Migrant Smuggling Data and Research

travel documents from friends and family members or purchasing or renting the
former for a one-time use, for example) (Kyle and Liang, 2001; Spener, 2009).
Historically, there is also a vast system of brokerage services – not unique to
Latin America – were licit and illicit services that facilitate travel processes
are marketed (such as the provision of travel documents by travel agencies,
mechanisms to obtain false or forged passports and other legal documents that
may allow for legal travel). 104 Yet increasing restrictions by migrant destination
countries imposed upon individuals unable to fulfil elaborate requirements are
key elements in the decision of those seeking to migrate – and who are unable to
secure the protections afforded by visas and passports – to opt for the services
of facilitators or brokers of migratory transits, known throughout the Americas
as coyotes or polleros.
Within the Americas, contemporary migration journeys have often been
explained as part of efforts to flee from the deteriorating human security
conditions in Central America and Mexico (afflicted by conflicts connected to
the presence of organized criminal groups, namely drug trafficking organizations
and transnational gangs) (Human Rights Watch, 2016), as responses to
economic insecurity throughout the continent (Red de Documentación de las
Organizaciones Defensoras de Migrantes (REDODEM), 2013 and 2014), and
as part of projects involving the reunification of families separated by earlier
migrations (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 2013).
Yet alongside migration efforts, it is also fundamental to highlight Latin America’s
role as a transit point in the journeys of transcontinental migrants fleeing war
zones or conflict regions throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia. While
acknowledged in the migration literature, transcontinental transit migration
in the Americas is one of the least explored themes on human mobility in the
region, and one that requires prompt empirical engagement.
As noted by other authors in this report, there are particular socioeconomic
and political factors that have made the study of smuggling – the facilitation of
transborder, irregular migration for a fee or in-kind payment – a complicated
proposition. In the Americas, the overall state of insecurity along many of
the most transited migration corridors, namely those in Northern and North-
Eastern Mexico (where thousands of migrants in transit have been reported
dead or missing) (Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH), 2013;
Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (CNDH), 2009 and 2011) and the
documented levels of corruption involving State actors throughout the region
104
Alpes (2013) has extensively documented the reliance of Cameroonian migrants on brokers. Kyle and Liang
(2001) provided perspectives of the facilitation of Chinese migration by “migration merchants”, a term
originally coined by Kyle (2000), who they refer to as an example of the embedded commodification of
migration: the individuals who profit from the migration of others regardless of legality.
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11. Latin America