The Organisation of Migrant Smuggling across the Mediterranean

• In Event: IASOC Presents the Mark Haller Memorial Panel: Illicit Enterprises that Span and Transverse the World

Abstract

This paper is an empirical in-depth study of the structure and activities of a human smuggling ring operating between the Horn of Africa, Libya, Italy and Northern Europe. The ring was involved in the tragic journey that ended with the 2013 Lampedusa shipwreck, in which 366 migrants lost their lives. More generally, the actors under investigation took part in the smuggling of at least 4,670 migrants across the Mediterranean. This paper relies on a number of novel data sets that were manually coded from court files and then analysed using social network analysis techniques. Based on both quantitative and qualitative evidence, this work sheds light on the structure of the smugglers’ network as well as the drivers of coordination among smugglers.

Author

• Paolo Campana, University of Cambridge