People-Smuggling in Europe: A Growing Phenomenon

Khalid Koser is a research fellow in the Migration Research Unit at University College, London, and the editor of New African Diasporas (Routledge, forthcoming).

A body of evidence is beginning to accumulate that significant proportions of asylum-seekers in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in western Europe have been smuggled. This has been the conclusion of several, albeit small-scale, case studies.¹ Tragedies such as the discovery in 2000 in the British port of Dover of fifty-eight Chinese who had suffocated to death in the back of a truck have raised the profile of human-smuggling. Most commentators, whatever their perspective on asylum, now accept that the smuggling of asylum-seekers in western Europe is on the increase.

 

Against this background, my purpose here is to review what is known about the smuggling of asylum-seekers in western Europe. The focus on western Europe is simply a reflection of the existing literature and data. This is not to underestimate the global significance of human-smuggling, or its rising incidence throughout the industrialised world.

 

This article is structured around a series of central questions. How is “smuggling” defined and who precisely is an “asylum-seeker”? What is the scale of the phenomenon, and is it increasing in importance? Why are asylum-seekers smuggled? What are the main patterns and processes that characterise such smuggling? What are the consequences for asylum-seekers? And what have been the policy responses? If a single theme pervades this article, it is that there are still very significant gaps in our knowledge. The final section consequently highlights the need for further research.

Questions of Definition

One of the main conceptual debates in this area concerns the distinction between human-smuggling and human-trafficking. Until only recently these terms were used more or less interchangeably. A series of new policy initiatives has, however, separated out the concepts. The Economic and Social Council of the United Nations General Assembly has, for example, produced separate protocols for trafficking and smuggling. These protocols distinguish two categories of individual. A “victim of trafficking” is someone who has suffered elements of exploitation and coercion. A “smuggled migrant” is someone who has voluntarily engaged a smuggler to move him or her illegally across a border. An implication of this distinction is that smuggling has emerged as primarily a migration issue, while trafficking is viewed more as a human rights issue.

 

At the same time, it is worth noting that a number of empirical studies indicate that the boundaries between smuggling and trafficking may be more blurred than policy suggests. For the individuals involved, smuggling can effectively degrade into trafficking. Thus, a migrant may make a down payment for what is understood to be a migration service, only to be forced into an exploitative situation upon arrival in the destination country in order to make good the balance due. In addition, there has been some resistance to the simple distinction between smuggling as a migration issue and trafficking as a human rights issue. In particular, recent case studies demonstrate how smuggling—with no associated coercion or exploitation—can nevertheless expose clients to vulnerability and threaten their fundamental human rights. (Some of this evidence is reviewed later in this article, when the consequences of smuggling for asylum-seekers are considered.)

 

It is also worth noting, however, that no empirical evidence has yet been published to demonstrate that asylum-seekers have been the victims of trafficking. The limited literature that exists focuses only on the smuggling of asylum-seekers. And there is an associated point worth emphasising: despite media assertions of a growing link between human-smuggling and the smuggling of other “commodities”, in particular drugs and arms, there is no empirical evidence of such a link. It may be that the link exists, but in the absence of evidence it is worth resisting for fear of further demonising asylum-seekers and lending credence to the largely unsubstantiated claim that asylum-seekers are associated with terrorist activities.

 

A final muddying of the conceptual waters arises from the debate concerning precisely who is an asylum-seeker. In western Europe the label combines three categories of people. One is people who are eventually recognised as refugees. Their number, as a proportion of total asylum applicants, has fallen in recent years in western Europe. A second is people who are recognised as being unable to return safely to their country of origin, but who at the same time do not meet the criteria of the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and so cannot be granted refugee status. Typically, they are granted an alternative form of protection—in the United Kingdom, for example, “exceptional leave to remain”. And the third, largest, category is those people who are not recognised as being in need of protection.

