Who Is a Smuggler?

• Author: Gabriella Sanchez
• Profession: Research Fellow at the Migration Policy Centre, European University Institute (EUI), Florence
• Pages: 183-195

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14. WHO IS A SMUGGLER?

Gabriella Sanchez

1. Introduction

In the European narrative of migration, the spectre of the migrant

smuggler looms large. As the facilitator of a person’s clandestine or

irregular journey into a country or territory other than his or her

own, the smuggler is systematically portrayed as operating in vast

networks of transnational reach, and as driven by the mere desire

of nancial gain. He (for the smuggler has also been gendered as

male) is also portrayed as member of a vast criminal pantheon,

working alongside drug trackers and feared terrorists, whose

goals are to cross the EU’s borders undetected.

But the descriptions do not stop here. e smuggler, we are

told, is inherently heinous, as evidenced by the acts of violence he

perpetrates against gullible and vulnerable migrants. Harrowing

stories of smugglers who scam migrants of their lives’ savings, beat

them to death, sell them to brutal desert tribes or into prostitu-

tion, push them o of boats on the Mediterranean or force them

into freezing lorries, have for years shaped our collective under-

standing of one of the quintessential predators of late modernity.

e frequent reports involving migrant deaths by drowning or suf-

focation further cement the hate and dislike towards smugglers,

who are almost singlehandedly blamed for people’s tragic ends.

e pain and victimization endured by men, women and chil-

dren on the migration pathway must not be denied. ere is in

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