Scrutinising the double disadvantage: knowledge production in the messy field of migrant smuggling

ABSTRACT

Human smuggling is a global phenomenon which has been difficult to research. Even though there is a large and growing literature on human smuggling, it lacks a systematic review of the major theoretical and conceptual approaches. Besides the lack of conceptual cohesion, there is fundamental lack of hard evidence to substantiate most aspects of the smuggling process because of methodological challenges. This ‘double disadvantage’ is an important explanation for theoretical as well as conceptual discrepancies in existing smuggling studies. In order to clarify and understand the diversity of theoretical approaches within the field of smuggling this article provides an overview of various readings of the literature. We identify a need to better understand how our knowledge about smuggling is constructed in this messy field. Furthermore, we question why we are producing particular types of knowledge and argue for more critical work in the field of human smuggling.

KEYWORDS:

• Human smuggling
• irregular migration
• theoretical approaches
• knowledge production
• ethics

Acknowledgements

Both authors would like to thank the three anonymous referees for invaluable comments on an earlier draft. Theodore Baird would like to thank Ninna Nyberg-Sorensen and the former DIIS Migration Unit for support and feedback on earlier versions of this paper. An earlier version of this paper was prepared as a working paper for the Danish Institute for International Studies. This paper received no specific funding. The usual disclaimers apply.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.