Entrepreneurial elements of human smuggling rings: findings from a multiple case study

Human smuggling towards Europe has reached an unprecedented level in the last years. The past decade has seen an intensification of the demand for irregular migration services, which increased the role of smuggling rings as service providers to assist irregular migrants in evading national border controls, migration regulations and visa requirements. These criminal organizations feature an entrepreneurial, rent-seeking behaviour using methods such as corruption, deceit, violence, and threats. Literature observes a number of elements which are essential for the establishment and development of any criminal organisation (capital collection, profit maximisation, differentiation of tasks, systems to conceal criminal money flows), but their actual presence within the human smuggling rings has never been verified. Using secondary sources, this contribution aims at verifying the presence of these entrepreneurial elements in the case of human smuggling rings by using a multiple case-study analysis.