Smuggling Networks Research Articles

Prostitution and Migrant Smuggling Networks Operating between Central America, Mexico, and the United States

During the past five years, a process of specialization has taken place in migrant smuggling networks that has led to the strengthening of those focused on transporting women. The reasons are that migrant women have been less affected than men by the violence in Mexico and that the adult entertainment industry pays the highest prices for irregular migrants. In-depth interviews with procurers, smugglers, and women from Central America describe the operation of the networks for the smuggling of women for prostitution operating between Central America, Mexico, and the United States and indicate that the recruitment of women is usually not coercive and that the employment of minors is more frequent in the United States than in Mexico. En los últimos cinco años se ha producido un proceso de especialización de las redes de tráfico de migrantes que ha conducido a un fortalecimiento de aquellas que transportan mujeres. Esto se debe a dos motivos: Las mujeres migrantes se han visto menos afectadas que los hombres por la violencia en México, y la industria del entretenimiento adulto es la que más paga por los migrantes irregulares. Entrevistas en profundidad con proxenetas, traficantes de mujeres y mujeres de Centroamérica describen el funcionamiento de las redes de tráfico de mujeres empleadas en el sector de la prostitución que operan entre Centroamérica, México y Estados Unidos y concluyen que el reclutamiento de mujeres no se produce de modo coercitivo y el empleo de menores es mayor en Estados Unidos que en México.

Human Smuggling and Intentions to Migrate: Global Evidence from a Supply Shock Along Africa-to-Europe Migration Routes

Africa-to-Europe irregular migration depends heavily on human smuggling services. The demise of the Gaddafi regime in 2011 marked the end of a bilateral agreement between Italy and Libya and opened the Central Mediterranean Route for irregular border crossing. How did this remarkable increase in human smuggling services affect migration intentions in the rest of the region? This paper isolates a causal impact by exploiting the spatial dimension of the smuggling network and its change over time, which produced a heterogeneous decrease in bilateral migration distances between countries in Africa and Europe. We use this source of variation and a novel dataset of bilateral distances along irregular land and sea routes, combined with cross-country survey data on individual intentions to move from Africa to Europe between 2010 and 2012. Netting out pair- and country-by-time-specific fixed effects, we find a large negative effect of distance along smuggling routes on individual migration intentions. Shorter distances increase the willingness to migrate especially for youth, (medium) skilled individuals and those with a network abroad. The effect is stronger in origin countries not too far from Libya and with weak rule of law.

The Gold Kings: Sonū Smugglers in Johannesburg, Durban and Lourenço Marques, 1890s–1920s

This article opens up the 1914 case of smugglers Hira Naran and Dulabh Vira, to consider an illicit trade in gold between the eastern ports of southern Africa, east Africa and southern Asia. From a newly compiled database of two and a half thousand known gold dealers active in southern Africa between 1906 and 1926, it is evident that illicit gold dealing was a significant, if hidden, aspect of the region’s towns and ports. Gold was informally ‘exported’ from Johannesburg by an amorphous, diverse group of runners to Durban and Lourenço Marques. At the ports, Gujarati firms, increasingly marginalised by racial legislation, took a leading role in transmitting gold, or sonū, eastwards across the Indian Ocean. The article shows, rather than discusses in the abstract, how a transnational method can reveal hitherto obscure but important themes in southern African history. The article argues that a half-millennium-old indigenous gold trade between south-east Africa and India, in apparent decline by the 1870s, was invigorated by the growth of the Witwatersrand mining economy. Administrators saw the ports as important sites of regulation and restriction, but failed to rupture the old gold smuggling networks decisively, in ways that posed important, unresolvable questions about the institutional capacity of the South African state at its maritime gateways.

