Migrant Smuggling Data and Research

Given extremely limited household incomes, very low education levels and compromised
health of Rohingya (ibid.), the “attractiveness” of Rohingya in the eyes of smugglers was not
entirely clear. Their capacity to pay for smuggling both before and after the smuggling process
was not immediately apparent. The results were even more unexpected in light of results of
other groups at risk of displacement and smuggling (for example, 8% of Hazara households in
Pakistan and 17% of households in Afghanistan were approached by smugglers).
The May 2015 events, however, shed new light on the smuggling of Rohingya, bringing into
stark relief the uneasy nexus between migrant smuggling and trafficking. It became clear –
initially through investigative journalism resulting in the exposure of Thai trafficking networks 98
– that Rohingya (and Bengali) of Cox’s Bazar were being smuggled into sophisticated trafficking
networks operating out of Thailand. In July 2015, the Thai attorney general’s office charged
104 people (including Thai officials) with human trafficking offences stemming from an
investigation into jungle camps and mass graves found on the Thai–Malaysian border where
Rohingya and others were held prisoners for ransom or sold into servitude (Barron and Lone,
2015).
The regional responses to the May 2015 humanitarian crisis, which were fragmented,
inconsistent and uncoordinated, demonstrated that despite a strong focus on countersmuggling
and anti-trafficking, the region was ill-prepared for an irregular flow of around
7,000 people, some of whom were refugees (McAuliffe, forthcoming). The lack of research on
Rohingya and the paucity of data on their irregular movements in the region was brought into
clear focus following the crisis.
Review of migrant smuggling research
There is a growing body of research on migrant smuggling in South-East
Asia and Australia, notwithstanding the difficulties in undertaking research on
a sensitive issue that is largely clandestine in nature. To assess the nature and
extent of research on smuggling in the region, the starting point was UNODC’s
October 2014 Annotated Bibliography on Migrant Smuggling in Asia (UNODC,
2014a). 99 The bibliography includes 76 publications from both academic and
grey literature, with a focus on migrant smuggling in South-East Asia or Australia
published between late 2010 and early 2014. The criteria used to compile the
bibliography comprised a mix of key subject words and terms (such as “irregular
migration”, “smuggling” and “routes”), as well as all countries in Asia. 100 To
supplement the UNODC bibliography, searches (for English-language materials
only) were conducted in Google scholar and ProQuest to locate additional
materials published in 2014 and 2015 (up until the end of 2015), which took
the number of research publications up to 104. A list of research published
since UNODC’s 2014 Annotated Bibliography is in the appendix. While gaps
are inevitable, the authors assess that the identified material provides both a
98
Reuters journalists Jason Szep and Andrew Marshall, among many others.
99
Note that the geographical scope of the bibliography is wider than that of the present chapter.
100
The full list of criteria can be found at pages 3–5 of the report.
228
9. South-East Asia and Australia