Controlling Immigration and Organized Crime in the Netherlands. Dutch Developments and Debates on Human Smuggling and Trafficking

Abstract

Although 'trafficking in human beings' and 'human smuggling' are divergent crimes that refer to different articles in the Dutch Criminal Code, they both became strongly attached to 'world' of organized crime. Consequently, the government speaks of victims in case of people being trafficked and increasingly of offenders for those being smuggled. In this chapter, several global developments and incidents within the Netherlands have been described that have contributed to a climate in which human smuggling has evolved from a non-problematic fact or activity to a serious criminal offence that deregulates Dutch immigration and integration policies and ultimately threatens national security. This chapter focuses on the flows of people, transnational organized crime and international terrorism. As in most other western countries, migration policies in Netherlands are increasingly characterized in terms of migration control. Simultaneously migration policies focus on integration of settled immigrants at the expense of marginalizing and excluding illegal immigrants. Keywords: Dutch criminal code; Dutch immigration policies; human smuggling; illegal immigrants; international terrorism; migration control; Netherlands; organized crime; trafficking in human beings