why migrant smuggling pays

Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.,9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

© 2008 The Author Journal Compilation © 2008 IOM

International Migration Vol. 46 (2) 2008 ISSN 0020-7985

* The Brookings Institution, Washington DC.

Why Migrant Smuggling Pays

Khalid Koser*

ABSTRACT

Drawing on empirical research in Afghanistan and Pakistan, this article ‘follows the money’ for 50 migrants smuggled to the UK, to cast light on the financing of smuggling. The means used to raise the money to pay smugglers ranged from drawing on savings to selling property, land and jewellery. Payments were made to a third-party, who did not release the payment to the smuggler until migrants had arrived in their destination – effectively a ‘money-back guarantee’ on smuggling. Smugglers disbursed about half of their fee to forgers, procurers of passports, airport officials and other intermediaries required to facilitate smuggling. Most migrants quickly found work in their destination and started remitting soon after their arrival. On average remittances were at a sufficient level to repay the initial outlay on smugglers’ fees after two years, and thereafter remittances on average more than doubled household incomes at home. In this case study, smuggling therefore paid for the range of intermediaries involved in facilitating it, for migrants themselves, and for migrants’ households at home.

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INTRODUCTION

It is widely agreed that migrant smuggling is an enormously profitable business for the smugglers involved. Reported rates range widely but can be as high as US$70,000 for a single person going from mainland China to the United States (Petros, 2005). Combine this with estimates that perhaps 1,500 migrants are smuggled between China and North America each year (Richards, 2001), and that hundreds of thousands of people are smuggled across borders worldwide each year (GCIM, 2005), and it is easy to understand why smuggling is a multi-billion dollar business.

Despite a real growth in empirical research on migrant smuggling in recent years (e.g. the series of articles in the October 2006 issue of International Migration), however, surprisingly little is know about how exactly smugglers make their money. Most empirical studies do include an estimate of how much is charged by smugglers. There has been some more systematic analysis of the costs of smuggling that demonstrates how costs vary considerably according to variables like origin and destination, the number of people moved and the mode of transportation; and that costs can change over time even for the same route (Petros, 2005).

However, more sophisticated questions about the financing of migrant smuggling remain largely unanswered. Not even an industry as profitable as migrant smuggling can guarantee a one hundred per cent return: smugglers have outgoings, take financial risks and compete with one another. What proportion of their payment do smugglers turn as a profit and what proportion is invested either to facilitate migration or secure the growth of their business? What is their relationship with the suppliers of documentation and transportation and the facilitators of border crossings – and how much money is disbursed to secure their services? Does migrant smuggling always pay for smugglers?

Neither has much attention been paid to why smuggling pays for migrants. It is taken for granted that hundreds of thousands of people pay smugglers for their services, on the whole voluntarily. What is in it for them? For refugees, the answer may well be to escape danger and persecution. For most others, they must assume before making the commitment that they will profit (in most cases financially) from the transaction, at least in the long run. This is especially the case where migrants finance their journey by borrowing, often at high interest rates, from money lenders. In other cases journeys are financed by migrants’ families, in which case, how does it profit their families?

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Drawing on empirical research on smuggling between Afghanistan/Pakistan and the UK, that includes interviews with smuggled migrants, their families and a few smugglers, this article attempts to ‘follow the money’ through the smuggling process to understand why migrant smuggling pays1.

There are firm conceptual foundations for focusing on financial returns in migrant smuggling. The phenomenon has increasingly come to be conceptualized as a business (Salt and Stein, 1997) comprising ‘…a system of institutionalized networks with complex profit and loss accounts, including a set of institutions, agents and individuals each of which stands to make a commercial gain’ (p. 467) and subject to powerful market forces (Aronowitz, 2001). Along with the separate phenomenon of human trafficking, migrant smuggling also comprises the illegitimate side of a wider migration industry that generates enormous profits (Bilger, et al., 2006; Castles and Miller, 2003; Hugo, 2005). By focusing on the money that drives the entire process, this article furthers understanding of how migrant smuggling operates as a business, and helps enhance this particular conceptual approach.

There are also policy justifications. Until relatively recently, legislation and policy frameworks for combating human trafficking and migrant smuggling have been poorly-developed, even in the industrialized nations. To some extent this gap has now been addressed in the case of human trafficking. The normative framework has been elaborated in the 1998 UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons; there has been an array of regional initiatives against human trafficking, for example the Convention on Preventing and Combating Trafficking in Women and Children for Prostitution adopted by the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in 2002; and many countries have now passed specific legislation to penalize traffickers and protect their victims (Muntarbhorn, 2002).

In contrast, there is still a striking lack of specific laws and policies on migrant smuggling. There is a separate UN Protocol, but at the regional and national levels combating migrant smuggling is normally included as one objective for laws and policies aiming more generally at reducing irregular migration through, for example the strengthening of borders and the enhancement of cooperation between origin, transit and destination countries (Brolan, 2002). It is suggested here that understanding its financing can inform policies specifically targeting migrant smuggling, by transforming it from a ‘low risk, high return’ operation for smugglers into a ‘high risk, low return’ one.

