3071-The political economy of new slavery

Jeroen Doomernik 47
often dangerous are border crossings within Europe. The recent deaths
of 58 Chinese in a Dutch lorry found at Dover is a sad illustration of the
dangers involved with what seemed a safe and simple journey by lorry.
Also the Oder and Neisse rivers dividing Poland from Germany are
known to have taken a number of victims in the past decade. All in all,
since 1993, around Europe more than 2,000 migrants are reported to
have perished (United Non-Profit).
Organized crime
As mentioned earlier, it is impossible to gauge the involvement of
organized crime syndicates in the smuggling of migrants. We merely
know that this involvement exists in general and in some migration
flows in particular, for instance, in the smuggling of Chinese migrants
to Northern America (Smith, 1997; Chin, 1999). Given the fact that
unsolicited migration becomes more difficult due to increased immigration
restrictions, there is every reason to assume that more and more
professionalism is required in order to smuggle migrants into a country.
Professionalism asks for division of labour and hence for organized
collaboration. In other words: we should anticipate an increase in the
involvement of organized crime groups in the smuggling business. This
development should worry us in several ways.
First of all, it is estimated that even today the amount of money
earned with the smuggling of human beings has already superseded the
profits made in the drugs trade (Ghosh, 1998). This then implies that
huge sums float around uncontrolled by tax inspectors and law enforcement
agencies and can readily be invested in other fields of criminal
entrepreneurship. Second, criminal organizations may easily be even
less interested in the well-being of clients, be it in transit or upon
arrival. Third, such gangs are known to actively recruit clients by misrepresenting
the facts regarding what the prospective migrant will face
once in the country of destination (Godfroid and Vinkx, 1999), thus
increasing the problems of all concerned except themselves.
It is interesting, in this context, to note parallels between past and
present rogue regimes in countries of origin. The German Democratic
Republic (East Germany) in its dire need for hard currency, between
1961 and 1989, sold 34,000 dissident citizens to the Federal Republic,
for between DM 40,000 and DM 95,847 each (Knauer, 1999). The
advantages were obvious. It does not seem very far-fetched to assume
similar operations still to take place, albeit by different methods. Until
recently Iraq, for example, was a police state par excellence and few
matters took place without the government, or its cronies, knowing