Criminalising ‘boat pilots’: Comparative critical reflections from ethnographic research in the UK and Greece

• In Event: Rethinking migrant smuggling: Narratives, perceptions and policies across routes

Abstract

This paper is a conversation between two early career researchers conducting ethnographic research on the impact of ‘counter-smuggling’ measures in Europe. Vicky’s research focuses on the criminalisation of people crossing the English Channel in ‘small boats’, which has targeting those identified as steering dinghies since 2018. Her research included ‘courtwatching’ 130 relevant hearings 2023-2025, and interviews with lawyers, practitioners, and people on the move. Simone’s work focuses on the prosecution of ‘boat drivers’ and the different narratives involved, in Samos, Greece. Her research, conducted across 3 months in 2025, included courtwatching, interviews with boat drivers and with people who had recently arrived to Samos.
Drawing our combined empirical research, we discuss the legal violence enacted by and through different actors involved in these criminal proceedings. We discuss key similarities in the rhetorical justification and prosecution of ‘boat pilots’, as well as important differences mediated by the different geographical contexts. In both countries, ‘rescue’ becomes a carceral encounter. We discuss how people on the move understand and experience arrests as, at once, both arbitrary and racialised; and how framings of ‘innocence’ are constructed within courtrooms. These frames, we suggest, while helpful for some individuals’ mitigation, further reify racialised bordering practices constructing some movement as ‘good’ and others as ‘bad’.
Thinking beyond this state gaze of innocence/guilty, we argue that these prosecutions are important instances of racialised (b)ordering, where the script of the ‘illegal migrant’ is (re)written, unauthorised mobility is pathologised, and where criminal punishment is relied upon as a crude, often violent tool in the enforcement of borders and belonging.

Authors

• Simone Schwab, University of Amsterdam

• Victoria Taylor, University of Oxford