 

What is interesting is that while people in these three categories may differ significantly in their motivations for leaving their countries of origin, and in their eventual destination countries, their patterns and processes of movement appear to have converged and increasingly to have become dominated by smugglers. There is no evidence to suggest significantly different interactions with smugglers among the various categories of people who constitute asylum-seekers. In addition, there is no evidence that the smuggling of asylum‑seekers takes a different form from that of other migrant types.

Estimating Numbers

Any attempt to estimate the number of migrants who are smuggled—let alone more specifically the number of asylum-seekers who are smuggled—is dogged by problems of an empirical and conceptual nature. Where figures do exist they concern mainly the European context.

 

A starting point is data on illegal migration. Even in Europe, and even for legal migration, figures are often inaccurate, out of date and non-comparable. Obviously, these problems are amplified for data on illegal or irregular migration. For example, different states in the European Union use different methods to derive their data. One of the most common sources is the number of apprehensions at the border. Thus, in 1998, 40,201 people were apprehended after illegally entering Germany, 16,500 were apprehended the same year in the United Kingdom and 9,700 were apprehended during the period January–May 1999 in Austria.²

 

However, there are real difficulties in translating these figures into an estimate of the number of migrants who have been smuggled. Perhaps the greatest difficulty is that many—perhaps most—of those who have been smuggled may not be apprehended at the border. Thus, border apprehensions would need to be combined with in-country apprehensions to provide a base figure from which to try to estimate how many in total have been smuggled.

 

The most widely quoted figure for the scale of human-smuggling in Europe was produced in 1994 by Jonas Widgren, who tried to overcome some of these data problems.³ It is worth rehearsing briefly how he arrived at his numbers. He estimated that in 1993 there were 240,000–360,000 illegal migrant entries in western Europe. The figure was extrapolated from the number of illegal migrants apprehended in a certain destination and the number of migrants apprehended in transit countries on their way to that destination. Analysis of border control data showed about 60,000 apprehensions. Widgren then estimated, based on interviews with border control authorities, that at least four to six times that number entered their destination undetected. Of these, Widgren further estimated that between 15 and 30 per cent had used the services of smugglers during part of their journey, amounting to a total of between 36,000 and 108,000 smuggled migrants in 1993.

 

If Widgren’s multipliers are applied to the more recent data on border apprehensions cited above for Germany, Austria and the United Kingdom, then his estimates need to be updated significantly. Data for just these three countries give approximately the same ranges he arrived at for the European Union as a whole, namely, 250,000–350,000 illegal migrants, of whom between about 35,000 and 100,000 were smuggled. Although plainly the basis for these calculations is open to question, this preliminary longitudinal analysis would seem to reinforce a growing consensus that the scale of human-smuggling has grown substantially since Widgren made his estimate in 1994.

Smuggling on the Rise

Widgren also made a separate calculation for the number of asylum-seekers specifically who had been smuggled. In 1993, there were about 690,000 asylum-seekers in western Europe, of whom Widgren estimated about half were not in need of protection. Of those without a well-founded claim for asylum, Widgren estimated that between 20 and 40 per cent had been smuggled, amounting to between 70,000 and 140,000 smuggled asylum-seekers in western Europe in 1993. Again, the number of asylum-seekers in Europe has increased dramatically since 1993, owing to rising applications and continuing backlogs, and an update of Widgren’s calculations would show a significant growth in the number of smuggled asylum-seekers.

 

There are other observations to make of Widgren’s data. It is interesting that his estimate for smuggled asylum-seekers is based only on the number of claimants whose applications he judged to be unfounded. But, as mentioned above, the limited available research suggests that there are no grounds for assuming a distinction, in terms of their interaction with smugglers, between those who do and those do who not have a well-founded claim for asylum. In an admittedly small-scale study, for example, John Morrison found a high incidence of smuggling among a group of respondents who had been granted refugee status in the United Kingdom.⁴

 

Moreover, there are a number of reasons to believe that a significantly larger proportion of asylum-seekers than the 20–40 per cent posited by Widgren have used smugglers since he made his estimate. One is empirical. The German Federal Refugee Office estimated in December 1997 that about 50 per cent of asylum-seekers in Germany were smuggled into the country. In 1998, the Dutch immigration service upgraded its 1996 estimate of 30 per cent for smuggled asylum-seekers to between 60 and 70 per cent.

