Beyond the matrix of oppression: Reframing human smuggling through instersectionality- informed approaches
| Published date | 01 February 2017 |
| Date | 01 February 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480616677497 |
| Author | Gabriella Sanchez |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
677497TCR0010.1177/1362480616677497Theoretical CriminologySanchez
research-article2016
Article
Theoretical Criminology
2017, Vol. 21(1) 46 –56
Beyond the matrix of
© The Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permissions:
oppression: Reframing
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480616677497
DOI: 10.1177/1362480616677497
journals.sagepub.com/home/tcr
human smuggling through
instersectionality- informed
approaches
Gabriella Sanchez
University of Texas El Paso - USA
Abstract
What are the challenges and the advantages of using an intersectionality-informed
approach in criminological research? In this essay I raise that question via an analysis of
human smuggling discourses. Tragic events involving the deaths of irregular migrants
and asylum seekers in transit are most often attributed to the actions of the human
smuggler— constructed as the violent, greed-driven, predator racialized, and gendered
as a male from the global South. Most academic engagements with smuggling often
failing to notice the discursive fields they enter, have focused on documenting in detail
the victimization and violence processes faced by those in transit, in the process
reinscribing often problematic narratives of irregular migration, like those reducing
migrants to naïve and powerless creatures and smugglers as inherently male, foreign
and criminal bodies. I argue that essentialized notions of identity prevalent in neoliberal
discourses have permeated engagements with migration, allowing for human smuggling’s
framing solely as an inherently exploitative and violent practice performed by explicitly
racialized, gendered Others. In what follows I start to articulate the possibility of
reframing human smuggling, shifting the focus from the mythified smugglers to the series
of social interactions and sensorial experiences that often facilitated as demonstrations
of care and solidarity ultimately lead to the mobility, albeit precarious, of irregular
migrants. Through a critical engagement with the concept of intersectionality I
Corresponding author:
Gabriella Sanchez, Assistant Professor of Security Studies and Associate Director for Research,
University of Texas El Paso’s National Security Studies Institute, 500 W University, Kelly Hall 409, El Paso,
TX 79968, USA.
Email: gesanchez4@utep.edu
Sanchez
47
explore how smuggling—as one of multiple irregular migration strategies—can be
unpacked as constituting much more than the quintessential predatory practice of late
modernity performed by criminal smugglers preying on powerless victims, to be instead
acknowledged as an alternative, contradictory, highly complex if often precarious path
to mobility and safety in and from the margins.
Keywords
Human smuggling, intersectionality, irregular migration, smugglers
Introduction
Next to the terrorist, the human smuggler has become one of the most recognized preda-
tors of late modernity. Often referred to as traffickers,1 smugglers are quasi-obligatory
characters in contemporary migration narratives. They invariably appear in connection
with calamities involving migrants and asylum seekers in transit, and the language used
to describe them and their activities is almost apocalyptic. They are labeled as unscrupu-
lous and willing to engage in lethal practices (Sunderland, 2014); as greedy and profit-
driven (UNODC, 2015); as capable of transporting sanguinary fundamentalists and
terrorists (Brown, 2015); as transiting the same routes as illicit traders of nuclear material
(Zaitseva and Steinhausler, 2014), and as sexual predators unable to control their most
basic impulses (Gibson, 2014). Yet perhaps the most notable feature of the human smug-
gler discourse is its racialized and gendered nature, where specific identities (males of
color from the global south) are described as virtually indispensable to the practice.
Oftenabsent are the references to the role of migration policy and enforcement and their
correlation with the demand for mechanisms to facilitate irregular migration worldwide.
The smuggler is the inherently evil, violent, and predatory male from the global South
who driven by greed alone does not think twice about exploiting his fellow nationals or
raping child-like migrant women; the criminal who delivers drugs, terrorists, and nuclear
weapons into the pristine, safe capital cities of the global North. Construed as a threat not
only to others but to the very security of the nation-state, the smuggler is a monster to be
contained.
While smugglers can be ruthless and deceptive (De Haas, 2015), the tasks they per-
form constitute a sought-after service that those on the move extra-legally need and are
willing to pay for (Van Liempt, 2007; Zhang, 2007). Border militarization and control,
changes to asylum policies, and the increasing criminalization of human mobility may
lead irregular migrants and asylum seekers to rely on those who can help them overcome
barriers and gain access to safer, more desirable locations.
While the precariousness of irregular migration cannot be denied, not all irregular
migratory journeys are exploitative, violent, or dangerous—or facilitated by smugglers
alone. Yet most academic iterations on irregular migration transits have focused on docu-
menting the victimization and violence experienced by migrants, quite often in a fetishis-
tic manner. Furthermore, many researchers have failed to take into account the discursive
field in which irregular migration is embeddedfurther reinscribing smugglers are as racial-
ized and gendered predators. This tendency has included the absence of smugglers’ own
48
Theoretical Criminology 21(1)
perspectives, often migrants and asylum seekers in transit themselves (Achilli, 2015;
Sanchez, 2014), and for the privileging of narratives that further vilify them.
I argue that the focus —and the emphasis—on the identity of the smuggler as a male
of color from the global South reveals a co-option of the concept of intersectionality—
the subject of this special section and a fundamental theoretical tool of gender stud-
ies—by neoliberal narratives of diversity and multiculturalism in the global North. The
reliance of migration discourses on the concept of the smuggler as possessing an easy-
to-digest, prepackaged identity against that of migrants which fall within clear-cut
lines of race, class, and gender has only further reified smugglers as off-the-grid,
racialized, gendered, and hypersexualized “distant others” (O’Connell Davidson,
2014). This series of attributes is, in turn, extended by proxy to those who smugglers
assist (migrants and asylum seekers), facilitating the widespread execution of punitive
migratory measures.
In this essay, I rely on the treatment of the human smuggler’s identity in migration
narratives to demonstrate how intersectionality’s capacity as an analytical tool is often
exceeded when tackling globalized violence formations . Yet I also acknowledge that
through its recognition of identities as fluid and context-specific, intersectionality can be
a stepping-stone to reframing irregular migration processes. Through intersectionality,
human smuggling can be framed not as a criminal/ized act alone, but rather as a mecha-
nism developed within the matrix of oppression to reduce or overcome the structural
limitations imposed upon people’s mobility and their sense of safety. Relying on an
overview of critical human smuggling scholarship, I call for the development of new
frameworks in mobility studies that recognize irregular migration efforts as worthy of
being critically analyzed beyond the illusion of race, class, and gender as discrete.
Introducing the transnational into intersectionality to “attend to the globalized dimen-
sions of interlocking systems of power" (Henne and Troshynski, 2013: 458), the nature
of all forms of migrations is revealed as existing “against linearity, coherency and perma-
nency” (Puar, 2005: 128) revealing the experiences that take place outside the coordi-
nates of the intersectionality grid. I propose the reframing of smuggling in a way that
...
To continue reading
Request your trial