The digital routes of human smuggling? Evidence from the UK

Diba, Parisa; Papanicolaou, Georgios; Antonopoulos, Georgios A.

doi:10.1057/s41300-019-00060-y

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Given that Internet penetration is extremely low in the developing countries and even more so in Eritrea (World Bank 2016) as well as those who choose to migrate irregularly tend to be 'digitally disadvantaged' (Sanchez 2017), this should not come as a surprise. Our data also indicate that human smugglers, who facilitate irregular migration of Eritreans, get involved in small-scale smuggling operations that do not require sophisticated use of ICT (which is not used by their potential clients either) but, quite simply, knowledge of the harsh local terrain and borderlands as well as purely practical skills (see Diba et al 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 65%

How Eritreans plan, fund and manage irregular migration, and the extent of involvement of ‘organised crime’

Whittle

Antonopoulos

2020

Crime Prev Community Saf

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The increased government, media and public focus on migration from Africa to the EU in the past few years has led to an explosion in reporting from governments, NGOs, academics and quasi-academia. Within this context, there are a number of basic assumptions and discourses in relation to these migratory processes from Africa. The first assumption, often put forward by the media, is that migrants from Africa intend to cross the Mediterranean Sea in an effort to reach Western European countries. The second assumption is that in their effort to cross the Mediterranean, African migrants are facilitated by 'criminal networks'. The third (and extremely popular in the last few years) assumption is that information and communication technologies have been instrumental in the planning of irregular migration and identifying smugglers to facilitate migration. The final assumption, which has also garnered increasing attention in recent years, is that understanding human smuggling finances can inform policies specifically targeting migrant smuggling. This article, which is based on in-depth interviews with Eritreans, who have migrated illegally in Egypt, aims to add to the understanding about how Eritrean people plan, fund and manage irregular migration journeys. In the process, it will attempt to debunk some of the common assumptions around irregular migration.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 65%

How Eritreans plan, fund and manage irregular migration, and the extent of involvement of ‘organised crime’

Whittle

Antonopoulos

2020

Crime Prev Community Saf

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“…The findings by Dekker et al (2018) go in the same direction: of the 51 Syrian refugees they have interviewed in the Netherlands, 80% had consulted social networking websites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Diba et al (2019) offer further evidence on the recourse to Facebook as source of information when searching for a smuggler. However, the use of social media, and information technology more generally, varies greatly among respondents.…”

Section: Gathering Informationmentioning

confidence: 83%

Choosing a Smuggler: Decision-making Amongst Migrants Smuggled to Europe

Campana

Gelsthorpe

2020

Eur J Crim Policy Res

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This paper explores how transactions between smugglers and migrants come about in the context of irregular migration. We first offer some theoretical reflections on the challenges that such a context poses to both parties-smugglers and migrants-and point to three main conditions under which smuggling transactions take place: illegality, asymmetrical information and low trust. Next, we explore the strategies that migrants and smugglers alike may employ to overcome these challenges. We focus on three broad sets of strategies related to information-gathering, to information-checking (reputation and the role of physical and virtual communities) and to developing substitutes for trust (guarantees, escrow services and hostage-taking strategies à la Thomas Schelling). To illustrate our reasoning, we draw on examples from published works as well as from a novel set of 43 qualitative interviews with migrants recently smuggled to Europe. Such interviews were carried out in a destination country (England) and in a transit country (Greece). Evidence from this work supports previous calls to move away from a simplistic "predator-victim" discourse.

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“…In the UK, migration that is facilitated by human smugglers falls under the general category of illegal immigration. The UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) firmly associates human smuggling with organised crime (Diba, Papanicolaou, and Antonopoulos 2019). According to statistics from 2018, three in five Britons supported the UK Home Office "hostile environment" policy, which makes it difficult for illegal immigrants to stay in the country (Wilson and Kirk 2018;quoted in Diba, Papanicolaou, and Antonopoulos 2019).…”

Section: Introduction: the Mo Robinson Casementioning

confidence: 99%

Free Mo Robinson: citizen engagement in response to a crime event on social media

Mayr

Statham

2021

Social Semiotics

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The growth of digital culture has opened up new spaces of engagement where interactive users discuss social issues, including crime. Given crime's ubiquity in popular culture, cultural criminologists argue that diverse emotional involvement with crime in popular cultural texts, such as social media, provides important insights into how citizens comprehend issues related to crime. Here, an analysis of emotion should be placed into the foreground (Hayward, K., and J. Young. 2004. "Cultural Criminology: Some Notes on the Script." Theoretical Criminology 8 (3): 259-273). Taking this as a cue to explore these often neglected popular moral and emotional aspects of crime, this article focuses on constructions of popular crime discourses, using citizens' responses to the Mo Robinson people smuggling case on Facebook as a case study. Applying multimodal critical discourse analysis and a framework for analysing evaluation, we reveal ideological themes through which participants judge crime, perpetrator and victims. Our analysis of the Free Mo Robinson Facebook page demonstrates that although social media has the potential to challenge and shift traditional narratives about crime, it can also perpetuate and amplify ideological narratives of crime control that fail to address the wider socio-political and structural contexts in which crime occurs.

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The digital routes of human smuggling? Evidence from the UK

Cited by 3 publications

References 32 publications

How Eritreans plan, fund and manage irregular migration, and the extent of involvement of ‘organised crime’

How Eritreans plan, fund and manage irregular migration, and the extent of involvement of ‘organised crime’

Choosing a Smuggler: Decision-making Amongst Migrants Smuggled to Europe

Free Mo Robinson: citizen engagement in response to a crime event on social media

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