At the same time, it is important to place any such study in the broader, social context for migration. Commodifying migration runs the risk of underestimating

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the motivations, experiences and rights of the migrants involved (Van Liempt and Doomernik, 2006). The ‘business’ model of migrant smuggling underestimates the role of social networks in migration generally (Boyd, 1989; Gurak and Caces, 1992) and migrant smuggling specifically (Chin, 2000; Herman, 2006; Koser, 1997). Profits are not always financial – people move for safety, to join family and friends, and for adventure (Herman, 2006). Additionally, conceiving smugglers as business people can professionalize them and ignore the utter lack of respect that many have for the rights and dignity of their clients.

The overall purpose of this article is to present new empirical data on migrant smuggling; contribute towards better articulation of the ‘business’ model; and inform policy efforts to combat migrant smuggling. The first part assesses the overall scale of migrant smuggling between Afghanistan/Pakistan and the UK in order to place the research findings in context. The second part explains the methods adopted in the empirical study. Because one of the main reasons why there has been a lack of in-depth research on the financing of smuggling are the difficulties of collecting detailed data from smugglers and their clients, the methods adopted and their drawbacks are discussed at some length.

The next part ‘follows the money’ from how it was raised by migrants and their families, through its payment to smugglers and subsequent disbursal by them, to how migrants repaid the investment after arriving in the UK. Discussion thereafter is concerned with considering the implications of the findings first for furthering understanding of the concept of the smuggling business, and second for developing policies for stemming migrant smuggling.

MIGRANT SMUGGLING BETWEEN AFGHANISTAN/PAKISTAN AND THE UK IN CONTEXT

Gauging the scale of migrant smuggling between either Afghanistan or Pakistan and the UK is difficult for a number of reasons. While there is fairly well established literature on legal migration between Pakistan (and historically the Indian subcontinent) and the UK (e.g. Addleton, 1984; Jones and Karim, 2005), there is no published work on irregular migration between these countries, nor migrant smuggling more specifically (although it is worth noting Saha’s 2007 analysis of smuggling from India to the UK). This section is therefore necessarily brief; and the trends described largely derive from media reports in Pakistan, various unpublished reports especially by local non-governmental organizations in Pakistan, and interviews with key informants.



A second reason is that among both Afghans and Pakistanis, smuggling to the West comprises a relatively small component of a much more complicated nexus of migrant smuggling and human trafficking (Table 1). Within this nexus, migrant smuggling to the West attracts relatively little attention locally, at either a policy or media level. It is numerically relatively insignificant, it is not perceived as a human rights issue, and at the government level, irregular migrants are often viewed as just as valuable a source of remittances as legal immigrants and are therefore not necessarily viewed as problematic.

TABLE 1: THE MAIN TyPES OF MIGRANT SMUGGLING AND HUMAN TRAFFICKING IN AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTANAfghanistan Pakistan‘Internal trafficking’ of girls for forced marriage, boys for sexual servitude and some girls and women for prostitution

Origin country for smuggling of Afghans and Pakistanis to UAE and the West

International trafficking of young men to Iran and Pakistan for forced labour and young women to Iran and Pakistan to work as prostitutes

Origin country for trafficking of young boys to UAE and Saudi Arabia for forced labour and as ‘camel jockies’

Smuggling of young men to Iran and Central Asia for work

Transit country for people being smuggled and trafficked between the Far East and the Middle EastDestination country for women in particular trafficked from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Central Asian republics and Myanmar for prostitution‘Internal trafficking’ of girls for forced marriage, boys for labour and some girls and women for prostitution

Sources: Field data (2003); various press (2002-03)

A third complication is that, for a number of reasons, it is practically very difficult to distinguish the smuggling of Afghans from Pakistan to the West from that of Pakistanis. First, where there is contemporary smuggling directly from Afghanistan, a significant proportion goes via Pakistan as a transit country. Second, the majority of Afghans who have been smuggled to the West in the last 20 years lived in refugee camps in Pakistan and began their journeys there. Third, and especially during the Taliban period (1995-2001), most Afghans were smuggled out of Pakistan with Pakistani passports, as there were no Afghan passports. Fourth, and in contrast, since the fall of the Taliban and the commencement of the ‘war on terror’, many Pakistanis have been smuggled out of Pakistan with Afghan passports, anticipating sympathy towards Afghan refugees in the West. Fifth, many smugglers operating in Pakistan are Afghan nationals, who move both Afghans and Pakistanis. Finally, Pakistani smugglers also move both Afghans and Pakistanis, though generally preferring Afghans who tend to be able to pay higher prices.

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Lastly, there are simply no accurate data - not even on the totality of migrant smuggling or human trafficking from Afghanistan or Pakistan, let alone on movements to specific destinations. Nobody is willing to even ‘guesstimate’ how many Afghans have been smuggled out of Pakistan in the last 20 years. Most sources agree, however, that the smuggling of Afghans was more prolific before 2002 than it is now. This is mainly because since 2002 significant numbers of Afghans have repatriated from Pakistan back to Afghanistan.

In contrast, there are at least some indicative figures for the smuggling and trafficking of Pakistanis. In interpreting these figures, however, it needs to be borne in mind that at least a proportion of people enumerated as Pakistanis are actually Afghans. Some sources estimated in 2004 that as many as 500,000 people per year were being smuggled or trafficked into and out Pakistan each year, of which, however, only a small proportion will be Afghans or Pakistanis being smuggled to the West. Various local press sources revealed that 1,336 Pakistani irregular immigrants were deported from European countries in 2001-04 – although some of these may have fallen into the category of ‘irregular migrant’ for reasons other than illegal entry such as overstaying their visas. At the same time various press sources reported that in 2004 there were 1,497 Pakistanis imprisoned in European Union (EU) countries for illegal entry. Finally, various press sources also reported that in 2003 alone, 389 Pakistanis had been killed illegally crossing the borders of Greece, Spain and Turkey.