 

A second reason is more conceptual and less quantifiable. This is that the distinction between asylum-seekers and illegal migrants may no longer be as clear as Widgren proposed. Even though the 1951 refugee convention specifically guards against it, there are indications that use of smugglers may negatively affect the claims of asylum-seekers in some countries. For example, in the United Kingdom, recent grounds for rejecting asylum applications reportedly include failure to present supporting documentation and presentation of fraudulent documentation—both shortcomings being specific outcomes of smuggling. Consequently, some people who have fled their country of origin as “refugees” are not lodging asylum claims in their destination country because of their means of arrival. In other words, at least a part of the illegal migrant population consists of people who should be applying for asylum.

Tightening the Noose on Asylum

Analysis of the changing political context for asylum-seekers in western Europe, together with statistical analysis of asylum applications, provides some insight into the interactions between smuggling and asylum. In simple terms, asylum in western Europe can be thought of as having moved through three phases over the last thirty years. In the first phase, during the 1960s and 1970s, and particularly before the oil crisis of 1973, there were two distinct legal migration channels into western Europe, one for labour migrants and another for refugees. The majority of refugees at this time were accepted in western Europe on the basis of a quota system.

 

As economic recession and an environment of retrenchment struck western Europe during the mid-1970s, the demand for overseas labour dried up and most of the formal routes for labour migration—e.g., recruitment agreements with particular countries of origin—were closed over the following decade. In retrospect, it is quite clear that one unintended consequence of this policy was the forcing of economic migrants into the asylum channel, which had become the only remaining legal path into western Europe. This was the second phase in Europe’s asylum experience. Asylum applications in the European Union grew steadily through the late 1980s, reaching an overall peak in 1992 of some 672,000 applications. The convergence in the asylum channel of refugees and economic migrants has notoriously presented policymakers with great problems of clarification, and many human rights activists are concerned that at least some genuine asylum claimants have been ignored as the obsession with filtering out so-called bogus refugees has grown.

 

Largely in response to rising numbers and the impression that most asylum-seekers were bogus, a raft of policies was adopted across western Europe during the mid-1990s to curb asylum flows—the third phase in European asylum history. Some policies sought to reduce the scale of asylum migration. They included the imposition of visa requirements on citizens from an expanding list of countries, the promotion of so-called safe havens, the necessity for asylum-seekers to submit their applications at a consulate or embassy in their country of origin (“in-country processing”), and sanctions on the carriers of claimants. Another set of policies targeted the spatial distribution of asylum applications, seeking to divert them away from western Europe. Perhaps the best example is the series of readmission agreements signed on a bilateral basis between EU countries and those in central or eastern Europe, which have facilitated the return of asylum-seekers from the former to the latter.

 

The combined effect of such polices was a dramatic fall in asylum applications in the European Union after the peak of 1992; applications had more than halved by 1996. Nevertheless, since the late 1990s, asylum applications have begun to rise again in all EU countries except Germany. This rise has been particularly significant in the United Kingdom, where the estimated number of asylum applications in 2002 exceeded that country’s previous historical high of 1991. And, as has been indicated above, an increasing proportion of these recent asylum-seekers are arriving with the assistance of smugglers.

 

One interpretation of these data is that, just as closing down the labour migration channel forced economic migrants into the asylum channel, constricting the asylum channel is now forcing asylum-seekers into a new, illegal, channel. And the indications are that this channel is being monopolised by smugglers. Faced with increasingly stringent restrictions, potential asylum-seekers have little choice, it seems, but to enter western Europe illegally.

