The Criminalization  of Human and  Humanitarian Smuggling

Scott Watson

doi:10.18357/mmd11201513273

Scott Watson University of Victoria

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18357/mmd11201513273

Abstract

This paper critically examines how states manage international migration through the criminalization of smuggling. I contend that the smuggling narrative relies on three categories to reduce the ambiguity associated with smuggling and undocumented migration: smugglers/humanitarians, legal/illegal entry, and agents/victims. The insistence on pure and unambiguous categories has renderd migration legible to states by denying the complexity of international migration, redefining humanitarian practices, reinforcing problematic depictions of organized crime and humanitarian actors, and denying the culpability of the state in the prevalence and danger of smuggling.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Aleinikoff, T. Alexander. 1992. “State-Centered Refugee Law: From Resettlement to Containment.” Michigan Journal of International Law. 14: 120-131.

American Friends Service Committee. 2014. “Defend Joe Callahan.”

http://afsc.org/event/defend-joe-callahan. Accessed July 26, 2014.

Aronowitz, Alexis A. 2001. “Smuggling and Trafficking in Human Beings: The Phenomenon, the Markets that Drive it and the Organisations that Promote it.” European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research. 9 (2): 163-195.

Barker, Catherine. 2013. “The People Smugglers’ Business Model.” Research Paper No. 2, 2012-13. Parliament of Australia, Canberra.

Bell, Stewart. 2013. “Suspected Organizer of MV Sun Sea Human Smuggling

Operation Believed Killed in Sri Lanka.” National Post, 8 October 2013.

Brian, Tara and Frank Laczko. 2014. Fatal Journeys: Tracking Lives Lost during Migration. Geneva: International Organization for Migration.

Cameron, Matthew. 2013. “From ‘Queue Jumpers’ to ‘Absolute Scum of the Earth’: Refugee and Organised Criminal Deviance in Australian Asylum Policy.”

Australian Journal of Politics & History. 59 (2): 241-259.

Canadian Council for Refugees, (CCR). 2008. “Proud to Aid and Abet Refugees” Campaign. http://ccrweb.ca/sites/ccrweb.ca/files/static-files/aidandabet/

aidandabetbackgrounder.pdf. Accessed May 20, 2015.

Canadian Press, The. 2014. “Top Court to Hear Three People Smuggling Cases.” The Canadian Press, 17 April 2014.

Carling, Jørgen. 2007. “Migration Control and Migrant Fatalities at the Spanish-

African Borders.” International Migration Review. 41 (2): 316-343.

CBC News. 2012. “American Caught in Human Smuggling Case Gets $5K Fine.” CBC News, November 1, 2012.

Chacón, Jennifer M. 2009. “Managing Migration through Crime.” Columbia Law Review Sidebar. 109: 135-148.

Chan, Wendy. 2005. “Undocumented Migrants and Bill C-1: The Criminalization of Race.” In Law Commission of Canada, ed. What is a Crime? Defining Criminal Conduct in Contemporary Society, Vancouver: UBC Press, 34-60.

Colbert, Douglas L. 1986. “Motion in Limine: Trial without Jury: A Government’s Weapon Against the Sanctuary Movement” Hofstra Law Review. 15: 5-77

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 1995. “Smugglers Or Samaritans in Tucson, Arizona:

Producing and Contesting Legal Truth.” American Ethnologist 22 (3): 549-571.

Crépeau, François. 2003. “The Fight Against Migrant Smuggling: Migration

Containment Over Refugee Protection.” In Van Selm, Joanne; Khoti Kamaga, John Morrison, Aninia Nadig, Sanja Spoljar-Vrzina and Loes van Willigen, eds. The Refugee Convention at Fifty: A View from Forced Migration Studies. Lanham:

Lexington Books, 173-185.

Cumming-Bruce, Nick. 2014. “Smugglers’ Rammed Migrants Boat, Sinking it, Group Says.” The New York Times, 15 September 2014.