METHODS

The findings presented in this article draw on two discrete fieldwork periods, the first to both Pakistan and Afghanistan and the second to Pakistan alone, which took place between October 2003 and January 2004. The first visit had two main purposes. One was to understand the context for migrant smuggling from Afghanistan and Pakistan, and this was established through interviews with representatives from government, international organisations, non-governmental organisations and law enforcement agencies, as well as local researchers, journalists and activists in the field.

The second purpose was to try to speak to smugglers themselves. This was achieved with limited success – in-depth interviews were conducted with only five smugglers, and five more with agents variously involved in the process (e.g. forgers and intermediaries). There is a general consensus among researchers on migrant smuggling that interviewing smugglers in destination countries is basically not possible – they cannot readily be identified and even if they are they are reluctant to divulge information. Additionally, their involvement in



criminal gangs also means that trying to interview them might expose researchers to considerable personal risk. In contrast, it is often assumed that interviewing smugglers in origin (or perhaps transit) countries should be easier. Experience during this fieldwork suggests that this assumption needs to be qualified. On the one hand, it was relatively easy to identify smugglers – in some cases they advertised their services quite openly. In addition, most smugglers I approached did not seem reluctant to admit that they provided migration services. On the other hand, only five were willing to provide any detailed information about how they operated.

To supplement this information, therefore, further in-depth interviews were conducted with eight people who had been smuggled out of Pakistan but had subsequently been deported. Together, these interviews took place in Islamabad, Karachi and Peshawar in Pakistan, and Kabul in Afghanistan. Most of the interviews were in English, but on occasion the assistance of an interpreter was required.

The main purpose of the second visit was to speak to the families of smuggled migrants. One reason was to try to understand the socio-economic context from which smuggled migrants originate. The second was to consider the implications of smuggling for those who presumably often are involved in the decision to migrate, and may have to raise the money to pay for migration, but do not actually move themselves. Relevant families were identified through a ‘snowball’ sampling procedure: an initial group of families was identified through a smuggler, and they in turn identified further families. These household interviews all took place in Karachi.

Pilot interviews quickly demonstrated the reluctance of many of these families to be interviewed in my presence, so most of the household surveys were conducted – individually, by a team of four researchers employed from the Aga Khan University in Karachi. I met the team each morning to overview the day’s schedule, and every evening to review questionnaires, and I attended a handful of interviews.

A total of 183 families were approached for interviews, in most cases at their front door. Of these, 133 refused to participate in the research. This is a significant non-response rate. Debriefings with the research team suggested three main reasons. First, and most often, families that refused to participate in the research cited concerns about exposing family members abroad. Indeed, none of the households that did participate were willing to provide names or contact details for migrant members of their family, meaning that a proper ‘two-ended’ study linking migrants with family members at home could not be achieved. Second,

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in some cases it was implied that migrants from the families had left on political grounds. Discussing their cases might not only jeopardize their claims on asylum in the United Kingdom, but also expose family members to the possibility of retaliation in Pakistan. A final possible reason was that households for whom smuggling had not been successful might have been unwilling to participate. This would include cases where migrants had died, or been imprisoned or deported, and also perhaps cases where migrants had not maintained contact since leaving or had not sent home remittances.

A structured questionnaire was used for the interviews, which lasted between 45 and 90 minutes and normally took place with the head of the household or, in his or her absence, the next most senior household member present.

Certainly not all the key actors involved in smuggling were interviewed during the first period of fieldwork, and equally the household survey was far from necessarily representative. It follows that the results presented here are indicative rather than conclusive. They provide an insight into the migrant smuggling process from a relatively new set of perspectives, but by no means can they tell the whole story.

‘FOLLOW THE MONEy’

The purpose of this section is to try to follow the money through the smuggling business between Afghanistan/Pakistan and the UK. First, the routes and costs involved are established. Next, how households raised the capital in the first place is examined. Third, the different methods by which smugglers were paid for their services are explained. Then, the way that smugglers disbursed payments to the various intermediaries who assisted them – while still maintaining a profit themselves – is described. To complete the circuit, the extent to which migrants had found employment and sent home remittances is considered, and the extent to which these remittances repaid the initial investment analysed.

Smuggling routes and costs

Three main smuggling routes from Pakistan into Western Europe were reported by smugglers. The first was direct flights to the intended destination. The destinations to which it is possible to fly directly, however, change. After September 11th 2001, for example, British Airways suspended its direct flights between Islamabad and Karachi and London. To fly to the UK from Pakistan in 2004 therefore required a transit stop over, usually in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) (British Airways has now resumed direct flights between Islamabad and London).

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A second route was to fly initially to a country for which Pakistanis can easily and legally obtain a visa. Smugglers’ agents operating in these countries then arranged for the necessary documentation for the onward flight to the final destination. Transit destinations that were apparently popular among smugglers were reported to include: Bangkok, Casablanca, Dhaka, Dubai, Istanbul, Jeddah, Johannesburg, Kampala, Kiev, Larnaca, Maputo, Mauritius, Moscow and Riyadh. Naturally these transit destinations had changed over time according to visa regimes.