The Smuggling Process

Remarkably little is known about precisely how smugglers operate. (A cynic might well argue that it would be useful to understand the nature of the phenomenon before trying to legislate against it.) The main reason for this lack of knowledge is methodological. Unsurprisingly, given the nefarious nature of their activities, there has been no systematic research among smugglers themselves. And surveys among smuggled asylum-seekers are relatively rare, and certainly not representative. They are also at best only indirect sources for understanding the smuggling process.

 

What is clear even from the limited literature, however, is that smugglers range from individuals to well-organised transnational networks, and operate in different ways. It is impossible to generalise about smuggling.

 

Smugglers can be involved at various stages of an asylum-seeker’s migration, from exiting the country of origin to transiting through intermediary countries to entering and settling in a final destination.

 

A survey I conducted in 1996 among smuggled Iranian asylum-seekers in the Netherlands indicated that smugglers had helped them to leave their country of origin in three main ways.⁵ First, smugglers concealed in Iran several who said they were in immediate danger of being arrested. One respondent had remained in hiding for about a month, waiting for his contact to make the necessary arrangements to smuggle him out of Iran. Second, smugglers organised air tickets and false travel documents. However, only a minority of the respondents flew out of Iran, and for the remainder a third function served by smugglers was to move them across a land border. For the few who exited Iran via formal border crossings, forged documents were also provided. The others were moved clandestinely across the border by the smugglers.

 

Respondents in this and similar surveys confirm that it is relatively easy to find smugglers in countries of origin. Some asylum-seekers already know smugglers either personally or indirectly through other people. Others say smugglers can be found on certain days in certain bazaars in most large cities, and that they even advertise their services in newspapers. Some journeys are organised by relatives already living in western Europe, with the smugglers being contacted directly in the destination countries.

 

The Iranians reported paying between $4,000 and $6,000 for the services of the smugglers. (More recent case studies indicate smugglers’ fees have risen since the mid-1990s, when the Iranians left Iran.) Payment is made in three main ways. Sometimes—and this was the case for all the Iranians—it is demanded upfront and in full. Alternatively, a deposit is paid in advance, with the balance being paid upon arrival in the destination country. A final method is for no payment to be made until the client has arrived safely. These last two options arguably provide some security for the migrants: there are clear financial incentives for the smuggler to deliver them safely. On the other hand, the obligation to raise the funds owed leaves migrants open to the possibility of exploitation in the destination country.

Routes and Entry Strategies

Besides assisting asylum-seekers to leave their country of origin, smugglers may also organise their migration routes. Most of the Iranian respondents first moved overland to neighbouring Turkey or Pakistan, then flew to either Hungary or Romania, and then finally travelled overland to the Netherlands.

 

Three wider observations are worth making. First, smugglers move people by different methods, and this reinforces the point made above that it is impossible to generalise about who smugglers are and how they operate. Sometimes they accompany their clients throughout the journey. When this occurs, it is commonly reported that upon arrival in the destination country the smuggler will take back any false documentation that has been provided, presumably for recycling. Alternatively, a transnational network may underpin the smuggling operation. Some Iranians, for example, reported that in each transit country a different person had taken responsibility for them. Interestingly, these local contacts were usually nationals of the transit country in question.

 

A second observation is that migrants may spend significant periods of time in transit countries en route to their final destinations. For example, most of the Iranians surveyed spent over two weeks travelling to the Netherlands; one reported staying in Romania for nearly three months while his contact there obtained a false passport for him.

 

The implications of long transit periods are returned to later in this paper, as for several respondents they became significant sources of insecurity. For now, it suffices to observe that smuggling is arguably increasing the significance of transit countries in the geography of asylum. Significant new ethnic enclaves may be emerging in some of these transit countries.⁶

 

A final observation arises from the relatively limited number of routes reported by respondents. This may indicate that some routes have become well established and are maintained by smugglers. One respondent told me that a friend who had been smuggled from Iran to the Netherlands about three years before her had come by a quite different route, namely, via Spain. Smugglers are no doubt responsive to the opening and closing of opportunities for gaining entry into western Europe.

