The Rise of the Migration Industry: Theoretical, ethnographic and policy perspectives

The current migration crisis in Europe has focused the world’s attention on the role of actors in the migration industry. Recent research has shown that these actors are motivated not only to facilitate mobility across international borders for financial gain, but they also act to control migrating peoples sometimes under contract to the State. Further they may pursue humanitarian goals or engage in helping migrants maintain transnational ties with sending countries. A focus on the migration industry reveals a complex interplay among its varied actors, including those that operate outside the rule of law. It may be difficult to distinguish among those working legally or illegally in a given situation. The roles described above are not mutually exclusive and may constitute one another. The rise of an industry reflects an era in which hundreds of millions of people are migrating across international borders every year due to the convergence of several long term trends, a situation in which the opportunity for profit becomes integral to contemporary capitalism and its corruption. In this context an unprecedented number of migrating persons are in peril of exploitation, especially women and children, making recovery (also called “rescue”) of kidnapped and trafficked persons an emergent and contested role. In this paper we discuss several ethnographic cases of the migration industry in northern Europe with the aims of: characterizing interactions with migrants and other social actors, including the State; examining influences among actors and State policies; and rethinking roles and industry categorization schemes.