Iraqi Asylum Migrants in Jordan: Conditions, Religious Networks and the Smuggling Process

The cumulative effect of ten years of European Union (EU) policies on migration has been an overriding emphasis on control at the borders, and beyond the borders, of EU states through a series of measures: carriers’ liability, stricter visa requirements, readmission treaties with Central and Eastern European states, and electronically fortified borders. As several case studies have shown, trying to keep economic migrants out has had, among others effects, the result of allowing the development of networks of human smugglers (Koser, 1997; McDowell, 1997; Salt and Stein, 1997; Ghosh, 1998; Messe et al., 1998; Morrison, 1998; Van Hear, 1998; Koslowski, 2000; Peter, 2000; Salt and Hogarth, 2000; Snyder, 2000). Migration control policies have affected asylum seekers in much the same way as other groups of migrants, forcing them to resort to illegal migration to reach Western Europe, and therefore criminalizing them in blatant contradiction of international law governing the status of refugees (Engbersen and van der Lun, 1998; Van Hear, 1998).