HCIAS Blogcast: Gabriella Sanchez on Migrants’ Interactions with Smuggling Facilitators on the US-Mexico Border

Welcome back to the HCIAS Blogcast! This is a series of posts on the HCIAS blog, we summarize some of the key points from our most recent podcast episode. This week, we bring you a conversation between Dr. Gabriella Sanchez of Georgetown University, Dr. Yaatsil Guevara González, Junior Professor of “Migration and the Americas” at the HCIAS, and Dr. Héctor Álvarez Mella, the HCIAS publications editor.

Migrant smuggling is a contentious issue in various spheres, from its portrayals in the media to political discourse and academic investigation. Smuggling facilitators have traditionally been painted with a broad brush as opportunistic and predatory men with links to international organized crime syndicates, often being vilified for taking advantage of the vulnerability of those seeking a better life in a new country. However, an emerging trend in academia, led by ethnographic studies, challenges this simplistic “black and white” narrative, emphasizing instead the need to comprehend the intricate dynamics between migrants and facilitators.

One of the first points of departure from popular depictions of migration that Dr. Sanchez’s research makes is her understanding of migration as a collective practice influenced by shared experiences and, significantly, the images portrayed in media, including social networking platforms. She stresses the importance of viewing migration decisions not as isolated choices but as events deeply embedded within a social context.

Migrants, in the course of their journey, encounter various social actors, with the migrant smuggler, colloquially known as “el coyote” or “el pollero” in Spanish, occupying a disproportionately large space in public imagination. Media plays a pivotal role in shaping public perception of migrant smuggling, often reinforcing law enforcement policies. Dr. Sanchez, through her ethnographic work, dispels the myth surrounding migrant smuggling, revealing a more complex reality. Her research explores the intricate dynamics of trust, mistrust, and emotional attachments formed in the shared space of the migration pathway.

Gabriella Sanchez. Photo credit: Georgetown University

One important strand of Dr. Sanchez’s research is examining how migrants are able to make contact with smugglers in the first place. One of the ironic elements in the typical media narrative of migrant smugglers as highly elusive members of a criminal “underground”, is that facilitators are seemingly always readily accessible to people seeking their services. In the digital age, migrants in transit gather information about facilitators through online, through social media as well as via referrals from friends and family. As Face-to-face meetings became challenging due to the global Covid-19 pandemic, they were replaced by video calls or voice messages as a means to establish trust through personal interaction.

As the services of facilitators are very expensive for migrants, the process of establishing a relationship of trust is usually a long one, involving interviews with the facilitator and often the presentation of testimonials from previous clients or other forms of evidence. Migrant smuggling is, in this sense, is not any different from other kinds of human interaction in which trust is essential. While abuses of confidence in migrant / facilitator relationships certainly do occur, Dr. Sanchez emphasizes that this is also true in all other kinds legal, regularized activities.

While it is true that most facilitators of migrant smuggling who face prosecution are men, women also play an important role in the process and the number of women convicted of smuggling related crimes is growing. Many women work as recruiters, or work at ‘safe houses’ which migrants stay in along the course of their journey. Normally the division of labor is gendered, with men more often taking on roles as guides, drivers or lookouts and women more often ensuring the safety and well being of migrants by providing food or care, including basic medical attention.

Frequently parents, having emigrated earlier, may rely on smugglers to reunite with their children. In this context, Dr. Sanchez argues that migrant smuggling emerges as a form of care, albeit a risky nd not always benevolent one. The striking images of ‘unaccompanied minors’ encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border is often used as evidence of parental indifference, in many cases the parents of these children have worked for many years in order to afford the services of a facilitator who will keep their child safe and healthy in transit. While Dr. Sanchez, acknowledges that in many cases these children are placed in perilous situations, she urges us to consider the responsibility that states’ formal immigration policies have in creating the conditions in which migrants are forced to resort to irregular channels.

In the final section of the podcast, Dr. Sanchez addresses the risks, both in terms of the physical dangers and the ethical dilemmas which confront researchers who investigate smuggling issues. She emphasizes that, in her personal experience, dangers often come from law enforcement officers rather than those involved in smuggling. She also highlights the ethical obligations researchers have to protect their subjects, observing that the growing interest in smuggling research, is accompanied by a growing disregard for the safety for those involved in these processes. She argues that, in the ‘publish or perish’ climate of academia, the fact that research into migrant smuggling often has impacts on policy enforcement decisions is too regularly overlooked, and urges scholars to consider more carefully how the impacts of their discourse and findings trickles down to the experiences of people, including smuggling facilitators.

This HCIAS Blogcast has been just a short recap of a wide-ranging and thought-provoking discussion. If you would like to learn more about our guest and her work, you can listen to the whole episode here.

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