 

The last principal function which smugglers serve concerns entry into destination countries. Smugglers employ three main entry strategies: clandestine entry, entry with false documentation, or entry without documentation (i.e., presenting oneself to the immigration authorities, but bearing no entry permits, identification, etc.). This last strategy illustrates a wider service provided by smugglers, namely, helping their clients to remain in destination countries after arrival. For example, the absence of a passport hinders personal identification, the identification of a country of origin, and the identification of transit countries. Many smugglers seem to be well informed about the asylum procedure in the destination country. Some asylum-seekers are even advised on how to respond during interviews with immigration officials—for example, they are told not to name as transit countries those with which the destination country has signed a readmission agreement.

 

The most extreme example of smugglers organising entry strategies is when they determine even the final destination of asylum-seekers. Many asylum-seekers report that they simply requested to be taken to western Europe, leaving it to the smugglers to decide which country they would end up in. Others intending to join relatives or friends already living in specific European countries ultimately find themselves in different destination countries, simply because those are the only places to which they can be smuggled at the time. In other words, smugglers effectively take the decision about their final destinations for them.

The Impact on Asylum-Seekers

Given that so little is known about the patterns and processes surrounding the smuggling of asylum-seekers, it is unsurprising that the consequences for asylum-seekers themselves are also largely unknown. Drawing specifically on my survey of Iranian asylum-seekers in the Netherlands, however, I have argued elsewhere that smuggling can expose asylum-seekers to significant insecurity.⁷ The arguments are briefly rehearsed here:

Political Insecurity

A chief source of political insecurity for any asylum-seeker is the threat of deportation. Iran is one of a number of countries where repatriated asylum-seekers reportedly face persecution specifically because they attempted to claim asylum in the first place. Nevertheless, during 1996, at the time of the survey, deportations from the Netherlands to Iran were occurring. What remains unclear is the extent to which smuggling increases the likelihood of being deported. On the one hand, the 1951 convention stipulates that refugees should not be penalised on the basis of their method of arrival in a country of asylum. The implication is that once asylum-seekers have entered the asylum procedure, their involvement or otherwise with smugglers should have no bearing on their applications. On the other hand, it is quite clear that certain political and media agendas increasingly represent asylum-seekers as being synonymous with illegal migrants. Human rights activists are concerned that asylum-seekers proved to have been smuggled may not be allowed to enter the asylum procedure, and may be deported as illegal migrants.

 

For most respondents in the Iranian survey, their sense of political insecurity was heightened by the fact that they had arrived in the Netherlands via one or more transit countries. Many were smuggled initially to Turkey, from where Iranian asylum-seekers are regularly deported. Romania was another country that many respondents transited. The Dutch government has negotiated a readmission agreement with Romania so that asylum-seekers can be returned there, even though Romania is one of several central or eastern European countries widely regarded as ill equipped to receive and protect asylum-seekers properly.

Economic Insecurity

As noted above, smugglers charged between $4,000 and $6,000 to move people between Iran and the Netherlands, and these costs made many respondents economically vulnerable at various stages of their migration. First, even before leaving Iran, all but two were obliged to turn to friends or relatives for financial assistance. Several said they had been forced to risk staying in Iran despite the very immediate threat of detention in order to raise money. Without financial support from social networks, most respondents would not have been able to migrate.

 

Meeting smugglers’ fees also meant that some respondents left Iran with virtually no money, rendering them economically vulnerable both in transit countries and in the Netherlands. About half reported that they had been obliged to work on the black market in transit countries just to survive. The fees paid to smugglers did not cover subsistence costs en route to the Netherlands.

