Migrant Smuggling Data and Research

Migration, either regular or irregular, follows a few predictable patterns.
At the micro or personal level, disparities in earnings draw individuals from lowwage
countries towards high-wage countries with prospect for greater personal
or family wealth. Wage differences between sending and receiving countries are
the most important factors for people to move (Harris and Todaro, 1970; Mahler,
1995). At the macrolevel, countries with shortage in labour attempt to recruit
workers from abroad to fill the demand of the economy. As the economy expands
or contracts, the labour market fluctuates and countries in need of labour thus
respond by encouraging or discouraging immigration. Individual labourers, on
the other hand, adjust and adapt to the cycles of economy. A state of equilibrium
is thus achieved through periodic redistributions of labour through migration
(Massey et al., 1998). International population migration thus becomes an
equalizing mechanism to balance the distribution of economic resources across
countries (Massey et al., 2002). Labour markets in post-industrial nations have
become bifurcated, with high pay and steady jobs on one end, low pay and
unstable jobs on the other. The dual labour markets are particularly salient in
major cities, such as Los Angeles and New York where managerial, administrative,
financial and technical jobs have achieved high levels of concentration and also
created high demands for low-wage services. Such a bifurcated labour market
structurally depends on a steady influx of cheap foreign labour to sustain itself
(Piore, 1979).
Beyond the earning disparity factor
Although wage differentials or relative deprivation and the prospect of
elevating one’s family status and financial standing in the sending country provide
a strong incentive for people to migrate, it is not a sufficient condition. Far more
people in developing countries are aware of the earning differentials and dream
of a life as an immigrant in a Western country than those who actually take the
journey. The fact that not more people from developing countries participate
in transnational migration suggests that the decision to migrate involves more
than monetary factors. Access to migrant smugglers and the ability to purchase
quality smuggling services become important factors in this decision-making
process.
Kinship and community ties, legal barriers and human smugglers, airlines,
railways and shipping companies, and even law firms, human rights groups
and anti-immigration activists are all part of this complex picture, each group
playing out some roles that directly or indirectly affect the flow and direction of
legal as well as illegal migration (Pieke, 1999). In practice, most migrants follow
existing networks to particular destinations rather than simply moving to the
country where most money can be made (Zhang, 2007). Facilitators (or migrant
smugglers) are important players in these existing migration networks.
Migrant Smuggling Data and Research:
A global review of the emerging evidence base
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