Why Take the Risk? Explaining Migrant Smuggling

Abstract

There is a clear legal distinction between migrant smuggling and human trafficking. The former involves a migrant voluntarily paying for clandestine transportation into another country; the latter involves people being coerced into moving against their will and exploited after arrival in their destination, either in their own or another country. While the risks associated with human trafficking are almost always greater, migrant smuggling is certainly not always risk-free. A large number of people die trying to cross land and sea borders without being detected by the authorities — as many as 2000 migrants each year trying to cross the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe and 400 trying to cross the Mexico-US border (GCIM, 2005). Smuggled migrants — especially women — can be confronted with discrimination, are obliged to accept the most menial informal sector jobs, can face specific health-related risks and are often at risk of exploitation by employers and landlords (Gencianos, 2004). Smuggled migrants with irregular status are barred from using the full range of services available to citizens and migrants with regular status and do not always make use of public services to which they are entitled, for example, emergency health care (Le Voy et al., 2004). Furthermore, migrant smuggling can effectively degrade into human trafficking, where a migrant is moved without fully paying off his or her debt to a smuggler, thus opening up the possibility for exploitation until the balance is repaid (Koser, 2007).