The numbers are difficult to grasp. According to recent figures, there are, globally, over 280 million international migrants defined as those living outside their country of birth; 110 million people forcibly displaced due to conflict, persecution and the like, up from around 40 million in 2009; and 169 million labour migrants. At the same time, several million people are smuggled across borders to places where they remain illegally.
In the face of these staggering figures, the attempt to control international migration via such instruments as visas, border checkpoints, walls and patrols, seems almost futile. The mostly academic contributors to the edited volume Global Human Smuggling say as much, adding that these measures are also unfair and dangerous, fueling the smuggling of people via “irregular” means. They also convincingly re-frame the migrant-smuggler relationship as one of client and service provider, rejecting the simplistic construct of migrant as victim and smuggler as exploiter. Combined with the numbers quoted above, the book delivers an unequivocal message: people are creative, determined and resilient. They are on the move for a better life and they aren’t going to stop.
Though migration to Canada is barely explored in the work’s 20 essays (the absence of a chapter on Roxham Road is an unfortunate oversight), they hold useful lessons for Ottawa policy makers as domestic support for relatively high immigration numbers erodes. Historically, this support was strong, based in part on the perception Canada managed immigration well. But huge increases in the number of temporary workers, international students and asylum seekers arriving here combined with a shortage of housing and a deterioration in public services, has led to the perception that Canada has lost control over the number of foreign nationals entering the country. The government is now taking measures to curb arrivals. Global Human Smuggling’s editors, Luigi Achilli and David Kyle would likely be skeptical of this turn. Barriers to legal migration, they argue, “create the conditions for some to try to cross borders outside state laws and programs at great personal risk”. In other words, despite the dangers or what the government tries, migrants are probably going to attempt to come anyway.
The book delivers an unequivocal message: People are creative, determined and resilient.
Achilli and Kyle assert that there is no universally accepted definition of the term “human smuggling”. They argue that media and political discourse describe smugglers less via their “logistical skills” or in legal terms, than through moral judgments that view them as nefarious operators, exploiting vulnerable, ill-informed migrants for profit. In contrast, the various contributors to their book present research soundly rejecting the notion of the migrant as victim. Over and over, in examples from Gaza to Ecuador to North Korea to Mexico, the authors illustrate how smugglers provide in-demand expertise in manoeuvring people around the barriers to migration that governments have imposed.
IRCC Migration Officers see this in their day-to-day work: visa application packages submitted by paid agents on behalf of would-be migrants hoping agent know-how can increase their chances of obtaining a visa. Though these packages are often of poor quality and applications rejected, the common view that naïve applicants are being “duped” by unscrupulous agents lacks nuance. Would-be migrants recognize that they likely stand almost no chance of obtaining a visa without outside support because of the rigorous requirements Canada imposes on them – so why not give agents a try? Officers (including myself) often decry this reliance on agents, but it’s difficult to argue with the thesis, repeated by multiple contributors to this book, that it’s high barriers to safe, legal migration – such as the impossibility for many of obtaining a visa – that drive applicants to these agents in the first place.
Risks are higher for migrants attempting to breach land and sea borders. Many essays trace the gradual “hardening” of borders through history, particularly along the US southern boundary. As recently as the 1990s, Mexican “smugglers” were little more than locals familiar with the border landscape, assisting fellow-countrymen for a fee to supplement earnings. But as border enforcement increased, so too did the sophistication and organization of smuggling operations, spurring yet more severe enforcement tactics by border officials in a self-perpetuating cycle that failed to curb illegal crossings. Instead, the problem is displaced. As smugglers professionalize, migrant journeys become more costly – and more dangerous. As a young Gazan reflects in the book’s final chapter, “What is there to be afraid of? I know people say going with a smuggler can be bad, but it’s better to try it and see than just stay here and wait to be killed by an airstrike.”
With Canada’s migration consensus in peril, it’s understandable that the government is attempting to reign in immigration.
With Canada’s migration consensus in peril, it’s understandable that the government is attempting to reign in immigration. But numbers may not be the problem, so much as the perceived failure to manage them effectively. Welcoming thousands of international students into strip-mall colleges offering bogus diplomas, for example, was hardly the foundation for a credible immigration program, as Canada’s immigration minister has more or less admitted. But Canada – like many Western countries with aging populations – needs people. And if we don’t manage the numbers properly, people are going to be knocking at our door regardless, though it will be via unpredictable routes that Canada can’t manage.
The days of Fortress Canada are gone. Even with formidable geographic barriers, irregular migrants make their way to Canada with the help of professional smugglers and agents. In addition, mobile devices and social media allow smugglers to advertise their services and, once hired, connect clients to their agents along migration routes; migrants, in turn, use social media to trade information, download maps, contact smugglers and pay fees from their phones. This communications and information flow can’t be stopped. Governments, including our own, are slow to acknowledge this reality. A quick read of even a few chapters of Global Human Smuggling would provide policy makers within the migration space with a useful counter-perspective to enforcement-focused solutions. IRCC Migration Officers – who have fewer and fewer opportunities to meet applicants because of processing pressures – could learn a great deal about the complex economic, social and security motivators driving migrants to move.
The criminalization of migrant smuggling, the book argues, simply drives activity underground. It’s also unfair – the International Organization for Migration states that “the availability of migration options is partly related to the lottery of birth.” With odds like these, it’s not surprising that human smuggling thrives.”
Global Human Smuggling
Buying freedom in a retreating world
Edited by Luigi Achilli and David Kyle
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS, DECEMBER 2023, 512 pp, $58.95
ISBN 978-1421447513
