The ethics of commercial human smuggling
| Author | Julian F. Müller |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885118754468 |
| Published date | 01 January 2021 |
| Date | 01 January 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
EJPT
Article
The ethics of commercial
human smuggling
Julian F. Mu
¨ller
Brown University, USA
Abstract
Even though human smuggling is one of the central topics of contention in the political
discourse about immigration, it has received virtually no attention from moral philoso-
phy. This article aims to fill this gap and provide a moral analysis of commercial human
smuggling. The article accomplishes this by analyzing whether the moral outrage against
human smugglers during the European refugee crisis can be justified. To do this, the
article first analyzes whether (commercial) human smuggling is inherently wrong.
Answering this question in the negative, this article then asks whether the wholesale
condemnation of human smuggling in the European case can nevertheless be justified by
recourse to a nation-state’s purported right to political self-determination.
Keywords
Human smuggling, immigration, migration, people smuggling, refugee crisis
Introduction
In the wake of the European refugee crisis, not one day has passed by without a
high-ranking politician condemning human smuggling. They have demanded
that ‘‘Europe must take even more decisive action against human smugglers,’’
celebrated military operations against smugglers as an ‘‘impressive symbol of deter-
mination and solidarity’’ (Gebauer et al., 2014), and called out commercial human
smuggling for being a ‘‘disgusting crime’’ (ARD, 2015). Even international organ-
izations have been quick to morally condemn organized human smuggling. The
UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) (2010b: 29), for instance, has recently
published a 300-page handbook titled Toolkit to Combat Smuggling of Migrants.
The public thus finds itself in a situation, as van Liempt and Sersli (2013: 2) point
out, in which it is constantly confronted with the ‘‘[d]iscursive associations between
smugglers and crime [...] by politicians, the media, and academics.’’
European Journal of Political Theory
2021, Vol. 20(1) 138–156
!The Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1474885118754468
journals.sagepub.com/home/ept
Corresponding author:
Julian F. Mu¨ller, Political Theory Project, Brown University, Box 2005, 8 Fones Alley, Providence, RI 02906,
USA.
Email: julian_mueller@brown.edu
However, from a purely moral point of view, it does not seem obvious that this
round-about moral condemnation against human smugglers is justified. First off,
human smuggling should not be confused with human trafficking. While human
trafficking concerns ‘‘the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt
of persons, by means of threat or use of force’’ (UNODC, 2004: 42, emphasis
added), commercial human smuggling is defined as ‘‘the procurement, in order
to obtain [...] a financial or other material benefit of the illegal entry of a person
into a State Party of which the person is not a national or a permanent resident’’
(UNODC, 2004: 54).
1
Moreover, human smuggling rings are often the only way for
refugees and other people in desperate need to escape unjust states of affairs and
find sanctuary. Even the UN recognizes that human smugglers are often the only
way for refugees and the destitute to get out of harm’s way. Against this back-
ground, some might ask whether we should instead praise human smugglers for
helping the worst-off to secure their rights, rather than condemning them. At the
very least, these preliminary thoughts should motivate us to articulate a more
nuanced view on the moral status of human smuggling.
In the recent decade, there has been a surge of interest in political philosophy
and ethics with respect to the morality of immigration. The most prominent issue in
immigration ethics is surely whether nation-states have the moral right to exclude
people from immigrating into their territory. Other questions in immigration ethics
include whether wealthy nations have different obligations to refugees and the
desperately poor, whether highly-skilled immigrants in some circumstances have
an obligation to remain in their country of origin, whether citizenship should be for
sale, and how nation-states should deal with the fact that globally, millions of
people in the foreseeable future will try their best to cross the borders into wealthy
nations in the hope of a better life.
Although philosophers have spent much time and ink discussing the morality of
immigration, the moral status of human smuggling is an issue that has been vir-
tually absent from academic discussion in philosophy. That human smuggling is
indeed an issue that is usually overlooked in migration ethics is reflected in the fact
that the most recent treatises on the morality of immigration, David Miller’s (2016)
Strangers in Our Midst and Joseph Carens’s (2013) The Ethics of Immigration, fail
to provide an analysis of the moral status of human smuggling and indeed do not
even flag the issue as one of philosophical concern. This is curious as human
smuggling is one of the core issues—as pointed out earlier—in the public debate
about immigration. William Smith (2015: 90) recently noted that the literature in
immigration ethics mainly focuses ‘‘on the morality of border controls’’ while
mostly ignoring issues concerning the morality of border crossing.
2
This is an
unfortunate situation, as it entails, as he rightly points out, ‘‘that political theory
offers little guidance about the normative issues raised by unauthorised economic
migration, understood as unlawful entry to or residence in a state by persons from
less wealthy societies looking to enhance their occupational opportunities.’’
3
In this
article, I want to discuss a specific aspect of border crossing, namely, the moral
status of human smuggling, an issue that is both politically important as well as
philosophically understudied.
4
Mu
¨ller 139
To continue reading
Request your trial