a number of reasons. First, enforcement of irregular migration operations through deterrence has often proven inefficient. The evolution of smuggling across the Asian, American, and Mediterranean corridors demonstrates this with dramatic clarity. Effectively blocking smuggling groups has often resulted in redirected unauthorised migration flows onto different routes.
Second, the implementation of these security-based policies increases the level of risk faced by those on the move, who in an attempt to avoid detection often opt, with the hopes of reaching less precarious locations, for more remote and hence more dangerous travel mechanisms and routes. Finally, the militarisation of border control has accompanied a growing tendency of smuggling groups to specialise and to increase their capacity of delivering specialised services to would-be migrants in a systematic and standardised manner. This has led to the emergence of increasingly precarious conditions characterised by specific forms of smuggling violence afflicting those on the move.
The search for better policy
The urgency of migrant ‘crises’ all over the world calls for alternative policy measures. A better understanding of human smuggling is crucial in light of ensuring the security of the migrants and that of the receiving states.
On 5 and 6 April, an international group of scholars will gather at the European University Institute in Florence to challenge widely-held notions about smuggling and to provide an empirical basis for one of the least researched fields in migration studies: the facilitation of irregular migration. The workshop ‘critical approaches to irregular migration facilitation: dismantling the human smuggler narrative’ constitutes the first collective attempt to provide grounded and much needed critical notions in the area of human smuggling scholarship.
Our goal is to furnish unique insights into the much-debated issue of human smuggling, at a time when Europe is calling for the official return of strict immigration controls and restrictions to asylum conventions; America is witnessing the spectral return of the radical-right and supremacist groups; and calls for the establishment of walls, fences, and detention facilities for migrants and refugees seem to be spreading like wildfire.
Over the next few days, in preparation for the workshop and through a dual collaboration between openDemocracy and Allegra Lab, we will first present a round table that records our participants’ approaches to human smuggling. The following week we will publish a series of articles from the workshop participants on the main lessons found in their work. Drawing on firsthand work in Europe, the Middle East, southeast Asia, Oceania, Africa and the Americas, this series reveals smuggling as a complex practice that cannot be boiled down to the narrow parameters of transnational crime, violence and greed. In the words and works of our contributors, smuggling emerges instead as a far richer practice embedded in notions of collective solidarity and support. We invite you to join us in this global journey on the facilitation of migration across five continents.
Link to the round table is available here: https://opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/hsr/luigi-achilli-gabriella-sanchez/introducing-human-smugglers-roundtable
Link to the workshop is available here: http://www.migrationpolicycentre.eu/event/workshop-critical-approaches-irregular-migration-facilitation/