EUROSTAT: Smuggling of Migrants

Source details

Migrant smuggling is a profitable business for criminal networks exploiting migrants seeking to escape armed conflict, persecution and deprivation (Europol).
More than 90 % of irregular migrants use facilitation services.
In 2015 the estimated annual turnover related to migrant smuggling reached EUR 3–6 billion, with possible scenarios projecting a double or even a triple increase.
Migrant smuggling generates significant financial flows between residents and non-residents that can distort external sector statistics if not captured or recorded correctly.
Facilitation of illegal migration is an illegal economic activity that falls within the production boundary of national accounts and therefore should be included in statistical estimates of economic output.

Council Directive 2002/90/EC of 28 November 2002 provides a common definition for assisting illegal immigration and includes:
- Assisting intentionally a non-EU national to enter or transit through an EU country, in breach of the law.
- Assisting intentionally, and for financial gain, a non-EU national to reside in an EU country, in breach of the law.
- Instigating, taking part in or attempting to commit the above acts.
Distinction between migrant smuggling and human trafficking:
- Migrant smuggling: parties enter by mutual agreement; classified as a resident–non-resident transaction.
- Human trafficking: activity against an individual with no mutual agreement; not classified as smuggling.
Two main types of smuggling agreements:
- 'Pay-as-you-go' agreement: no final destination predetermined; speed and direction depend on migrants’ ability to pay at each step; dominant mode of migration.
- ‘Full package’ agreement: less common; fee paid in country of origin to a smuggler arranging several services to transport the migrant to destination.

For EU Member States, models may focus on border-crossing and transiting-through effects; transactions before point of entry can often be disregarded from the EU perspective.
Frontex data suggest EU border crossing is often facilitated by non-resident smugglers; only part of related transactions is relevant for Member States’ balance of payments.
Transiting through the EU is more likely operated by resident service providers; in such cases transactions should be recorded as transportation and travel services.
Demand-side models are argued to be more feasible for balance of payments and national accounts purposes given relatively better data on numbers of irregular border crosses and prices.

Possible data sources for smugglers’ fees: police reports, interview-based media publications and information from social media.
Price determinants include border type (land or sea), types of services provided, risks borne, seasonality, and supply and demand shifts.
Data on numbers of smuggled migrants: detections by police authorities and Frontex; these should be adjusted with detection rates.
International Organization for Migration provides global data on irregular migration.
Suggested statistical methods (from literature on US–Mexico illegal border crossing) include:
- capture-recapture methods
- stratified sampling of border crossings
- surveys and respondent-driven sampling
- synthetic and proxy measures
Recommended estimation approach:
- Stratify data along available categories.
- Construct price and quantity matrices and multiply to produce total turnover from irregular migration.
- Use supply-side data (e.g., numbers of facilitators) where available to verify assumptions, adjust models, and assist geographical allocation and intermediate cost estimation.

Trafficking of migrants is not among the 'core' illegal economic activities obligatorily estimated for national accounts and balance of payments in the EU (core set includes drugs, prostitution and smuggling of tobacco and alcohol).
There are currently no official estimates and country case studies cited for migrant smuggling in the EU.
Key conceptual and practical challenges:
- Overlap with corruption and bribery and with the underground economy (e.g., accommodation services) creates potential double counting.
- Migrants may retract consent during smuggling operations, producing borderline cases where the economic transaction concept may or may not apply.
- Determining irregular migrants' residence is complex: migration processes can take months or years, with migrants spending significant time in transit hubs before changing their centre of economic interest; tracking and timing residence changes is therefore difficult.