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Migration Industries, Legal Services, and Human Smuggling

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Migration

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Synonyms

Migration business; Migration entrepreneurs; Migration industries; Migration merchants

Definition

Migration industry: the business of migration or migration merchants.

Detailed Description

There has been much attention recently in what has been labeled alternatively the “migration industry,” the business of migration, or migration merchants. Much of the literature on international migration emphasizes either the role of social networks and social capital or highly stylized economic explanations. There is growing dissatisfaction with conventional models of migration, even when packaged together within a migration systems framework, for explaining contemporary migration patterns generally, and the rise of migrant smuggling and trafficking specifically. Apart from focusing on the institutional intermediaries, the migration industry concept allows for an analysis of more asymmetric economic and political power relationships shaping the migration process and subsequent patterns of...

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References

  • Castles S, Miller MJ (2009) The age of migration: international population movements in the modern world, 4th edn. The Guilford Press, New York/London

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  • Hernández-León R (2008) Metropolitan migrants: the migration of urban Mexicans to the United States. University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles

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  • Kaye J (2010) Moving millions: how coyote capitalism fuels global immigration. Wiley, New Jersey

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  • Kyle D (2000) Transnational peasants: migrations, networks, and ethnicity in Andean Ecuador. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Davis Sociology, 1282 Social Sciences & Humanities, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    David Kyle

Authors
  1. David Kyle
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to David Kyle .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Research on Immigration Population and Public Policy, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, USA

    Frank D. Bean

  2. School of Social Sciences, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, USA

    Susan K. Brown

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© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Kyle, D. (2015). Migration Industries, Legal Services, and Human Smuggling. In: Bean, F., Brown, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Migration. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6179-7_5-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6179-7_5-3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-007-6179-7

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Social SciencesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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