Mexican migrant-smuggling: A cross-border cottage industry

Abstract

As the United States has intensified surveillance of its southern border with Mexico, unauthorized migrants have become increasingly dependent on hired smugglers when they cross the border and reach their destinations in the US interior. According to the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, tighter border controls have systematically transformed migrant smuggling into a sophisticated and highly profitable industry dominated by large-scale criminal syndicates that prey on migrants desperate to enter the US without official authorization. In this article I argue that despite the rise of larger-scale smuggling organizations, smuggling of migrants across the US-Mexico border is still undertaken by small-scale and~or part-time smugglers who are embedded in the Mexican migrant community itself. Moreover, I suggest that the logic that predicts the elimination of small-scale smugglers from the market is flawed because it is based on an unrealistic assessment of the requirements for mounting a successful smuggling enterprise. I base this claim on preliminary findings from an ongoing ethnographic study of migrant smuggling on the South Texas-Northeast Mexico border that I began in summer 1998. Depuis que les Etats-Unis ont intensifid la surveillance de leur fronti&e avec le Mexique, les migrants non autoris~s ont de plus en plus recours aux passeurs de clandestins engages pour traverser la fronti~re et arriver ~ leur destination am~ricaine. Selon le United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (service d'immigration et de naturalisation des Etats-Unis), les renforcements du contr~le frontalier ont syst&natiquement transform~ la migration clandestine en une industrie perfectionnde et tr~s rentable domin~e par des associations de malfaiteurs qui exploitent les migrants voulant a tout prix rentrer aux Etats-Unis sans autorisation officielle. Dans cet article, nous faisons valoir le point de vue selon lequel une grande part de la migration clandestine entre les Etats-Unis et le Mexique est encore contr~lde par des passeurs dont le travail est d" envergure rdduite ou ?z temps partiel et qui sont intdgrds dans la communaut~ migrante mexicaine et ce, en depit de la mont~e des r~seaux de passeurs qui oeuvrent ~ grande dchelle. De plus, nous proposons que les prddictions voulant que les passeurs qui travaillent ?z petite dchelle seront dlimin~s du marchd ne sont pas fondees puisqu ' elles reposent sur une dvaluation peu rdaliste de ce qui est n~eessaire pour r~ussir le trafic d'immigrants. Des r~sultats pr~limi-naires d~coulant d'une recherche ethnographique en cours entreprise h l'dtd 1998 et portant sur le passage de clandestins le long de la fronti~re entre le sud du Texas et le nord-est du Mexique viennent appuyer cet argument.

New directions in exploring the migration industries: introduction to special issue

“…Some studies have focused on the illegal dimension, that is, the human smuggling industry (Kyle and Koslowski 2001;Laczko and Thompson 2000;Spener 2004); however, a more comprehensive approach to migration industry shows a structural interweaving of the informal and formal in migration facilitation and control. An ever expanding range of migration intermediaries, function within and without the legal structures set up by the State (Hugo 1996).…”

Subcontracting work via social networks: migrant Latino Labour and the rebuilding of New Orleans

“…subcontractors, coyotes, remittance carriers), theorising migrant social networks as solely comprised of family and hometown friends (Massey et al , 1987, 1998, 2002; Durand and Massey, 2004). Rather than operating in worlds apart, however, labour recruitment and the entrepreneurs who provide immigrant services are an integral part of network migration (Kissman, 2000; Spener, 2004; Hernández‐León, 2008). The experience of migrants who contributed to the rebuilding of New Orleans and their relationship to subcontractors evidences the overlapping, complex, and changing nature of social networks.…”

“…Many of the migrants' negative experiences with wage theft and other types of abuse occurred in the context of trying to get work independently after having just arrived or when other jobs had ended. Similar to studies of coyotes (Spener, 2001, 2004) or labour contractors in the agricultural sector (Griffith and Kissam, 1995; Krissman, 2000), using trusted subcontractors was an important strategy in avoiding abuse, especially for the most vulnerable undocumented or inexperienced migrant populations.…”

“…Hernández‐León (2005, 2008) demonstrated that ‘migration industry entrepreneurs’, including coyotes and money lenders, employers, labour contractors, ‘ride givers’ ( raiteros ), remittance companies, and other providers of migrant services inevitably include members of a migrant's social network, including family, friends, and paisanos . Spener (2001, 2004) documented the fact that coyotes who smuggle migrants into the US from Mexico for a fee are linked to migrants through indirect (and sometimes direct) networks of kinship and compadrazgo (co‐parents or fictive kin). In Spener's words, ‘smuggling enterprises do not just feed off or prey upon the migrant stream.…”

When the border educates: Malín Alegria’s Sofi Mendoza’s Guide to Getting Lost in Mexico (2007)

“…The post-9/11 policies for defending US boundaries have motivated the militarization of this border in particular. However, as many studies have shown, this fence and the obvious growing military presence in the area are not stopping the crossings but instead are promoting an organized illegal business aimed at passing people from one side to the other by smugglers and coyotes (Spener, 2004). A proven failure, the fence is the materialization of the step taken by President George W. Bush on the War on Terror, which shows conceptual similarities to Operation Wetback that was structured as a response to internal instability during the Cold War in the 1950s.…”