The third main reported route was to fly to a transit country, then complete the journey overland. At the time of the research the most popular route was reported to be to fly to Dushanbe, then travel overland first to Moscow, from Moscow into Eastern Europe, and finally to Western Europe.

Interviews with smugglers indicated that perhaps 50 per cent of migrants smuggled into Europe from Pakistan in the last few years flew directly, 45 per cent flew via a transit country, and only five per cent flew then continued overland. They also confirmed that two routes that were widely used previously – travelling the entire way overland or by sea – were now considered too dangerous and were no longer encouraged.

The three main routes described above entail different levels of organisation and costs, and were reported to be progressively cheaper, although actual costs varied with routes and destinations (Table 2). Three further observations are worth making. First, this range of options meant that potential migrants had some choice depending on their resources. Smugglers reported that they normally recommended direct flights, not just because their profit margin was higher, but also because this was apparently the route with the highest success rate. They were, however, willing to discuss cheaper options with potential migrants who could not afford to fly directly.

Second, there was some competition between the handful of smugglers operating in Pakistan at the time. One, for example, could undercut the price offered by another when he (no-one had heard of any female smugglers) had located a group of people to be smuggled, as his costs per migrant reduced. Finally, it was reported that the overall costs of smuggling had increased in the past four to five years. Partly this was in response to reduced demand for smuggling as many of the Afghan refugees in Pakistan who had been an important client base had repatriated, and partly it was because tightening policies both in Europe and in Pakistan were making smuggling more risky and difficult for the smugglers and intermediaries involved.

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TABLE 2: COSTS FOR SMUGGLING FROM PAKISTAN vIA vARIOUS ROUTESRoutes Costs (USD)

Direct flightsUSA and CanadaUKEU mainland

$17,000 - $20,000$13,000 - $14,000$9,000 - $10,000

Indirect flights $6,000 - $12,000 (depending on the transit country)

Flight then overlandUKEU mainland

$4,000$3,000

Source: Field data (2004)

Raising the money

Given the costs involved, it is unsurprising that the households covered by the survey were not from the very poorest strata of Karachi society. A number of indicators were included in the survey to try to ascertain their socio-economic profile. Most directly, the total monthly income of the entire household was recorded (this excluded any remittances from the migrant). Thirty-eight of the 50 households were willing to answer this question. Their mean monthly income was Rs 12,700 (US$ 210), and the range was from Rs 3,500 (US$ 58) to Rs 35,000 (US$ 580). In interpreting these incomes, however, it is worth bearing in mind that household sizes varied considerably – between just one adult in five cases to six in four cases. The mean number of household adults was 3.44.

A series of other indicators was used to supplement information on household incomes. One was where the household lived – and this varied from middle-class Karachi ‘towns’ such as Gulshan-e-Iqbal, North Nazimabad and Federal B Areas; to Malir and Orangi ‘towns’, which are among the poorest in the city. Another was to list the ‘luxury’ consumer items owned by each household - all 50 households owned a television, 45 owned a refrigerator, 24 had a telephone and 11 each had a car and a computer. And a third additional indicator was provided by a question on the sources of income other than employment that each household had. Twenty-seven owned property, six owned land and one household owned a business.

Only thirty households were willing to answer a question about how they raised the money to pay for the smuggler (Table 3). The most frequent response was savings – and that some of these households apparently had the equivalent of several thousand US dollars in savings again attests to the fact that they were not among the poorest. A further 21 responses indicated that households had sold possessions, particularly property, land or jewellery in order to raise sufficient



funds. And a further 14 responses showed a reliance for at least part of the capital on loans from a variety of sources. A number of households combined several sources to raise the money.

TABLE 3: RAISING THE MONEy TO PAy SMUGGLERSSource FrequencySavings 16Sale of property 9Sale of land 8Sale of jewellery 4Loans from relatives 4Money lenders 3Loans from friends 3Bank loans 3Community fund 1Total* 51Source: Field data (2003)* 30 households responded to this question; column totals exceed 30 as in some cases there were multiple sources of income

One implication of these data is that for all these households, even though they were not necessarily poor, investing in the smuggling of a family member still represented a significant sacrifice – whether in the form of drawing on savings, selling possessions or taking out loans. Had the migrants been political refugees, then getting them out of harm’s way would arguably have been sufficient return on this investment. In all but four cases, however, the households admitted that migration had been primarily economically motivated. This places far greater emphasis on the extent to which migrants were able to send home remittances to repay their families’ investments.

Paying smugglers

These thirty households were also asked how the payment to smugglers was made. All reported a broadly similar method of payment; namely that payment was made in full in advance of migration. The main variation reported concerned whether or not this payment was made as one lump sum or over a period of time in instalments. What is particularly interesting, however, is how the payment was arranged.

Across the range of respondents, those willing to go into detail consistently confirmed that payments in advance were always made to a third party, rather than directly to the smuggler himself. In Peshawar, the third party was normally one of the moneychangers in the Chowk Yadgar bazaar in the Old Town, or occasionally a jeweller. The third party would issue a formal receipt to the potential migrant, his or her family and the smuggler. The money would then

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only be released to the smuggler once the migrant’s family confirmed to the third party that he or she had arrived safely – normally having received a telephone call from the destination country.

