CORRUPTION

International Affairs Forum Fall 2016
The Potential Correlation Between Migrant
Discrimination, Human Trafficking, and Smuggling
Dr. Erin Denton
London School of Economics and Political Science
This article is an exploratory discussion of implicit bias and in-group preferences that have marred
the contemporary humanitarian migrant crisis. This article’s primary scope is the potential correlation
between migrant discrimination, human trafficking, and smuggling. Trafficking and migrant narratives
are often presented as pejorative generalizations of the population in question. Such generalizations
bolster conceptions of “Otherness” as tangible continuums of space and time, perpetuating societal
modalities that foster inequality. This article addresses issues inherent to implicit bias, the praxis of
defining the migrant as the “Other”, the creation of heterotopic migrant spaces, and the potential for
migrant victimization.
The current economic, legal, political, and social context of the European Union has seen
an increase in the number of migrants arriving as asylum seekers and refugees. During the
summer of 2015, the unprecedented surge in the number of asylum seekers arriving at the
European territory resulted in diverging state and public responses. This humanitarian crisis
revealed that state and public security often veiled notions of state and public insecurity. Also, this
humanitarian crisis revealed issues inherent to principles of non-refoulement as described in the 1951
Refugee Convention. The migrant as Other is exemplified by the onto-praxis of internment camps and
confined segregation. He or she is unwelcome; he or she is uninvited. Why?
Article 33 of the 1951 Refugee Convention is the primary legal instrument employed to protect
refugees from policies of refoulement. It states, in part:
No Contracting State shall expel or return (“refouler”) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to
the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race,
religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.
The provision proscribes sovereign states from returning a refugee to a territory where his life or
freedom is threatened for one or more of the aforementioned conditions in the Convention’s Article 33.
This proscription, however, is muddled. Contracting states “bound” to the Convention have employed
various interpretations of the policy of non-refoulement. In essence, Article 33 grants asylum seekers
a de facto right to enter or be admitted to host territories. From the individual migrant’s perspective,
the issue is not entirely that of the right to be admitted into a territory: His concerns start long before
he reaches a host territory, his issues begin with fearing a threat to their lives, and his anxieties are
deeply embedded in their experiences of discrimination in their country of origin. They do not seek a
better life: they seek a life free from threats and persecution. Migrants are the Other long before their
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