Stranded: the impacts of COVID-19 in irregular migration and migrant smuggling

This research brief documents the impacts the COVID-19 response, coupled with border enforcement and migration estrictions have had on the journeys of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in transit irregularly and on their communities. Relying on recent empirical research and journalistic coverage, the brief pays specific attention to how measures against the pandemic may impact the activities of those behind irregular journeys – including migrant smuggling. For this we draw from data on the experiences of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in the context of irregular or clandestine journeys and the growing empirical evidence and insights from facilitators.

The COVID-19 pandemic challenges the ways in which we think about and perform mobility worldwide. Numerous scholars have started to think of the short and long-term implications the COVID-19 response will have on irregular migration, as the following weeks and months will be critical to document and understand the effects of the pandemic on mobility dynamics.

COVID-19 restrictions will not stop irregular migration nor smuggling activities. Evidence of migrants traveling irregularly during the contingency show that the coupling of the COVID-19 response with migration enforcement regulations has perhaps led to a temporary or seasonal suspension or reduction of smuggling activity, but has not eliminated the demand for services. Smuggling facilitators have simply adapted to shifts to the demand and enforcement restrictions (dynamics well known to them). Yet the closure of borders and other state-imposed mobility restrictions are effectively and intention ally redirecting migrants into more perilous landscapes where humanitarian support and rescue are often unavailable.

COVID-19 responses have furthered the precarity that migrants traveling irregularly face and will undoubtedly impact the facilitation of irregular migration. But claims of migrant smuggling undergoing radical changes or transformations must be taken with a grain of salt. The scholarship shows that state-sponsored efforts to dismantle or counter smuggling activity have greater impact on migrants, asylum seekers and refugees than on those who prey upon them. Narratives labelling the facilitation of irregular migration as hierarchical, mafia-like and inherently criminal have been used to justify stepped-up enforcement measures that foster the criminalization of those seeking to reach safety and those behind their journeys, yet leaving the reasons behind the demand for smuggling services intact.

Given the community-based nature of many migration facilitation practices, COVID-19 responses are also likely to impact the livelihoods of the communities that by virtue of being located on the migration pathway benefit from the presence of migrants and/or their journeys (shopkeepers, food vendors, renters of informal accommodation, etc.). Data show state-initiated efforts to counter irregular migration and its facilitation increase the levels of precarity and inequality of growing numbers of indigenous, tribal, pastoral and migrant communities around the world, which are increasingly confronted with the labelling of their community-based, long-standing forms of mobility, trade and solidarity under the migrant smuggling tag. There is a risk COVID-19 responses will further this process.

Any solutions to contain the reliance on irregular migration facilitation and to contribute to migrants’ safety under COVID-19 or any other future crises must recognize the systematic decrease of paths for safe, orderly and regular migration that motivate the demand for smuggling services, and the ways migration and border controls have systematically put migrants, asylum seekers and refugees and their communities at risk, leaving the structural reasons leading to the emergence of smuggling unattended. Otherwise, measures are likely to become further weaponized, and simply compound the uncertainty and danger those traveling and living irregularly already experience on the migration pathway, emboldening in the process all of those who benefit from their precarity.

This is a part of the policy brief published by Gabriella Sanchez and Luigi Achilli.