This finding needs to be interrogated. This same payment method was reported independently not only by each of the five smugglers interviewed, but also by the eight deportees. The household survey was unfortunately not sufficiently detailed to yield this type of information, but there is at least some ‘triangulation’ of findings from a variety of independent sources. Furthermore, a similar mechanism was found by Içduygu and Toktas (2002) in Turkey; they referred to the third party as a ‘cashier’.

At the same time a series of further questions immediately arise, which largely remain unanswered and need further research. How do the money-changers benefit? Some informants reported that they charged a commission, others that they simply earned interest on the deposit. Içduygu and Toktas (2002) reported that cashiers in the Turkish case received between US$ 50 and US$ 100 per deal. Neither is it clear exactly how ‘success’ is defined in terms of releasing the payment. Does a migrant have to reach a specific destination, or will anywhere in Europe do? Does he or she have to be confident of being able to stay in the destination, or is the contract simply to get them to the port or airport? And what is to stop a migrant arriving safely then pretending they have not, so that the fee is returned to their family? Içduygu and Toktas (2002) emphasize the importance of interpersonal trust between migrants, their families, smugglers and cashiers. In this research informants provided largely ambiguous responses to these questions. The answer may well be that different smugglers and different money-changers operate in different ways at this level of detail in the transaction.

The disbursement of payments

While the initial financial transaction only exposes the potential migrant or his or her household to a single smuggler and a third party, the subsequent arrangement of migration always involved a wider network of agents or intermediaries - a broadly similar network was also found in Turkey by Içduygu (2004). Table 4 attempts to trace the disbursement of payments by the initial contact through this network. This information was provided by the smugglers and intermediary agents interviewed – and it is worth reiterating that only five of each were interviewed. It focuses only on the arrangements required for a direct flight between Pakistan and the UK, but it can be assumed that indirect travel is even more complex.

Even for a direct flight, arranging departure from Pakistan can be complex. The main sources of information on these methods of smuggling were smugglers themselves and some of the deported smuggled migrants.

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The first step in planning a flight out of Pakistan was to arrange a passport with the required visa. It was, however, often necessary to obtain a new passport. One reason was that at certain times in the preceding decade or so it was preferable for Afghans to travel on Pakistani passports or vice versa. While Afghan and Pakistani passports were the easiest to obtain, some smugglers also reported obtaining passports of other nationalities, including British passports. Depending on the nationality of the passport, the intended destination and the current visa regime in that destination, it was often also necessary to obtain a visa. Passports and visas were reported to be obtainable through theft or bribery, or they were forged.

Once again depending on the nationality and quality of the passport and visa, a necessary second step in departing Pakistan was often to bribe airline and airport officials. As is the case in all international airports today, documents were scrutinised at three different stages – the check-in counter, upon entering the departure lounge, and directly before boarding the flight. It is reported that staff at all three stages were bribed not to scrutinise passports and visas too closely.

The sequence of payments depicted in Table 4 show the most commonly reported methods for arranging departure from Pakistan and average costs. Thus, once payment in full had been deposited with a third party, smugglers usually obtained passports and visas from an intermediary or forger, for a price of around US$ 2,000 depending on the nationality of the passport and the quality of any forgeries. A further US$ 5,000 or so was additionally paid to airline and immigration staff at the airport.

There are a number of observations worth making. First, this disbursement chain reinforces the intricacy of the smuggling network. Smuggling may be organised centrally by one individual, but his network also includes intermediaries, forgers, airline staff and immigration officials. Second, most sources confirmed that smugglers retained about half the payment made after their disbursements – in the chain depicted in Table 4 about US$ 7,000 of the US$ 14,000 fee is retained.

A third point, however, is that this is only true where the migration is successful. The outlay by the smuggler needed to be made in advance of the potential migrant actually leaving Pakistan. Should the move be unsuccessful, and the down payment refunded in full by the third party with whom it was deposited, then the smuggler was left significantly out of pocket. One implication was that smugglers were increasingly keen to move several people at once. While payments for passports and visas are for each individual migrant, the outlay on bribery at the airport was the same for one person as for several. Smuggling several people also increased the chances that at least one would arrive safely and thus that the smuggler would recoup his initial outlay.

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TABLE �: THE DISBURSEMENT OF PAyMENTS (US$) FOR A FLIGHT FROM PAKISTAN TO THE UKActors Amount Description Balance

Potential migrant pays full amount to a third party

Up to 14,000

The third party issues a receipt. He holds the money it is confirmed the migrant has arrived. The money is then

handed over to the smuggler

14,000

The smuggler obtains a passport and/or visa for the potential migrant from an intermediary

2,000Costs vary according to the

nationality and quality of the passport/visa

12,000

The smuggler pays one member of the airline check-in desk staff to issue a boarding pass without closely inspecting the passport

1,000 The amount paid depends on how reliable the passport is 11,000

The smuggler pays one member of the airline staff responsible for checking passports immediately prior to boarding not to scrutinise the passport


The smuggler pays members of Pakistani immigration not to scrutinise the passport


Source: Field data (2003-04)

Employment and remittances

In order to complete the circle, it is now necessary to consider the extent to which successful migrants sent money back to their households to repay the initial investment. It seems reasonable to assume that only those migrants who had found employment would be in a position to send home money. Given its focus on the sending country, the research upon which this article is based was not able to go in detail into the experiences of migrants once they reached their destination country. The data on current employment presented in Table 5 was provided by the migrants’ household members in Karachi. They should be interpreted with a degree of caution as in some cases migrants had not been in contact with their families for significant periods of time and so their employment status may have changed, and also because migrants commonly exaggerate their success in destination countries to friends and family back home (Koser and Pinkerton, 2002). It seems, for example, quite unlikely that 12 recently-arrived irregular Pakistani migrants had really found work in professional or technical jobs in the UK.



