Humanitarian Smuggling in a Time of Restricting and Criminalizing Mobility

Abstract

A remarkable finding from studies that take migrants’ perspectives on human smuggling into account is that smugglers’ services are often described in the context of ‘saving lives.’ Apart from smugglers who are in for profit, there are people involved in the smuggling industry who want to help migrants find protection. These ‘humanitarian smugglers’ range from religious organisations, charities, NGOs, private initiatives, celebrities, to migrant’s family members. In this chapter it is argued that criminalization of human smuggling and the lumping together of very different smuggling activities is morally unjust and involves serious human rights violations.