Global Human Smuggling: Comparative Perspectives

During the past decade, human smuggling across national borders grew from a low-level border crossing activity in a handful of countries to a diverse multibillion dollar business spanning the entire globe. New laws in several states, the creation and expansion of new enforcement and management agencies with enormous budgets, and multilateral programs around the world are currently being developed to combat human smuggling. But how well do we understand it? This volume explores the global dimensions of human smuggling in several forms and regions, examining its deep social, economic, and cultural roots and its broad political consequences.

Part I discusses the sociohistorical context and contemporary diversity of human smuggling of migrants, asylum-seekers, and those who are tricked into slavery, including the conflicting role of states and corrupt state officials as contributing to the problem. In Part II, the authors present high profile case studies that include U.S.-Mexican border smuggling, the international business of trafficking women from the former Soviet Union, and the origins and social organization of human smuggling as a global business from China and Southeast Asia. In Part III, contributors examine the politics of human smuggling, looking more closely at the legal construction of victimized women trafficked into slavery, the social construction of smuggled immigrants as threats to the social order, and the sanctioning of unauthorized employment of illegal immigrants.

Contributors: Peter Andreas, Reed College • Ko-Lin Chin, Rutgers University, Newark • John Dale, University of California, Davis • Nora Demleitner, St. Mary's University • James O. Finckenauer, National Institute of Justice • H. Richard Friman, Marquette University • Khalid Koser, University College, London • Rey Koslowski, Rutgers University, Newark • Peter Kwong, Hunter College • David Kyle, University of California, Davis • Zai Liang, City University of New York • Mark J. Miller, University of Delaware • Eileen Scully, Princeton University • David Spener, Trinity University • Wenzhen Ye, Xiamen University

David Kyle is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis. Rey Koslowski is an assistant professor of political science at Rutgers University, Newark.