Human Smuggling from/via North Africa and Turkey to Greece

Abstract

This chapter looks specifically into migrant smuggling from Africa towards Greece. Based on extensive fieldwork (approximately 50 semi-structured qualitative interviews with smuggled migrants and 20 interviews with other relevant actors, including state authorities, non-governmental organizations and migrant associations), the chapter investigates the routes and modalities of migrant smuggling from East and West Africa via North Africa and/or Turkey to Greece as well as from North Africa to Greece, via Turkey or directly. The chapter outlines the main routes and modalities of migrant smuggling in this region and analyses the internal organization of smugglers’ networks. It confronts the objective aspects of migrant smuggling (routes, means of transport, fees, duration, demographic and socioeconomic features of smuggled migrants, visa requirements in countries of transit and related issues) with the subjective experience of the migrants (their way of making sense of their migration project and in particular of the trip). The chapter pays attention to the relationship between smugglers and smuggled people and the degree of agency of the migrant in the process (starting at the country of origin when s/he first seeks the services of the smuggler and continuing through the trip and after arrival in ‘Europe’, i.e. the first European Union country that they encounter, notably Greece). Naturally, attention is paid to the vulnerability of migrants and the risks they face during the trip and the factors that exacerbate or mitigate that vulnerability/those risks, including kinship and co-ethnic ties. This chapter concludes by discussing the ways in which Greek policies for combating irregular migration have affected the migrant-smuggling phenomenon in recent years.