By Tuesday Reitano and Prem Mahadevan

This brief brings together key lessons emerging from GI-TOC research on the smuggling of migrants (SOM) between 2015-23. The research emphasises (1) The need to provide sufficient opportunities for legal migration (2) The importance of timing for enforcement-led responses (3) The adaptive nature of the smuggling industry, with route changes being implemented swiftly in response to seemingly formidable obstacles to population movement.

Hostility towards migrants has increased in the aftermath of COVID-19, however drivers of migration have intensified. Regional smuggling markets and routes are consolidating under influential poly-criminals, while governments crack down on smaller players. To counter this, state intervention efforts might consider prioritising the slowing, and ideally, the reversal of this consolidation. This would require a holistic approach that addresses migrant smuggling through development interventions, over solely concentrating on interdiction measures.

Policy implications

• Legal migration prospects offer a clear boundary between lawful and unlawful entry, facilitating prompt action for those not using established channels.

• Setting up humanitarian support infrastructure along smuggling routes could help mitigate power imbalances between migrants and smugglers

• Multilateral intelligence collection states with visa-free travel arrangements between them, could use tracking to detect criminal consolidation on key routes, enabling targeted interdiction and counter-action against smuggling networks.

• Differentiating between migrant smuggling networks: standalone operations vs. career criminal groups.

• Partnering with NGOs and CSOs could help map smuggling networks, as they often have access to migrant accounts.

• Strengthening of data collation capacity within law enforcement agencies could build up a longterm evidence base to curate policy responses.

Briefing Note 28

The Hague: Serious Organised Crime & Anti-Corruption Evidence (SOC ACE), 2024. 10p.

By Rhoda Margesson, Kristin Finklea

Migrant smuggling, also known as human smuggling, refers to the voluntary transportation of an individual across international borders, in violation of one or more countries’ laws. Smugglers facilitate migrant travel, typically in exchange for payment, sometimes using fraudulent identity documents and covert transit. While smuggled migrants agree to be smuggled—a condition that distinguishes the practice from human trafficking—they may be vulnerable to abuse by their smuggler or later become a trafficking victim. Various United Nations (U.N.) sources cite estimates that globally, migrant smuggling totals $7-$10 billion a year or more, but the full extent of the problem is not known. Through oversight hearings and proposed legislation, Congress has sought more information on migrant smuggling and on ways to deter and punish smugglers

Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2021. 3p.

By EUROPOL

Migrant smuggling continues to pose a challenge for police forces across the European Union. The criminal networks involved are complex and highly organised, diversifying routes and modus operandi in order to evade detection and increase profits. Meanwhile, migrants themselves are forced to risk their lives on the dangerous and unsafe transports offered by migrant smuggling networks. In this spotlight report, we cover the most important developments in the migrant smuggling landscape. The report details what the main features of modern migrant smuggling networks are, and how these networks administer themselves. It also explains phenomena such as criminal networks operating together in ‘joint ventures’, where illicit actors cooperate at various stages in the migrant smuggling chain.

Europol Spotlight Report series. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2023. 10p.

By Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera

Migration trends in the Americas recently have undergone a significant transformation. During the past few years, an increasing number of migrants and asylum seekers from different parts of the hemisphere—and other regions of the world, including Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and the African continent—have been undertaking a very long and arduous journey to the United States. Migrant mobility has been facilitated by sophisticated smuggling networks (that operate often in tandem with other criminal organizations) and corrupt officials.

Cambridge, MA: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, 2022. 15p,

Mixed Migration Centre and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

This snapshot focuses on how smugglers and refugees and migrants make contact in West and North Africa. It draws on 3,602 surveys of refugees and migrants who had used a smuggler or smugglers, conducted in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Libya and Tunisia from February 2021 to March 2022. It also draws on 356 smuggler surveys conducted in the same countries over June-October 2021. It provides analysis of the channels and the timing of contact between migrants and smugglers.

Mixed Migration Centre, 2022. 7p.

By United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

In April 2015, the UNODC Regional Office for Southeast Asia and the Pacific released the report Migrant Smuggling in Asia (Volume I), the result of an intensive effort to collect and share data and information on migrant smuggling spanning 28 States and territories in the Asia region. This new report, Migrant Smuggling in Asia and the Pacific (Volume II) builds on that work. Covering 40 States and territories, it expands upon the geographical scope of the previous report to include the Pacific and gives an updated overview of migrant smuggling in the region as a whole.

Bangkok, Thailand: UNODC, Regional Office for Southeast Asia and the Pacific , 2018. 339p.

By Andreas Schloenhardt

This research report identifies, outlines, and examines criminal offences pertaining to the smuggling of migrants in the ten ASEAN Member States. The report gives insight into the legislative framework relating to the criminalisation of smuggling of migrants in Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR), Malaysia, the Union of Myanmar (Myanmar), the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam. Domestic offences are compared to the criminalisation requirements set out in the United Nations Smuggling of Migrants Protocol and the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. Using this approach, similarities and differences to the international framework are highlighted and recommendations are developed to facilitate the accurate and comprehensive implementation of the Protocol requirements into domestic laws. Recent developments led by ASEAN to provide coordinated responses to smuggling of migrants and to facilitate cooperation and information exchange between Member States are also documented and their potential further explored. This report serves to assist ASEAN Member States in their efforts to prevent and combat the smuggling of migrants effectively, enhance international cooperation, protect the rights of smuggled migrants, and to strengthen the role of ASEAN in this field.

Bangkok, Thailand: United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Regional Office for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, 2019. 208p.