Human Trafficking and Human Smuggling to and from Eastern Sudan: Intended and Unintended Consequences of States’ Policies

This paper argues that irregular migration and human trafficking business are symptoms and consequences of political and legal failures on the part of the origin and host states. The crisis has been created, sustained and enabled by state-imposed human insecurities and highly restrictive border and asylum policies in the countries of origin, transit and destinations. Therefore, any attempt to solely deal with the symptoms including border control and implementation of legal measures to punish irregular migrants and traffickers are more likely to fail and less likely to affect the demand for its service. In an effort to stem the flow and combat human trafficking network, EU States have over-criminalized smugglers and provided financial assistance to oppressive governments in the name of poverty eradication but only to sustain the root causes of migration and trafficking crisis they aspire to tackle. States’ approach to over-criminalize human smugglers is leading to the transformation of smugglers into human traffickers jeopardizing refugees’ lives in the process. This paper explores the nexus between States’ migration policies and the surge of human trafficking business as well as the transformation of smugglers into human traffickers. Drawing from the Eritrean refugee experiences trafficked from Eastern Sudan to Egypt and Israel, this paper aims to shade some light on human trafficking and smuggling networks, and to fill the gaps in knowledge about the victims affected by the process. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2016.v5n1p215

A.Q. Khan Nuclear Smuggling Network

Abdul Qadeer Khan, widely viewed as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, was arrested on January 31, 2004 for his key role in the black market sale of nuclear technology and equipment to Iran, North Korea, Libya, and possibly others. A.Q. Khan’s nuclear smuggling network prospered throughout the 1980s and 1990s and was linked to middlemen and businesses in over 20 countries. The network offered buyers a menu of both technical expertise and materials with prices ranging from millions to hundreds of millions of dollars. The Khan network was ultimately exposed largely due to years of intelligence gathering by the United States and the United Kingdom. However, very few of the network’s members have been successfully prosecuted and the demand for nuclear material by both state and non-state actors continues. The exposure of Khan’s network confirmed that a non-state actor could procure and sell a turnkey nuclear weapons program to willing buyers.

Smuggling India: Deconstructing Western India's Illicit Export Trade, 1818–1870

AbstractIn the 1800s it was not only merchants from British India who participated in the expanding trade with China, but also those from the princely states who sought to profit from the increased demand for cash crops. Smuggling—just as most commercial activities unsanctioned by the Bombay Government were labelled—was a source of great anxiety for the colonial authorities in India, especially in the western territories. This article looks at smuggling activity in and around the Bombay Presidency during the first half of the nineteenth century. It will assert that local ‘smuggling’ was, in many cases, the continuation of pre-colonial trade relations, labelled as illegal as a result of ill-defined boundaries and ambiguous legal restrictions. In fact, the success of these activities was less a reflection of widespread criminality than structural weaknesses in the colonial administration. Evidence suggests that British anxieties over smuggling had a greater effect on the political economy of western India than the actual financial damage caused by the illicit trade. The coordinated subversive smuggling network, ultimately, did not exist, and held power largely as a figment of the imperial imagination.

The arming of non-state actors in the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula

Rebellious non-state actors of the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula have been arming themselves through smuggling networks operating in north-east Africa and the Middle East. They feature complex, dynamic, open systems which include many components of various organisational and national identities, and which are driven by various motives, united in order to accomplish the goal of arms smuggling. Previously, this system was dominated by the supply of Iranian large and high-quality weapon systems, mainly rockets, to the Palestinian Hamas, enabling them to build up military force that has sustained long-standing conflict against the stronger Israel. The Arab turmoil initiated dramatic changes in the arming system: Iran stopped, at least temporarily, the channelling of weapons to the Hamas due to its support of the Syrian opposition against the Assad regime. Egypt blocked many of Hamas's smuggling tunnels, intensifying Hamas's strategic isolation. Following the removal of Gaddafi and lack of government, Libya became a major arms source, serving mainly regional radical Islamic groups. Salafist jihadist groups in Sinai revolted against the Egyptian government, using huge local stockpiles of weapons and operational cooperation with Palestinian Islamists. This article argues that to survive, rebellious non-state actors must exploit arming opportunities in the physical, social and political environment, whereas securing shared borders is vital for defeating rebellious non-state actors. The arming of non-state actors should be analysed broadly, considering the needs of the civilian population among whom the militants are operating.

