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Contribution long abstract:

The militarization of borders and the restrictive policies implemented by the European Union to protect the so-called "Fortress Europe" have made the operations of smuggling increasingly challenging along the Balkan route. It is not only law enforcement making irregular hazardous: armed human smuggling groups have resorted to capturing people-on-the-move, an emergent repertoire of violence and exploitation, with systematic kidnappings and torture. The nomenclature of‘gangs’ to describe organised groups that facilitate movement (smugglers) has entered the lexicon of the media-state discourse. The image of the smuggler as a collective of unscrupulous entrepreneurs from the muslim world, putting the lives of their fellow compatriots in danger is a useful folk devil to present to western audiences as the pretext for further eroding civil liberties. Thus, the researcher is presented with a conundrum; how does anthropology avoid presenting the violent side of organised border groups without reproducing the demonisation of mobile (transit) communities along routes? Moreover do researchers tell the stories of those abused by smuggling groups without failing to narrativise the youth that have carried out the abuse, their histories of war trauma, hyper masculinity in an uncertain bordered reality. Without making direct connections to the everyday processes of horizontal power among migrant-transit communities (ie Smugglers) and mobility regimes, anthropology fails to challenge the situated material conditions in which border-transit crime takes place.