TABLE �: CURRENT EMPLOyMENT PROFILE OF MIGRANTSEmployment category FrequencyProfessional or technical 12Administrative 6Sales 16Services 1Agriculture 1Production 7Unemployed 7Total 50Source: Field data (2004)

Thirty-five households reported that migrants had sent back remittances since leaving. Seven of the 15 who had not were still unemployed at the time of the interview. Several of the remainder had apparently only just started work and not yet saved enough to begin remitting, whereas several others simply had opted not to send home money for the time being. Most of those who were remitting were reported to be doing so on a fairly regular basis (Table 6) – the majority once every three months or even more regularly.

TABLE �: THE REGULARITy OF REMITTANCESRegularity FrequencyOnce a month 6Once every three months 21Once every six months 7Once a year 1Total 35Source: Field data (2004)

In the 12 months prior to the interviews, remittances were reported to have varied from Rs 80,000 (US$ 1,320) to Rs 700,000 (US$ 111,500). There has to be a question mark over the higher figure. The mean remittance among the survey households was reported to be Rs 245,000 (US$ 4,180).

Repaying the investment

By combining data on household incomes, smugglers’ fees and remittances, it is possible to draw limited conclusions about how remittances were used to repay the initial investment in smuggling. The relevant data are provided in Table 7 – 22 households provided information on both their incomes and smugglers’ fees, 16 of which also provided information on remittance rates.

TABLE �: ANNUAL HOUSEHOLD INCOMES, SMUGGLERS’S FEES AND ANNUAL REMITTANCES (IN PAKISTANI RUPEES) FOR SELECTED HOUSEHOLDSQuestionnaire number

Annual household income Smugglers’ fees Annual remittances

1 204,000 350,000 200,0002 108,000 400,000 :3 42,000 450,000 300,000

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TABLE �: ANNUAL HOUSEHOLD INCOMES, SMUGGLERS’S FEES AND ANNUAL REMITTANCES (IN PAKISTANI RUPEES) FOR SELECTED HOUSEHOLDSQuestionnaire number

Annual household income Smugglers’ fees Annual remittances

4 228,000 300,000 9,6005 54,000 500,000 175,0006 216,000 400,000 144,0007 144,000 700,000 :8 264,000 600,000 100,0009 90,000 450,000 120,00012 114,000 500,000 300,00014 93,600 450,000 400,00017 222,000 700,000 600,00024 120,000 80,000 :32 54,000 300,000 300,00033 48,000 450,000 200,00035 168,000 300,000 :43 180,000 400,000 :44 180,000 300,000 120,00045 156,000 400,000 100,00047 264,000 300,000 200,00048 240,000 350,000 140,00050 240,000 300,000 :Mean 155,891 408,182 213,038Source: Field data (2003): no answer provided

What the data first reinforce is just how significant an investment smuggling represented for most households – on average, smugglers’ fees amounted to 262 per cent of the households’ annual income. Even the lowest ratio of fee to household income was 67 per cent; while in the most extreme case the fee represented over ten times the household’s annual income.

On average, annual remittances amounted to 52 per cent of the agents’ fees – ranging from just three per cent in one case to fully 100 per cent in another case. Continuing to use mean values, this means that on average it would have required just less than two years of remittances at the current level to repay the initial investment in smuggling – the range was from just one year in one case to over 31 years in another. An important assumption here, of course, is that the migrant was willing or able to remain in the UK for that period of time as well as continue to earn. Thereafter, assuming current rates of both, remittances would have very significantly increased household incomes – on average more than doubling them.

CONCEPTUAL AND POLICy IMPLICATIONS

Before turning to some of the implications of this research, a number of reservations should be posted. The first, as alluded to in the methodology section,

CONT.



is that the information presented here is neither comprehensive nor necessarily representative. It can be used to provide an insight into the smuggling process, but is not conclusive. Second, the findings derive from a particular case study – and they are dated. They may not apply to other situations and they may not even apply to Afghanistan and Pakistan today. Finally, it is worth reiterating that gaps in knowledge remain. As highlighted above, for example, significant questions about the flow of money are still unanswered. More broadly, the actual experiences of the smuggled migrants themselves – before departure, in transit and after arrival – have remained outside the scope of this paper.

Migrant smuggling as a business

Some quite striking results have been reported in this study. One is that prospective migrants and their households reduced their risks by depositing payments with a third party, and in effect negotiated a ‘money back guarantee’ with smugglers. This system concurrently increased the risk for smugglers, who invested substantially in the process without a guaranteed return. Another unexpected finding was not just that smuggled migrants apparently on the whole found work relatively quickly, but that their incomes were sufficient to remit enough money to repay a smugglers’ fee in full on average within two years.

As has been flagged through this article, at times the findings here are broadly comparable to those reported elsewhere; while at times they contrast quite significantly. For example, in this case study, smuggled migrants were found to be relatively well-educated and informed about their choices, which contrasts with findings on smuggling from other destinations – for example Colombia, Kosovo, and Somalia (Gilbert and Koser, 2006). The range of intermediaries found to comprise the smuggling network – included a third-party or ‘cashier’ – largely mirrored findings in the Turkish case study. In contrast, in many other contexts – for example across the Mexico-US border - smuggling is reported to be arranged on an individual basis by family, friends and individual personal contacts. And the ‘success’ rate in this case study – even allowing for bias in the sample – contrasts strikingly with the relatively high death rate for smuggling across the Mediterranean.

