Migrant Smuggling Data and Research

migratory corridor. Brigden (2015) employed a multisited fieldwork strategy in El
Salvador, Mexico and the United States to trace the improvisational practices of
migrants travelling irregularly. Following a similar methodology, Guevara (2015)
mapped the reliance of migrants on the humanitarian shelters that are set up
along Mexico’s South Pacific route, as connected to the interactions of migrants
and their families with smugglers. Vogt (2013) traced the commodification
of migrants and their victimization by groups of organized criminals and the
solidification of predatory smuggling and kidnapping practices. The work of
Álvarez Velasco (2015) has been fundamental at mapping the migratory spaces
between the United States, Mexico and Ecuador and their configuration into
a migratory system that identifies the complexities of the smuggler-migrant
relationship. Stone-Cadena’s research on indigenous coyotes in Ecuador has also
bridged the gap on the ethnographic work linking migration from South America
to the United States, examining the strategies of mobility and social networking
deployed by migrants and smugglers in Ecuador’s Southern Highlands (2014).
While lesser explored, work on the journeys of transcontinental migrants from
West Africa to South America is also part of the ethnographic production in the
region. The doctoral work of Uriarte-Bálsamo and the ensuing publication of her
book (2009) provided important insights into the experience of Ghanaian and
Nigerian migrants travelling by boat to Argentina, Uruguay and the Bolivarian
Republic of Venezuela.
Conclusion and ways forward
For generations, migration processes have been an integral part of the
history of Latin America and a fundamental element of the identity of its people.
While mainstream migration perspectives continue to frame migrants primarily
as economic actors seeking to travel to locations where they can improve their
economic potential (Herrera, 2003), the approach has historically and structurally
failed to acknowledge the complexity of the factors leading to migration and the
individual desires of those who migrate. Among these knowledge gaps lies the
lack of scholarly engagements with the processes connected with the facilitation
of irregular migration, which, amid State narratives of national security and
claims over sovereignty, has become increasingly treated as a security threat,
its cultural and community dimensions often ignored by methodological
approaches that favour discourses of crime, victimization and violence. This
is not to suggest that migrant smuggling is not violent, or that its facilitators
are not likely to engage in abusive or exploitative behaviour – a statement of
that nature would not only be naïve but amiss. Instead, the statement calls
for the recognition of the need for approaches that are critical of how the
focus on violence as inherent to smuggling that has dominated scholarly and
policy engagements with smuggling facilitation in the Americas has limited the
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11. Latin America