The missing link: the role of criminal groups in migration governance

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article investigates the role of transnational criminal groups in migration governance. Although this topic has attracted increasing global attention due to the intersection of migration management and crime, academic research remains limited. Most studies tend to view criminal groups merely as threats to migration governance or as peripheral actors. The article advocates for a significant paradigm shift in conventional debate on transnational governance. Rather than merely viewing criminal groups as global challenges for various actors to tackle, we should acknowledge them as pivotal actors influencing these challenges. Based on empirical research on migrant smuggling and human trafficking in the Greece and Libya, the article sheds more light on the complex relationships between these criminal actors, state actors and other key stakeholders in migration governance. It shows how criminal groups not only disrupt but also actively shape migration governance, and may even play a crucial role in the functioning and reproduction of its legal apparatus. In so doing, the article transcends both mainstream perspectives that view crime as a mere challenge to migration governance and critical studies that frame the role of crime in migration governance solely in terms of a state-driven process of ‘criminalization’.