Autonomy of migrant smuggling: legal absurdities in the criminalisation of family reunification and solidarity with asylum seekers

Abstract

Notwithstanding humanitarian crises at the EU external borders, migrant smuggling also comprises mundane solidarity-based and autonomous practices within Europe. Based on a socio-legal analysis of over a hundred court rulings in Finland, migrant smuggling predominantly covered assistance for asylum seekers and family members, usually embedded in social relations and personal networks. Overall, the sentences for the organisation of illegal entry mainly related to secondary smuggling of third-country nationals already assisted in reaching Europe, often involving the delivery of travel documents and joint travel via commercial routes within the Schengen area. The literalist and rigid sentencing practices, overlooking realities of migration and humanitarian considerations, expand punitive migration governance and reconfirm criminalisation of mobility, even with paradoxical outcomes. Despite some aggravated offences–including sentences for intermediaries–most defendants assisted with travel arrangements without any financial gain. Contrary to the impunity clause, the courts considered humanitarian motives mainly when lowering sentences, producing legal absurdities by treating family members, acquaintances, and fellow migrants as organised smugglers. The concept of the autonomy of migrant smuggling foregrounds the productive contradictions of migration governance in the criminalisation of self-organised and collective mobility practices that arise precisely from the necessity to navigate within the repressive border regime.