Consuming Europe: the moral significance of mobility and exchange at the Spanish–Moroccan border of Melilla

Situated on the north-eastern coast of Morocco, Melilla is a fenced territory of 12 square kilometres under Spanish sovereignty since 1497. Over the course of the twentieth century, and particularly after Spain's incorporation into the European Community (1986), Melilla's fiscal and geo-political status has triggered the growth of a black market economy built on a large variety of cross-border activities, most commonly the smuggling of basic commodities and luxury goods. This paper examines the connections between different forms of exchange linking the Iberian Peninsula to the Spanish enclave of Melilla, and Melilla to the neighbouring Moroccan province of Nador. Different forms of exchange rely on one another – from the family links on which smuggling networks are built, to the migratory tradition which connects Nador to Spain and to a number of European capitals and which has influenced patterns of exchange across the border in unexpected ways. In particular, this paper explores how the assimilation on the part of Nadori emigrants of Western consumption practices, or rather, of what emigrants identify as Western consumption practices, has generated, in Nador, a growing demand for certain goods which are now seen as objects of prestige and markers of status. This demand, in turn, has shaped smuggling practices. It is argued that, in the Melillan context, commodity exchange across the border cannot be properly understood without considering the processes by which certain ideas and conceptions have been appropriated and transformed through long-standing migratory practices linking the Moroccan Eastern Rif to the Iberian Peninsula and beyond.

White But Illegal: Undocumented Madeiran Immigration to South Africa, 1920s–1970s

Illegal entry was a central feature of the Madeiran immigrant experience in South Africa between the 1920s and 1970s. Unskilled Madeirans, who were generally not welcomed by the South African state, tapped into human smuggling networks to enter the country. It was a common practice to work illegally on farms or in shops owned by legally resident Madeirans. A large portion of these eventually secured work permits after having worked in the country for long periods. Not only were illegal immigrants generally destitute and illiterate, but they had to live under the radar to avoid arrest and deportation. In spite of their official status as ‘white’ and the many advantages this offered them, illegal Madeirans lived on, at best, the fringes of white society for several decades.

The Uninvited: Refugees at the Rich Man's Gate

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Patrick Ettinger . Imaginary Lines: Border Enforcement and the Origins of Undocumented Immigration, 1882–1930 . Austin : University of Texas Press . 2009 . Pp. xi, 244. $60.00.

The reports coming in from U.S. immigration officials stationed on the U.S.‐Mexico border were alarming. Transnational smuggling networks were surreptitiously transporting thousands of migrants across the border into the United States. Individuals who would have been excluded at regular ports of entry were easily entering the country without inspection through the country's “back door.” Every attempt immigration officials made to stem the tide was met with resistance, migrant ingenuity, and new technology. There seemed little that the U.S. government could do to remedy this broken immigration system. Contemporary readers might quickly place this characterization of the U.S.‐Mexico border in the late twentieth or early twenty‐first centuries. In fact, as Patrick Ettinger's book illustrates, these reports and the struggles of U.S. immigration officials to enforce a seemingly unenforceable border are a century old. Undocumented immigration into the United States became prevalent beginning in the late nineteenth century and involved a surprisingly diverse group of immigrants: Chinese, Japanese, Irish, Italians, Greeks, Syrians, and Mexicans. In his attempts to recover this largely unknown history, Ettinger offers a complex thesis. On the one hand, border control at both the U.S.‐Mexican and U.S.‐Canadian borders underwent an immense amount of change. Beginning in the 1880s, the two borders were mostly unguarded, existing only as “imaginary lines” that were easily traversed. By the 1930s, a highly regulated and professionalized system of border control was in place with dedicated immigrant inspection stations, border patrols, and policies. However, undocumented entry did not disappear. Border‐crossing patterns changed, but as we know from contemporary headlines and immigration debates, illicit entry of immigrants into the United States continues. Ettinger's goal, then, is to “understand and explain how a border to which so many resources had been devoted could undergo such little fundamental change” (p. 3).

