Up in Smoke: Human Smugglers and EU Containment Development in North Africa

This paper investigates the development of illicit networks in North Africa from cigarette smugglers to human smugglers and their change from petty traffickers to international criminals in the eyes of the European Union. In the mid 2000s, cigarette smuggling networks operating in the Sahara desert adapted their established trade routes to smuggle migrants within a power vacuum of conflicts and unstable governments. Although smugglers used the same routes that successfully avoided police detection for generations, in the face of mounting political pressure from Europe, nation-states in North Africa started to militarize their borders with financial support from the EU. I argue that the increased surveillance creates more dangerous routes for migrants, as smugglers are more likely to abandon migrants to avoid arrest. The EU’s efforts to externalize its border through what Loren Landau calls an example of containment development increases pressure on illegal smuggling organizations to the detriment of the migrants’ safety. Drawing additionally from the research of scholars on African politics, human smuggling, and conflict studies, this paper explores the effects of the EU’s overt criminalization of organized crime involving human smuggling towards Europe. The findings of this paper contend that the European Union’s policies towards North African states to contain migrants do not deter illegal migration but rather outsource the surveillance of such migrants to non-EU states. Such research engages with current debates over the morality and political effectiveness of development aid and the treatment of migrants in the European context.