Abstract
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 5 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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Notes
- 1.
Here, I am arguing against separating the categories of “migrants” and “refugees,” insofar as it obscures the complex motivations that guide someone’s journey to another country. As such, this chapter uses a more inclusive definition of a migrant as “any person who changes his or her country of usual residence” to indicate any person that moves to another country, under different circumstances and for a variety of reasons (see also Carling, 2015; United Nations Statistics Division, 1998).
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Achilli, L. (2022). Human Smuggling in the Mediterranean: A Comparative Analysis of the Central and Eastern Mediterranean Smuggling Routes. In: Savona, E.U., Guerette, R.T., Aziani, A. (eds) The Evolution of Illicit Flows. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95301-0_4
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