Clearly the smuggling process may operate quite differently across various contexts – in terms, for example, of its scale, the motivations of migrants and the precise details of the business. Furthermore the process can change rapidly over time. To properly understand the dynamics of migrant smuggling as a global phenomenon, what is required is both longitudinal and comparative research. While acknowledging criticisms, its application in this article has suggested that the ‘business’ model of migrant smuggling provides a viable conceptual

20 Koser


framework for this endeavour. It is worth noting that the model has also been ‘tested’ and found to have explanatory power in another geographical context entirely, namely Eastern Europe (Salt and Hogarth, 2000).

At the same time, the findings here can help elaborate the model and further understanding of migrant smuggling as a business in several ways. First, this study has uncovered in more detail than previously understood the way that money flows through the business, albeit for a specific case study. While there have been numerous estimates of the costs associated with smuggling, little was previously known about how money is raised by clients, how payments are made to smugglers and disbursed by them, how smugglers profit and how the initial investment pays for migrants and their families.

Another way this study has informed the ‘business’ approach to migrant smuggling is through reinforcing the findings of studies in other contexts (e.g. Bilger, et al., 2006; Neske, 2006; Väyrynen, 2003) that have found that smuggling often depends on a network rather than any one individual. While most of the literature tends to refer rather vaguely to ‘smugglers’ or ‘agents’, this article has uncovered the network of intermediaries involved and the nature of their relations with one another. In this case study, they included an initial contact person, suppliers or forgers of passports and visas, airline staff and immigration officials at airports, as well as a third party who held the payment. The network would have been even more complex for journeys that involved significant layovers in transit countries or overland travel.

Further research is required, but one implication is that smuggling networks clearly straddle legal boundaries, including some people who probably derive most of their incomes from nefarious activities and others who do not. Most of the initial contacts interviewed, for example, were travel agents who ran apparently legitimate businesses, and then turned their attention to migrant smuggling after closing the doors of their travel agencies at the end of the day. Similarly the third parties were mainly licensed money-changers or jewellers. Smuggling is usually portrayed as the ‘illegitimate’ aspect of the migration industry, but a more sophisticated analysis than straightforwardly labelling migrant smugglers as criminals may be required.

A third contribution has been to show that there is a range of actors with a stake in the smuggling business, all of whom stand to profit. In this case study, smuggling appeared to pay for migrants, smugglers, and the migrants’ households. While far more detailed information on the experiences of the migrants in the UK would be required to fully make this assertion from their perspective, what can be ascertained from the available data is that 43 of the 50 migrants covered by



the household surveys had apparently found employment in the UK and that 35 of them were apparently earning enough money to send home remittances on a fairly regular basis. Where migration was successful, smuggling also clearly paid for smugglers – a smuggler could expect to earn in the region of US$ 7,000 for arranging a direct flight between Pakistan and the UK – and for intermediaries who were being paid the equivalent of between US$ 1000 and US$ 3000 for their services. Finally, the analysis also shows how migrant smuggling paid for the families of migrants who had invested in the business, on average doubling their household incomes after just two years.

Finally, the findings here rebut one of the main criticisms of the business model of migrant smuggling, namely that it ignores the wider social context for migration (e.g. Herman, 2006; van Liempt and Doomernik, 2006). It is the case that following the money in this study has not allowed full attention to be paid to important social processes such as the implications of raising and borrowing money for migrants and families; the risks of smuggling for the migrants involved and the experiences of smuggled migrants in (or out of) the labour market in host countries. On the other hand, the focus on money has revealed the socio-economic context from which smuggled migrants derived; the network around the smuggling business; as well as the important role of migrants’ families. Indeed it might be argued that the business of migrant smuggling depends on social networks and relations to make a profit.

Policy implications

As explained in the Introduction, laws and policies to combat migrant smuggling have generally been subsumed within wider approaches to reduce irregular migration, including border controls and enhanced interstate cooperation. For a number of reasons, it has been suggested not to be an effective remedy to migrant smuggling. Some commentators have suggested that far from stemming migrant smuggling, for example, more stringent border controls can have the unintended consequence of increasing migrant smuggling, as people turn to illicit means to cross borders The more closed borders are, it is suggested, the greater the role played by smuggling networks and organized crime (Väyrynen, 2003). A second and particular concern that has been forwarded by refugee advocates is that refugees applying for asylum in the industrialized world are often transported there by smugglers, and that to stem smuggling runs the risk of reducing access for them to asylum systems (e.g. Brolan, 2002).

The ‘business’ approach to migrant smuggling broadly adopted in this article provides some scope for more nuanced policies targeted specifically at the phenomenon of migrant smuggling. It might be argued that for the smugglers involved, migrant smuggling currently comprises an activity that combines low

22 Koser


risks with high returns. Unlike the case for human traffickers, most states have not yet introduced legislation that specifically punishes migrant smugglers. The legal disincentives at least are minimal. At the same time, as emphasized in this case study, smugglers attract very high returns for their services.

