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ABSTRACT
This article analyses the European anti-smuggling agenda as an anti-policy that derives legitimacy from fighting ‘bad things’, in terms that mask political disagreement. By juxtaposing the agenda to the experiences and understandings of those whom such measures affect most directly – people migrating without authorisation to the EU – it uncovers the productivity of anti-smuggling and the political contestations surrounding it. Based on a qualitative analysis of 257 interviews carried out with 271 people who travelled – or sought to travel – across the Mediterranean Sea by boat using smuggling networks, the article highlights the complicity of governing authorities and officials with smuggling networks and practices, as well as the diversity and ambivalences of relationships between smugglers and the smuggled. Going further, the article points to the specific ways in which anti-smuggling is contested by those on the move, which expose a central political disagreement over the legitimacy of mobility across borders.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank all the research team, including Co-I's Angeliki Dimitriadi, Maria Pisani, Dallal Stevens, Nick Vaughan-Williams as well as research assistants supporting with interviewing on this project: Saleh Ahmed, Skerlida Agoli, Alba Cauchi, Sarah Mallia, Mario Gerada, Vasiliki Touhouliotis, and Emanuela dal Zotto. Thanks are also extended to our translators and transcribers, as well as to the research participants involved in the project. The authors wish to thank the reviewers as well as the special issue editors for helpful comments in support of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 While this article focuses primarily on policy developments in the EU, we use the term ‘European’ to reflect the terminology of the ‘European Agenda on Migration,’ and to acknowledge that EU anti-smuggling measures are implicated in localised policy and political contexts beyond the political entity of the EU itself.
3 http://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean. Notable is that many deaths are not noted because bodies are lost and decompose and therefore are not always counted (e.g. see Alonso and Nienass Citation2016).
8 These four pillars involve a reiteration of the EU's efforts to both secure its external borders and maintain a strong asylum policy, alongside the commitment to a new European policy on legal migration and an emphasis on ensuring a ‘robust fight against irregular migration, traffickers and smugglers’. http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-migration/background-information/docs/communication_on_the_european_agenda_on_migration_en.pdf.
9 For example, while the U.K. refused to participate in the relocation of arrivals within the EU, it nevertheless deployed various navy ships to support rescue missions and anti-smuggling efforts in the Mediterranean between Libya and Italy.
12 p. 8. http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-migration/background-information/docs/communication_on_the_european_agenda_on_migration_en.pdf We focus here on smuggling specifically, and do not have the space to analyse their differences. See the Protocol against Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Air, and Sea and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons.
13 See pp. 2–9. http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/e-library/documents/policies/asylum/general/docs/eu_action_plan_against_migrant_smuggling_en.pdf.
14 It thus equates smuggling with migrants (rather than with refugees), and engages smuggling as a highly violent and ruthless industry that requires dismantling. Page 1 http://ec.europaeu/dgs/home-affairs/e-library/documents/policies/asylum/general/docs/eu_action_plan_against_migrant_smuggling_en.pdf.
16 See https://eeas.europa.eu/csdp/missions-and-operations/eunavfor-med/pdf/factsheet_eunavfor_med_en.pdf.
18 The practice of secretly transporting people across international borders has, of course, a much longer history, prominently including individuals who smuggled Jews to safety from Nazi Germany, or political dissidents out of communist states during the Cold War. While smuggling did thus not suddenly emerge in the 1990s, its scope, diversity, and complexity grew as the Cold War ended, as did the interest of law enforcement, policymakers, and the academic community in the phenomenon (Kyle and Koslowski Citation2011, 7).
19 Difficulties in recruiting research participants in Malta due to reduced arrivals resulting from an ‘agreement’ with Italy during the time-period of our research led to some of the interviews being carried out at this site between December 2015 and March 2016.
20 Interviews were conducted by an international team of researchers in close cooperation with the project investigators. It is important to note that there exist differences in the backgrounds, experiences, and understandings of people travelling on different migratory routes. Whereas most of those crossing from Turkey to Greece were predominantly from Syria and Afghanistan as well as Iraq and Iran, the nationalities in Italy and Malta were more varied and included many from sub-Saharan Africa and the Horn of Africa (see Squire et al. Citation2017).
21 Under the EU-Turkey deal, those travelling from Turkey to Greece without authorisation are returned to Turkey if their asylum applications fail or if they do not apply for asylum. For the consequences this deal has had on those who remain ‘stuck’ in Turkey, see (Squire and Touhouliotis Citation2016).
22 Importantly, interviewees faced violence not only by police, but also by smugglers themselves. This will be explored in more detail in the following sections.
23 This more nuanced understanding of smuggling advanced by interviewees also matches self-representations by smugglers (see Achilli Citation2015).