International law separates migrant smuggling from trafficking in persons, defining each in a separate protocol under the same United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime. Smuggling is treated as a crime against the state because it violates the state's borders, with the traveller consenting to be taken across. Trafficking is treated as a crime against the person because it violates the human rights of someone moved against their will. State policy rests on this division, yet in practice the boundary is contested and thinly evidenced. This study analyses 71 anonymised interviews with people who travelled irregularly from Libya and were rescued at sea and disembarked in Malta in 2018 and 2019, focusing on 17 who worked in conditions meeting the definition of forced labour. It finds that the same person's status can move in both directions between being smuggled and being trafficked, so that smuggling, forced labour, debt bondage, extortion, kidnapping and trafficking overlap along the route.
Research Objectives
- Examine where and how smuggling and trafficking converge and blur along the Central Mediterranean Route (CMR) to Europe.
- Situate exploitation meeting legal definitions of trafficking within partly smuggler-facilitated journeys.
- Challenge the binary of smuggled migrant with agency versus trafficking victim without agency.
- Consider implications for states' obligations toward severely exploited migrants.
Methodology
- Qualitative analysis of 71 anonymised interview records supplied by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime, collected at Malta's Marsa Initial Reception Centre, July 2018 to September 2019.
- Sixty-three men, eight women; aged 18 to 50 at interview, mean age 21; at least 15 likely under 18 when leaving their country of origin; 31 (44%) Sudanese.
- The 71 are 1.46% of 4,851 people rescued and disembarked in Malta in 2018-2019; a convenience sample, no claims to generalisability.
- Situational approach (Clarke, 1997): the what, where, when and how of each case, compared across cases. Limitations include self-reporting bias and possible underreporting of sexual exploitation.
- The ILO Forced Labour Convention (1930) definition anchored coding; incidents were then examined against the Trafficking Protocol's act, means and purpose elements.
Key Findings
- Seventeen participants (24%) worked in conditions meeting the ILO forced labour definition, all in Libya; 11 while detained.
- All had been detained at least once by interview, 68% (n=48) also before Malta; excluding Malta arrival, 56 of 63 detention instances were in Libya. The authors argue deliberate torture for ransom, forced labour and extortion in certain facilities meets the purpose criterion.
- Transitions ran both ways: trafficking-to-smuggling arose where detained people negotiated paid boat crossings with captors to secure release. Several described smugglers forcing migrants onto boats, sometimes at gunpoint; one was sold by his smuggler into forced labour at Kouri Bougoudi goldfield.
- Agency did not fundamentally distinguish the categories: not absolute in smuggling, nor necessarily absent in forced labour or trafficking, though constraints were considerable.
- The authors qualify this: not everything exploitative could or should be called trafficking, and recasting smugglers as traffickers could attract stronger criminal justice responses on an already marginalised population.
Recommendations
- Base humanitarian protection on hardships experienced en route, not legal categorisation or initial motivations.
- Provide a better definition of exploitation; the authors do not call for labelling all smuggling as trafficking.
- Recognise ransom and extortion in detention more broadly in trafficking discourse, and debt bondage where it shows attributes akin to slavery or servitude.
- Reconsider externalised border controls in Libya that contribute to conditions conducive to exploitation; detaining severely exploited people on arrival in Malta goes against Malta's own obligations.
- Extend research to other routes and demographics, including women's experiences, and to EU state responses to trafficking en route.
Key Takeaways
- Smuggling and trafficking are better treated as separate but interconnected phenomena within a continuum of exploitation, not two clean legal boxes.
- Exploitation is undefined in the Trafficking Protocol; the authors cite work showing a smuggled migrant, lacking a formal exploitation element, has few rights and is most likely expelled.
- Evidence covers the CMR only and the authors claim no generalisability. Their question, whether protection follows the legal label or the hardship endured, may be worth posing in the Mekong subregion. This connection is our own; the paper holds no Southeast Asia data.
References
Bish, A., Cockbain, E., Walsh, P. W., & Borrion, H. (2024). Exploring the 'blurred boundary': Human smuggling and trafficking on the Central Mediterranean Route to Europe. Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, 5(1), 70–94. https://doi.org/10.31389/jied.214
Full text (Open Access): https://jied.lse.ac.uk/articles/10.31389/jied.214
