Women's Participation in the Facilitation of Human Smuggling
The Case of the US Southwest
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4864528 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Gabriella Sanchez (0000-0002-6543-346X, The University of Texas at El Paso, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 387-406 |
| Publication date | 2016-04-02 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Geopolitics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14650045.2016.1140645 |
| OpenAlex | W2335102344 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 25 |
Despite the central role of human smuggling in irregular migration, empirical research on the practice and its facilitators has been scant. Drawing from ethnographic observations and data present in court cases, this essay explores the roles of women at providing human smuggling services in Phoenix, Arizona, which by the turn of the twenty-first century became one of the US main hubs for irregular migration. While frequently overlooked within the mainstream rhetoric of smuggling dominated by male-centred narratives of exploitation, victimisation and violence, women play fundamental roles in the facilitation of irregular migration. They recruit customers, negotiate fees and payment plans; withdraw smuggling payments from banks and wire transfer stores, care for migrants and drive or guide groups of border crossers through the desert. This essay argues, in line with recent anthropological scholarship on precarious forms of labour present under globalisation, that the facilitation of irregular migration constitutes for its participants a valid, legitimate form of labour. Smuggling actors are neither predators nor victimisers, but rather ordinary people experiencing the tensions abundant in the precarity of contemporary, neoliberal life
Ethnography · Mainstream · Negotiation · Poison control · Political economy · Political science · Precarity · Rhetoric · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Suicide prevention · Victimisation · Gender Studies · Law · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Sex work and related issues
From Human Smuggling to State Capture
Irregular Migration
La internacionalización de las redes de tráfico de migrantes entre México y Estados Unidos
Los polleros que engañan a los migrantes
Debunking the Smuggler-Terrorist Nexus
Governing Migration Beyond the State
Migration in South America
The Etiology of Migrant Smuggling in Mexico
Banal bordering
Labor trafficking among migrant populations
Irregular migration, borders, and the moral geographies of migration management
Under one roof
From controlling mobilities to control over women’s bodies
Human smuggling at EU-internal transit points
Migrant Smuggling and Female Smugglers in South Texas
Critical Perspectives on Clandestine Migration Facilitation
El papel de la mujer en los nuevos tránsitos migratorios africanos a través de las Américas
Sheltering as a destabilising and perpetuating practice in the migration management architecture in Mexico
Trafficking in US Agriculture
Pre-criminalizing race and space
The Digital Infrastructures of Illegal Border Crossings
Historicizing Mobility
Gender mobility
Tactics of Empathy
De víctimas de trata a victimarios
| Citations per year | 2.78 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2017 - 2025 (9) |
| Highly cited | No |