 

Most respondents arrived in the Netherlands without money. At the same time, they had no source of income to supplement state allowances to meet basic needs. This was largely because Dutch law prohibits asylum-seekers from entering the labour market during their first two years in the country (and similar restrictions apply across the European Union). Only one respondent admitted working illegally during his first year in the Netherlands, although he intimated that several others had also done so but were unwilling to admit as much to me. Even in those few cases where respondents had found temporary (illegal) employment after their first year in the Netherlands, most sent back to Iran a substantial proportion of their income to repay friends or relatives from whom they had borrowed money to finance their journey.

Social Insecurity

Respondents whose destinations had been determined by smugglers were also subjected to what might be described as social insecurity. Those who had ended up in the Netherlands largely at the behest of smugglers, but who had originally intended to join family or friends in other European countries, were effectively isolated from supportive social networks. Those who did have access to such networks in the Netherlands confirmed that these had provided a variety of assistance, including emotional support, information, financial help and childcare. Asylum-seekers lacking these networks suffered from depression much more intensely and frequently than their more fortunate counterparts. They also expressed concern more often about their future. Over the longer term, social networks help migrants to integrate in new host countries, particularly through assisting with housing and employment.

Combating Smuggling

How has policy responded to the growing phenomenon of the smuggling of asylum-seekers? The first answer is that policy has refused to distinguish such smuggling from that of any other migrant type. The overwhelming approach has been to try to halt all smuggling. Asylum advocates argue, however, that doing so may also close the door on the last possibility for asylum-seekers (including at least some in need of protection) to enter western Europe. They argue that in tandem with anti-smuggling policies, legal alternatives must be provided to allow those in need of protection to reach western Europe. So far there is no sign that their concerns have been heeded.

 

Current anti-smuggling initiatives have three principal components. The first is tougher penalties against smugglers, including operatives such as truck drivers who knowingly transport migrants. Only the prospect of serious punishment can serve as a disincentive for smugglers. The second is intercepting smuggled migrants in transit countries, before they can reach their destinations; emphasis has recently been placed on tightening border controls in central and eastern Europe, especially in the Balkans. The third is returning to their countries of origin smuggled migrants and the victims of trafficking. There are serious doubts, however, about how far any of these approaches is likely to succeed:

Penalties

Policy inclines towards a monolithic view of smuggling as being a large, organised and multinational network, yet such a reading does not withstand scrutiny. Smugglers have diverse motivations and resources, and organisation levels vary widely. They range from transnational criminal networks, as in smuggling from China’s Fujian province, to low-level family or local community affairs, as in Latin America. Targeting the former type of operation, as policy tends to do, is unlikely to be as effective as penalising smugglers in small-scale outfits. Arresting a single smuggler in a transnational organisation will do little other than delay operations by a few weeks until a replacement is activated.

Interception

Similarly, closing down smuggling routes by controlling borders in transit countries is likely to have only a short-term effect. Smugglers simply adopt new routes when earlier ones are closed. Again, this probably applies only to well-organised and relatively large-scale smuggling networks, and nobody knows how important these are in the totality of smuggling in Europe.

Return

The third strand of the current policy approach is to return smuggled migrants and the victims of trafficking to their home countries. Some west European states provide assistance for returnees and focus on their sustainable reintegration in the country of origin. The underlying assumption is that return is an important anti-smuggling weapon. It acts as a disincentive by showing that migrants who paid large sums to be smuggled out wasted their money.

 

Yet this assumption is questionable, even if it is granted that return could be achieved on a significant scale. For example, there are grounds for supposing that returnees may remigrate and even employ smugglers once more. One is that in certain countries returnees can face persecution simply for having claimed asylum abroad. Consequently, even if their initial claims for asylum were not well founded, returning them effectively puts them under threat and thus strengthens the validity of any subsequent claims. Returnees might genuinely need to escape their country, and have no option other than to turn once again to smugglers.

 

Again, returnees who have been sent back promptly may arrive in their home country heavily in debt, having borrowed money to pay smugglers in the first place. They may need to leave once again to escape creditors. Finally, some asylum-seekers are simply sanguine about involuntary return. When I asked Iranian respondents in the Netherlands what would happen if they were sent home, many said that they would raise more money and “try again”, probably heading for another western European country.

