Pregledni rad
https://doi.org/10.11567/met.34.1.3
Human Smuggling on Europe’s Eastern Balkan and Eastern Borders Routes
Johan Leman
orcid.org/0000-0003-0544-7808
; Faculty of Social Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven
Stef Janssens
; Myria – Federal Migration Centre, Brussels
Sažetak
The authors propose an analysis of the developments in migrants’ smuggling (and indirectly also in transit migrations) on the Eastern Balkan (Bulgaria–Romania) and Eastern Borders (Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus) routes from around 2015. For some transit migrants (and migrants’ smugglers), with the severe controls on the Western Balkan route and after the EU–Turkey deal of April 2016, the new routes, each with its own already decennia-long smuggling tradition, have become a possible alternative for the Western Balkan route. Starting from the statistics, the authors show that there surely is a partial integration of both new routes, but that it is not very clear in which proportion and how it may happen. They provide the figures about what is already known today. But at the same time, one discovers that, due to the problems of official labelling and to a lack of an all-inclusive approach, for which only partial pieces of the routes are taken in consideration, it is difficult to come to a good understanding of the processes and of the complexity of the Smuggling of Migrants (SoM) business. Instead of only putting partial findings together, it should be possible to follow the processes from the destination to the arrival countries. In most cases, the countries on the Eastern Balkan and Eastern Borders routes only function as transit countries. The structure as a whole remains out of sight. To show the importance of this all-inclusive approach, the authors analyse some files from one of the possible destination countries (Belgium). They conclude with suggestions for further research.
Ključne riječi
Eastern Borders; Eastern Balkan; transit migrations; migrants’ smuggling
Hrčak ID:
209129
URI
Datum izdavanja:
19.4.2018.
Posjeta: 2.426 *