The Role of Informal Institutions in U.S. Immigration Policy: The Case of Illegal Labor Migration from Kyrgyzstan

Immigration is a sensitive topic on the American political, social, and economic agenda. Globalization as well as the end of the Cold War have meant that people are on the move worldwide as never before. Millions of people from poor countries migrate to richer ones to provide better lives for themselves and their families through legal and illegal channels. Heated debates surround this subject. A dramatic divide persists between proponents, who equate immigration policy with civil rights, and opponents, who cite the burden of illegal immigration on public education and public welfare systems. The author argues that informal institutions involved in migration processes, such as migrant smuggling networks, explain why the current crisis persists. The role of informal institutions is examined by focusing on those who migrate from Kyrgyzstan to the United States seeking low‐wage labor. The author generalizes how formal and informal institutions interact in the processes of migration and how informal institutions decisively influence immigration‐related policies in the United States.

Network Elucidation Template: A framework for human-guided network inference

Network elucidation is the problem of inferring all parameters of a network from a subset of those parameters. We introduce the Network Elucidation Template (NET), which provides a framework upon which algorithms for such problems can be built. NET algorithms take advantage of novel methods for collaboration between human operators and computers. They use visualizations of the peculiar structures that appear in optimal solutions to aid the parameter search. By design, NET is at a high enough level of abstraction to describe a class of algorithms, as opposed to a single algorithm. Given a problem, and the structure of that problem, an effective instantiation of the template into an algorithm can be created. We describe one such instantiation: using a network flow framework to implement a NET algorithm for uncovering smuggling networks; as well as the general template.

Re‐Thinking Migrants’ Networks and Social Capital: A Case Study of Iranians in Turkey

AbstractExisting research on international migration has focused on the importance of social networks and social capital in the countries of origin and destination. However, much less is known about the importance of social networks and associated social capital in transit countries. Drawing on ethnographic research on Iranian transit migrants in Turkey, this paper argues that migrant networks and social capital are equally important in transit countries. These networks, however, do not always generate positive social capital for Iranian migrants as there are scarce resources and there is no “enforceable trust”. Iranian migrant networks reorganized in a transit country like Turkey are not static structures and they are largely affected by macro‐variables such as current immigration and asylum policies of Turkey and Europe, transnationalism and globalization, and other place‐specific features like Turkey’s location bridging East and West, the existence of human smuggling networks, and its proximity to Iran. But Iranian migrant networks in Turkey are also affected by micro‐variables, such as gender, religion, and ethnicity of individual migrants.

The Various ‘Safe’-House Profiles in East-European Human Smuggling and Trafficking

In examining the activities of eight networks involved in human smuggling and/or trafficking from Eastern Europe to Belgium, we focus on the function of the ‘safe’ houses they use. We compare our findings with those reported in the existing literature on safe houses, which mainly looks at Chinese human smuggling networks. The differences relate to trafficking for the purpose of female prostitution, to smuggling practices directly associated with illegal employment, and to the ‘integrated-business’ character of Balkan criminal entrepreneurship.

Illicit Activity and Proliferation: North Korean Smuggling Networks

Since public disclosure by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) of its uranium enrichment program in 2002 and the subsequent restarting of its plutonium reactor, policymakers and academics have expressed concern that the DPRK will one day export nuclear material or components. An examination of North Korea's involvement in nonnuclear criminal activities shows that the DPRK has established sophisticated transnational smuggling networks, some of which involve terrorist groups and others that have been able to distribute counterfeit currency and goods on U.S. territory. These networks provide North Korea with a significant amount of much-needed hard currency, but the DPRK regime's control over them has decreased over time. These developments suggest that North Korea has both the means and motivation for exporting nuclear material, and that concerns over nuclear export from the DPRK, authorized or not, are well founded. When placed in the context of the global nuclear black market, the North Korea case suggests that criminal networks are likely to play an increased role in future proliferation. In addition, it raises the concern that proliferation conducted through illicit networks will not always be well controlled by the supplier state. It is therefore imperative to track and curtail illicit networks not only because of the costs they impose, but also because of the deterrent value of countersmuggling efforts. New strategies that integrate law enforcement, counterproliferation, and nonproliferation tools are likely to have the greatest success in addressing the risks posed by illicit proliferation networks.

