Abstract
As the United States has intensified surveillance of its southern border with Mexico, unauthorized migrants have become increasingly dependent on hired smugglers when they cross the border and reach their destinations in the US interior. According to the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, tighter border controls have systematically transformed migrant smuggling into a sophisticated and highly profitable industry dominated by large-scale criminal syndicates that prey on migrants desperate to enter the US without official authorization. In this article I argue that despite the rise of larger-scale smuggling organizations, smuggling of migrants across the US-Mexico border is still undertaken by small-scale and/or part-time smugglers who are embedded in the Mexican migrant community itself. Moreover, I suggest that the logic that predicts the elimination of small-scale smugglers from the market is flawed because it is based on an unrealistic assessment of the requirements for mounting a successful smuggling enterprise. I base this claim on preliminary findings from an ongoing ethnographic study of migrant smuggling on the South Texas-Northeast Mexico border that I began in summer 1998.
Résumé
Depuis que les États-Unis ont intensifié la surveillance de leur frontière avec le Mexique, les migrants non autorisés ont de plus en plus recours aux passeurs de clandestins engagés pour traverser la frontière et arriver à leur destination américaine. Selon le United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (service d’immigration et de naturalisation des Etats-Unis), les renforcements du contrôle frontalier ont systématiquement transformé la migration clandestine en une industrie perfectionnée et très rentable dominée par des associations de malfaiteurs qui exploitent les migrants voulant à tout prix rentrer aux Etats-Unis sans autorisation officielle. Dans cet article, nous faisons valoir le point de vue selon lequel une grande part de la migration clandestine entre les Etats-Unis et le Mexique est encore contrôlée par des passeurs dont le travail est d’envergure réduite ou à temps partiel et qui sont intégrés dans la communauté migrante mexicaine et ce, en dépit de la montée des réseaux de passeurs qui oeuvrent à grande échelle. De plus, nous proposons que les prédictions voulant que les passeurs qui travaillent à petite échelle seront éliminés du marché ne sont pas fondées puisqu’elles reposent sur une évaluation peu réaliste de ce qui est nécessaire pour réussir le trafic d’immigrants. Des résultats préliminaires découlant d’une recherche ethnographique en cours entreprise à l’été 1998 et portant sur le passage de clandestins le long de la frontière entre le sud du Texas et le nord-est du Mexique viennent appuyer cet argument.
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Spener, D. Mexican migrant-smuggling: A cross-border cottage industry. Int. Migration & Integration 5, 295–320 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-004-1016-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-004-1016-8