De Genova, Nicholas and Natalie Peutz eds. 2010. The Deportation Regime:

Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement. Durham: Duke University Press

Desjardins, Lynn. 2014. “Supreme Court to Hear Rejected Refugee Claims.” Radio Canada International, 17 April 2014.

Eades, Diana. 2009. “Testing the Claims of Asylum Seekers: The Role of Language Analysis.” Language Assessment Quarterly 6 (1): 30-40.

Fahrmeir, Andreas, Olivier Faron, and Patrick Weil. 2005. Migration Control in the North Atlantic World: The Evolution of State Practices in Europe and the United States from the French Revolution to the Inter-War Period. Oxford: Berghahn Books.

Fassin, Didier and Estelle d’Halluin. 2005. “The Truth from the Body: Medical Certificates as Ultimate Evidence for Asylum Seekers.” American Anthropologist 107 (4): 597-608.

Gale, Peter. 2004. “The Refugee Crisis and Fear Populist Politics and Media

Discourse.” Journal of Sociology 40 (4): 321-340.

Goldring, Luin, Carolina Berinstein, and Judith K. Bernhard. 2009. “Institutionalizing Precarious Migratory Status in Canada.” Citizenship Studies 13 (3): 239-265.

Goodwin-Gill, Guy S. 1986. “International Law and the Detention of Refugees and Asylum Seekers.” International Migration Review: 193-219.

Government of Australia. 2014. Migration Amendment Act 2014.

http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;

query=Id%3A%22legislation%2Fbillhome%2Fr5303%22. Accessed May 20, 2015.

Government of Canada. 2001. Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Retrieved from http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/I-2.5/20120815/P1TT3xt3.html. Accessed February 15, 2015.

Hailbronner, Kay. 2007. “Detention of Asylum Seekers.” European Journal of

Migration and Law 9 (2): 159.

Hyndman, Jennifer. 2000. Managing Displacement: Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Içduygu, Ahmet and Sule Toktas. 2002. “How do Smuggling and Trafficking

Operate Via Irregular Border Crossings in the Middle East? Evidence from Fieldwork in Turkey.” International Migration 40 (6): 25-54.

Kagan, Michael. 2002. “Is Truth in the Eye of the Beholder-Objective Credibility

Assessment in Refugee Status Determination.” Georgetown Immigration Law

Journal. 17: 367-415.

Lahav, G. and V. Guiradon. 2000. “A Reappraisal of the State Sovereignty Debate: The Case of Migration Control.” Comparative Political Studies. 33 (2): 163-195.

Malkki, Liisa. 2015. The Need to Help: The Domestic Arts of International Humanitarianism. Durham, Duke University Press

Mainville, Justice. 2013. Canada v J.P., A-29-13 (Federal Court of Appeal 11 December 2013).

McAdam, Marika and Baumeister, Sebastian. 2010. “Issue Paper: A Short Introduction to Migrant Smuggling.” Geneva: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Michalowski, Raymond. 2007. “Border Militarization and Migrant Suffering: A Case of Transnational Social Injury.” Social Justice. 34(2): 62-76.

Nyers, Peter. 2003. “Abject Cosmopolitanism: The Politics of Protection in the Anti-Deportation Movement.” Third World Quarterly. 24 (6): 1069-1093.

Perrin, Benjamin. 2012. Migrant Smuggling: Canada’s Response to a Global Criminal Enterprise : With an Assessment of the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act (Bill C-4). Ottawa, Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

Pickering, Sharon. 2004. “The Production of Sovereignty and the Rise of Transversal Policing: People-Smuggling and Federal Policing.” Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology. 37 (3): 362-379.

Preson, Julia. 2007. “Canada Arrests Aid Worker.” The New York Times, 29

September 2007.

Provine, Doris Marie and Roxanne Lynn Doty. 2011. “The Criminalization of Immigrants as a Racial Project.” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice. 27 (3): 261-277.

Pugh, Michael. 1998. “Military Intervention and Humanitarian Action: Trends and Issues.” Disasters. 22 (4): 339-351.

