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Counter-smuggling is cruel and ineffective. Can we imagine a better system? [1]
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Date: 2025-02
Over 20 years of counter-smuggling legislation have failed to sustainably reduce irregular migration to Europe or protect migrants.
These measures have only ever had short-term effects. The vast security response that followed the summer of migration in 2015, for example, decreased arrivals. But the effect was only temporary, and numbers have since returned to pre-2015 levels.
A similar story can be told about the number of dead and missing people on Europe’s Mediterranean border. According to the International Organization for Migration, the annual toll peaked in 2016 (5,136 dead and missing) and then began to drop. It reached its lowest point in 2020 (1,450 dead and missing) before climbing again. The new peak it hit in 2023 (3,155 dead and missing) was a shade off the pre-2015 level. Over 30,000 people have died in the Mediterranean since 2014.
Meanwhile, hundreds of people have been arrested, imprisoned, or tied up in legal proceedings across the UK and Europe – simply for crossing a border, or for acting in solidarity with someone who did.
openDemocracy’s recent series on how migration became a criminal offence showed that this shift is not an unintended consequence of border security policies. People are not getting ‘caught in the net’ by accident as British and European governments fight a legitimate enemy. Migrants and solidarity actors are being deliberately targeted.
This campaign is fuelled by two beliefs. First, that with enough force people can be successfully blocked and deterred from crossing borders. This remains the unshakeable core of migration policy, even though the UK Home Office itself admits that there’s no evidence to back this up. And second, that prosecuting more people involved in migration (regardless of who they are) will please voters.
Research and experience both tell us that deterrence doesn’t work. Continuing down that path until we find ourselves surrounded by fences and walls too high to see over isn’t a solution. Western countries, many of whom strongly rely on migrants to sustain their economies, need to radically rethink how to deal with migration and its facilitation.
This work begins with actively challenging the main misconceptions policymakers and the general public have about people smuggling. Only once we have a more realistic view of how people move, can we begin to imagine better policies – ones that respect people’s human rights on the one hand, and respond to economic and security concerns on the other.
Heading for more criminalisation in 2025
As the political outlier of 2024’s lurch to the right in Europe and the US, the new UK Labour government had a chance to move away from its predecessor’s policies on migration across the English Channel migration and chart a different course. It could have trialled safe and legal routes from France and Belgium, for example, to test if they reduce migrant deaths.
Instead, the UK government has chosen to follow the recipe outlined by the 2024 EU Pact on Migration and Asylum: streamline border procedures to screen asylum seekers, bar access to those who don’t qualify for asylum, and conclude agreements with source and transit countries to speed up deportations and deter migration ‘upstream’.
It also plans to set up a new Border Security Command, with a £75 million budget and a mandate to treat smugglers as terrorists. The effectiveness of this new unit, however, will be limited by its ability to communicate effectively with EU counterparts. Treating smugglers like terrorists or mafia clans essentially means delivering intelligence to European authorities and hoping they’ll do something about it, a plan that has raised doubts among Home Office officials.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/counter-smuggling-is-cruel-and-ineffective-can-we-imagine-a-better-system-migration-uk-eu/
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