The findings presented here have implications both for increasing risks for smugglers and reducing their return – in other words transforming a ‘low risk, high return’ operation into a ‘high risk, low return’ one. The finding that smuggling is often based on networks more than on a single individual, for example, is significant in considering how to penalize smuggling effectively. As with all networks, risk is effectively spread through the network. Arresting any single operative is unlikely to be anything more than a temporary setback for the functioning of the network as a whole. A related point arises from understanding that there is a range of actors – not just smugglers and their intermediaries – who stand to profit from the process. The implication is that a concerted and integrated approach to reducing migrant smuggling needs to focus on, and understand the motives of, not only smugglers, but also migrants themselves as well as other actors such as migrants’ families.

Where profit is the motive for all those involved (and as has been emphasised it is not always), this research can also begin to inform policies specifically aimed at reducing profits. If the supply of forged or stolen documents can be reduced, smugglers will need to pay more for them and either accept a lower profit or offset additional costs by charging potential migrants a higher price. Presumably there will be a cost threshold beyond which the demand for the services of smugglers begins to decline. The same logic applies to efforts to clamp down on corruption among airline and immigration officials. In this particular case study, smugglers appear to actually risk losing an initial investment in smuggling where migrants are intercepted or returned, and this can be a direct way that strengthening borders in both transit and destination countries impacts smuggling.

If smugglers absorb the financial costs of failure, however, there is little or no financial disincentive in the particular smuggling system studied in this article for migrants or their families to take the risk. If the migrants do not succeed then there is a ‘money back’ guarantee in place. One response is to focus on a broader definition of success. While there may be little financial risk for smuggled migrants, there are clearly risks of imprisonment, exploitation, abuse and even death. The sample in this research may well have been self-selecting, in that families whose members had been unsuccessful in this broader sense may have been unwilling to participate. Clearly there is not a one hundred per cent success rate for migrant smuggling between Afghanistan/Pakistan and the UK. Awareness-raising, education and information on the risks involved may be one policy response.



A final potential policy approach for disrupting migrant smuggling that arises from the analysis in this article is to focus on the migrants’ families. It has been suggested here that for many, smuggling represents a significant investment on which they expect a financial return, and that in most cases this return was substantial. How might it be possible to stop migrants’ families from profiting and thus stop them from funding smuggling? One approach is to expend more efforts on stopping smuggled and other irregular migrants finding work in destination country labour markets. A second is to limit their ability to send home remittances if they do they work. Both approaches are very difficult to achieve and raise significant ethical issues around the rights of migrants. Following the money, however, suggests that they could work.

NOTES

1 The research is funded within the Leverhulme Programme on ‘The Movement of People in the Modern World’, based at the University of Bristol and University College London.

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POURQUOI LE TRAFIC DE MIGRANTS EST RENTABLE

A partir de recherches empiriques menées en Afghanistan et au Pakistan, le présent article “suit l’argent” de 50 migrants ayant suivi une filière clandestine pour entrer au Royaume-Uni, afin de faire la lumière sur le financement de ce type de trafic. Les moyens mis en œuvre pour réunir l’argent nécessaire pour payer les passeurs vont de l’utilisation des économies à la vente de biens immobiliers, de biens fonciers et de bijoux. Cet argent a été confié à des tiers, qui ne l’ont remis aux passeurs qu’une fois les migrants arrivés à destination: une forme de garantie “satisfait ou remboursé” en quelque sorte. Les passeurs ont reversé environ la moitié de cette somme aux falsificateurs de documents et de passeports, aux employés des aéroports et aux autres intermédiaires nécessaires au fonctionnement de la filière. La plupart des migrants ont rapidement trouvé du travail sur leur lieu d’arrivée et ont commencé à rapatrier des fonds peu après. En moyenne, ces rapatriements de fonds ont été suffisants, au bout de deux ans, pour rembourser la mise de fonds initiale ayant servi à payer les passeurs, puis ont plus que doublé les revenus des bénéficiaires dans les pays d’origine des migrants. Dans la présente étude de cas, le trafic a donc été rentable pour l’ensemble des intermédiaires impliqués, les migrants et les familles des émigrés restées au pays.

¿POR QUÉ ES RENTABLE EL TRÁFICO DE MIGRANTES?

Dado los estudios empíricos realizados en Afganistán y Pakistán, este artículo ha determinado la utilización que se ha hecho del dinero de 50 migrantes objeto de tráfico al Reino Unido para aclarar cómo se financia dicho tráfico. Los medios para recaudar el dinero necesario a efectos de pagar a los traficantes iban desde la utilización de los ahorros hasta la venta de propiedades, tierras y joyas. Los pagos se efectúan a terceros, quienes no entregan el pago al traficante hasta que el o los migrantes llegasen a destino, efectivamente, se trata de una garantía de reintegro del dinero utilizado para el tráfico. Por su parte, los traficantes desembolsaban prácticamente la mitad de lo que cobraban a falsificadores, procuradores de pasaportes, funcionarios de aeropuertos y otros intermediarios necesarios para facilitar el tráfico. La mayoría de los migrantes consiguió un trabajo poco después de llegar al lugar de destino y empezó a enviar remesas inmediatamente después. Por lo general, las remesas bastaban para reembolsar, al cabo de dos años, el pago inicial a los traficantes y luego, en promedio, prácticamente duplicaban los ingresos del hogar en el país de origen. De este estudio por casos se desprende que el tráfico de migrantes beneficia económicamente a toda una serie de intermediarios implicados

why migrant smuggling pays

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