Rajaram, Prem Kumar. 2002. “Humanitarianism and Representations of the

Refugee.” Journal of Refugee Studies. 15 (3): 247-264.

Ramji-Nogales, Jaya, Andrew I. Schoenholtz, and Philip G. Schrag. 2007. “Refugee Roulette: Disparities in Asylum Adjudication.” Stanford Law Review. 60 (2): 295-411.

Regina v Appulonappa, Docket CA040592 (British Columbia 2014).

Rehaag, Sean. 2007. “Troubling Patterns in Canadian Refugee Adjudication.” Ottawa Law Review. 39: 335-365.

Robert Brooks, Dominique le Touze, Vijaya Manicavasagar, Mariano Ceollo, and Roth, Ken. 2004. “War in Iraq: Not a Humanitarian Intervention.” In Wilson, Richard, ed. Human Rights in the ‘War on Terror.’ Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Rousseau, Cécile, François Crépeau, Patricia Foxen, and France Houle. 2002. “The Complexity of Determining Refugeehood: A Multidisciplinary Analysis of the decision-making Process of the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board.”

Journal of Refugee Studies 15 (1): 43-70.

Sales, Rosemary. 2002. “The Deserving and the Undeserving? Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Welfare in Britain.” Critical Social Policy. 22 (3): 456-478.

Salter, Mark. 2003. Rights of Passage: The Passport in International Relations. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Schloenhardt, Andreas. 2001. “Trafficking in Migrants: Illegal Migration and Organized Crime in Australia and the Asia Pacific Region.” International Journal of the Sociology of Law. 29 (4): 331-378.

Schloenhardt, Andreas and Connor Davies. 2013. “Smugglers and Samaritans: Defences to People Smuggling in Australia.” University of New South Wales Law Journal 36 (3): 954-983.

Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press

Sharma, Nandita. 2003. “Travel Agency: A Critique of Anti-Trafficking

Campaigns.” Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees. 21 (3):53-65.

Silove, Derrick, Zachary Steel, Ina Susljik, Naomi Frommer, Celia Loneragan, Mitchell Smith. 2006. “Torture, Mental Health Status and the Outcomes of Refugee Applications among Recently Arrived Asylum Seekers in Australia.” International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care. 2 (1): 4-14.

Smith-Park, Laura. 2014. “Survivors: ‘Laughing’ Smugglers Kill 500 Migrants.” CNN, 16 September 2014.

Spijkerboer, Thomas. 2007. “The Human Costs of Border Control.” European

Journal of Migration and Law. 9 (1): 127-139.

Steel, Z., D. Silove, R. Brooks, S. Momartin, B. Alzuhairi, and I. Susljik. 2006. “Impact of Immigration Detention and Temporary Protection on the Mental Health of Refugees.” The British Journal of Psychiatry: The Journal of Mental Science. 188: 58-64.

Suganami, Hidemi. 2007. “Understanding Sovereignty through Kelsen/Schmitt.” Review of International Studies. 33 (3): 511-530.

The Sphere Project. 2011. “Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response.” http://www.sphereproject.org. Accessed May 20, 2015.

Torpey, John C. 2000. The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

United Nations. 1991. “General Assembly Resolution 46/182: Strengthening the Coordination of Humanitarian Emergency Assistance of the United Nations.” New York .

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, (UNHCR). 1951. “The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.”

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, (UNODC). 2013. “Assessment Guide to the Criminal Justice Response to the Smuggling of Migrants.”

US State Department. 2006. “Fact Sheet: Distinctions Between Human Smuggling and Human Trafficking.” http://www.state.gov/m/ds/hstcenter/90434.htm. Accessed May 20, 2015.

Weiss, Thomas G. and Kurt M. Campbell. 1991. “Military Humanitarianism.”

Survival 33 (5): 451-465.

Woodward, Jonathan. 2013. “Second Migrant Deported by Canada Jailed in

Sri Lanka: Court.” CTV News, 10 October 2013.