 

The unfortunate assumption behind the view that return acts as a disincentive is that all asylum-seekers are voluntary migrants. But many believe their lives are under threat, and they will take risks in order to escape, whatever the experiences of others. Such individuals may try to avoid the smuggler used by unsuccessful migrants, but in many origin countries there is a wide range of smugglers from which to choose.

Conclusions

This article has attempted to review the existing evidence on the smuggling of asylum-seekers in western Europe. Throughout, I have emphasised that there are significant gaps in our knowledge: from a lack of consensus over definitions and concepts, through inadequate data and uncertainty about precisely how smugglers operate, to unsatisfactory understanding of the consequences of smuggling and how it may best be combated.

 

Although limited, this body of evidence does warrant some preliminary conclusions. First, smuggling seems to be on the increase, and a rising proportion of asylum-seekers in western Europe appear to have been smuggled there. Second, it is impossible to generalise about the way that smugglers function. Third, despite the assumption that smuggling is no more than a “migration issue”, it can expose asylum-seekers to significant insecurity. Fourth, recent policy initiatives against smuggling may have only superficial impact. And finally, should anti‑smuggling initiatives succeed, new legal routes for seeking asylum must be provided unless its total cessation in western Europe is to be countenanced.

 

The evidence also raises some interesting conceptual issues. Smuggling is further blurring the boundaries between different migrant types. A wide range of migrants—from forced to voluntary and from economic to political—is converging in a single, illegal migration stream that has become dominated by smugglers. And it appears that smuggling may fundamentally alter the geography of asylum in Europe. Transit countries are becoming more important, and sometimes it is the smugglers, not the migrants, who choose the final destinations. Thus, to understand why there has been such a rapid rise in asylum applications in the United Kingdom, for example, we may need to understand why smugglers—not migrants—are targeting the country.

 

What all of this highlights, of course, is the need for further research. Smuggling is unlikely to be a passing phenomenon. As long as there is a demand to move, and as long as there are restrictions on movement, there will be a market for illegal migration. To understand this new phenomenon, research is needed, and that research needs to inform future policymaking.

 

Endnotes

1. See, for example, Khalid Koser, “Social Networks and the Asylum Cycle”, International Migration Review 31, no. 3 (1997), pp. 591–611; John Morrison, The Cost of Survival (London: Refugee Council, 1998); and Vaughan Robinson and Jeremy Segrott, Understanding the Decision-Making of Asylum-Seekers, Home Office Research Study 243, London, 2002.

 

2. The data for the three countries are derived from OECD correspondent reports on international migration (the Sopemi reports) presented at the November 1999 annual Sopemi meeting in Paris by Barbara Fröhlich (Germany), John Salt (United Kingdom) and Gudrun Biffl (Austria).

 

3. Jonas Widgren, “Multilateral Co-operation to Combat Trafficking in Migrants and the Role of International Organisations” (paper presented at a seminar for the International Organisation for Migration, Geneva, 1994).

 

4. Morrison, Cost of Survival.

 

5. See Koser, “Social Networks”; “Out of the Frying Pan and into the Fire: A Case Study of Illegality amongst Asylum-Seekers”, in The New Migration in Europe: Social Constructions and Social Realities, ed. Helma Lutz and Khalid Koser (London: Macmillan, 1998), pp. 185–98; and “The Smuggling of Asylum-Seekers into Western Europe: Contradictions, Conundrums, and Dilemmas”, in Global Human Smuggling, ed. David Kyle and Rey Koslowski (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2001), pp. 58–73.

 

6. See Khalid Koser and Charles Pinkerton, The Social Networks of Asylum-Seekers and the Dissemination of Information about Countries of Asylum, final report to UK Home Office, London, 2002.

 

7. Koser, “Smuggling of Asylum-Seekers”.