Smuggling in South Eastern Europe

The smuggling of migrants, narcotics, and weapons are currently some of the most important issues in the sphere of international crime. At the same time, they are essential to the issue of fighting terrorism. By analyzing the overall situation and the factors that encourage global terrorism, this paper argues that, apart from the risk posed by socalled rogue states, unstable states should also be a focus in efforts to combat terrorism. The term unstable states is used here to refer to states facing many unsettled internal issues, and which are likely to become a bridge or an interface for terrorists in their worldwide operations. Typical issues in unstable states (also known as “transitional states”) include high rates of organized crime, corruption, human trafficking, and trade in drugs and weapons; at the same time, such states are characterized by inefficient legal and governance structures, and weak central state power in general. According to this definition, a few countries in South Eastern Europe could be regarded as unstable states. A systematic effort to discover the routes used by smugglers of all kinds is needed if states are to concentrate their limited resources on solving these problems. Yet, it will only be possible to make forward progress in this respect by coordinating the efforts of executive, legislative, and judicial authorities in these countries, with the support of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and security experts of multinational corporations that currently deal with the transportation of people and goods. Professional support for this effort will require the implementation of the most recent scientific achievements and technologically advanced methods in uncovering smugglers and their cargos. The main goal of cooperative anti-trafficking and security efforts is the early detection and monitoring of all participants in a smuggling network. This achievement will create the conditions to deal with the network and its key strongholds—both physically and virtually—and to eliminate its vital infrastructure.

TO BE “EMPLACED”: FUZHOUNESE MIGRATION AND THE POLITICS OF DESTINATION

This article offers an exploration of what it means to be “emplaced” amidst the various spatial and temporal streams currently flowing through an emigrant village in the Fuzhou countryside along the southeast coast of China. These flows include both transnational currents resulting from two decades of mass emigration via human smuggling networks to the United States and other foreign destinations as well as national and translocal currents driven in part by Post-Mao reforms for market liberalization and China’s “opening up” (kaifang). Particularly, I aim to provide a corrective to the overemphasis of displacement as an experience outside of “home” and moreover, to the mystification of “home” sites as imaginary places simply of longing and belonging. My goal is not to dismiss symbolic understandings of mythical homelands but rather to better contextualize and refine assumptions of migrant displacement in relation to imaginations of locality and belonging from the empirical and phenomenological grounds of those who remained behind. Significantly, approaching issues of migrant identities and social formations from the location of dispersion rather than arrival enabled me to critically examine and situate existing analytic assumptions of displacement (e.g., as migrant nostalgia for “home”) alongside local theorizations of emplacement made by those who stayed put as others moved around them. As I will show for my Fuzhounese subjects, the ultimate form of displacement was seen and experienced as the result of immobility, rather than physical departure from a “home.”

Cigarette Smuggling: A Case Study of a Smuggling Network in Greece

Cigarette Smuggling: A Case Study of a Smuggling Network in Greece

It's time to scrap the NPT

Due to persisting demand-side factors and crumbling supply-side controls, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will probably be unable to prevent a likely proliferation rate of one or two additional nuclear weapons states per decade into the foreseeable future. Beyond being ineffective, I argue that the NPT will make this proliferation much more dangerous. The NPT is a major cause of opaque proliferation, which is both highly destabilising and makes use of transnational smuggling networks which are much more likely than states to pass nuclear components to terrorists. However, abandoning the NPT in favour of a more realistic regime governing the possession of nuclear weapons would help put transnational nuclear smuggling networks out of business and stabilise the inevitable spread of nuclear weapons.