Migrant Smuggling Data and Research

(Álvarez and Fernández Zubieta, 2009) often obstaculize the collection of data.
Furthermore, fear of detection by criminal organizations – engaged in activities
ranging from drug trafficking to extortion, kidnapping and human trafficking
– and State authorities has forced migrants in transit to improvise the course
of their journeys in ways that often take them into more remote areas where
their levels of vulnerability (as in the risk of sustaining physical injury or death)
increase significantly (Vogt, 2013; Stillman, 2015; Knippen, Boggs and Meyer,
2015) and where research conditions are less than optimal. Yet, and while the
overall security conditions along the Mexican migration corridor have often
limited researchers’ ability to carry out fieldwork, a significant body of literature
on migrants’ experiences has emerged in the form of journalistic coverage, grey
literature and ethnographic research, allowing to map migration conditions
to some extent. Simultaneously, it must be acknowledged that academic
research, given the historical preponderance of the Mexican and, to a lesser
degree, the Central American migratory to the United States, is often limited
on its engagements with other regions and processes in the continent, which
are nonetheless worthy of examination (such as irregular migration from and
within South America and the Caribbean into the United States through Mexico
and intra- and transcontinental migration dynamics). The focus on the Northern
and Central regions of the continent has also further limited the possibility
of framing connections between these flows and those taking place in South
America and the Caribbean, which often rely on similar routes and mechanisms.
A more inclusive, Pan-American engagement with the smuggling phenomena
would translate into an improved, continent-wide understanding of smuggling
facilitation and other irregular migration practices. 105
While governments throughout the continent have often found
opportunities to articulate a steady message concerning migrants and the need
to foster conditions to preserve their rights and safety, actions in the area of
migrant protection have not been as consistent. The 2000 Protocol against the
Smuggling of Migrants has been signed and/or confirmed by most countries
across the continent, and efforts to typify human trafficking and smuggling
as statutory offenses have been successful in the context of the Palermo
Protocols. 106 Yet the international community has often pointed out immigration
policy and enforcement practices throughout Latin America have repeatedly had
a counterproductive effect on the human security of migrants, whose negative
encounters and interactions with criminal organizations and State actors have
been well documented in the literature (Casillas, 2010a and 2015; CNDH, 2009
105
For an extended discussion on reframing migration studies from within, refer to Herrera’s La Migración
desde el Lugar de Origen.
106
Mexico signed and ratified the Palermo Protocols in 2003. The federal legislation that typified human
trafficking as a crime – known as the Law to Prevent and Punish Human Trafficking – was enacted in 2007.
Migrant Smuggling Data and Research:
A global review of the emerging evidence base
271