Illicit Affairs: How Smuggling Networks Shape Migrant Experience on the Balkan Route

Author: Madi Carpenter

October 17, 2025

Asylum seekers board a train en route to Serbia from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. (Photo: Mirjana Nedeva/UN Women Europe and Central Asia. [Image Source: Article: Outsourcing Migration Management: The Rol.. | migrationpolicy.org]

The journeys of forced migrants are plagued by various challenges. The routes are often perilous, unpredictable, and underdeveloped. Many turn instead to informal routes for seeking refuge because state-sponsored migration is expensive and difficult to access. Despite the risks, migrants continue to put themselves in harm's way, often to escape the protracted conflict in their home countries. The emergence of these informal pathways is typically followed by the development of migrant smuggling networks. These groups not only create unnecessary risks for migrants but also increase the difficulties many countries encounter from migration surges and irregularities. By examining how restrictive migration policies bolster smuggling networks and frequently shift harm onto migrant populations, we can better understand how to inform policies in the future that do not embolden smugglers and human trafficking networks. 

First used by migrants coming from the Middle East and North Africa and then by refugees fleeing the Yugoslav war in the 1990s, the Western Balkan Route was often referred to as Europe’s “back door.” Most notably, it was widely used during the influx of migrants into Europe in 2015 and 2016. During this time, migrants were coming from countries like Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq with the hopes of making it to countries that openly welcomed asylum seekers, such as Germany, Hungary, and Sweden. In order to do this, they had to travel through Turkey and cross the Aegean Sea into Greece. The most notable accounts from this journey were those of migrants on capsized boats in the Mediterranean, where there were often few survivors. 

When migration surged during the Yugoslav wars in the 90s, the policies that shaped migrant experiences were largely informed by the development of temporary protection, which allowed refugees fleeing the war to acquire a status in surrounding European countries. Although migration policies enacted during this time were widely criticized, attitudes towards migration differed markedly from those seen after 2015. During the surge of migration along the Western Balkan Route in 2015, European migration policy made a sharp turn towards border externalization and securitization, prioritizing deterrence. 

Irregular migration in the Mediterranean region reached a pinnacle in March of 2016, when the European Union and Turkey released a statement that Greece would be returning all irregular migrants that crossed into Greece back to Turkey, attempting to curb the heightened levels of irregular migrants crossing the Aegean Sea. Migrants were increasingly represented as a problem to be managed, rather than as people seeking protection. During this time, there was also increased interest in combating the criminal networks that were making an enormous profit from migrant smuggling. Interpol estimated that in 2015 alone, smuggling networks made 5 to 6 billion dollars in profits from migrant smuggling. Smuggling networks are often attracted to countries with political instability and weak economies. Following the 2008 financial crisis, which devastated Greece’s economy, high unemployment, weakened institutions, and strained border enforcement created conditions in which irregular migration and smuggling flourished. This consolidated Greece’s role as both a key entry point and transit hub into the European Union. Official statistics from the early 2000s show that Greeks accounted for more than half of those arrested for migrant smuggling, followed by substantial numbers of Albanians and Turks.

Migrants often view smuggling networks as both dangerous and indispensable, a perception shaped by increasingly strict border controls. As Hein de Haas famously argued, restrictive migration policies rarely eliminate irregular movement. Instead, they deepen migrants’ dependence on smugglers. In his analysis of the “myth of invasion,” de Haas stresses that border externalisation has not halted migration but has allowed smugglers to assume the role of gatekeepers. Although migration levels have remained relatively stable over time, politicization has led public discourse to frame migration as a crisis, prompting restrictive measures that ultimately strengthen the very smuggling networks they seek to dismantle. 

Migrant testimonies highlighted this paradox. Migrants being interviewed about smugglers often portray their experiences in contrasting lights. In a study looking at smuggling in Greece, a Kurdish migrant said, “…the kaçakçi do good. How could we come here if it wasn’t for the kaçakçi…?” Kaçakçi is a Kurdish word often used to describe smuggling groups. Another migrant in 2024 described the conditions in a boat organized by smugglers:

At 2 am, we put the dinghy in the water. The sea was very rough. Our dinghy was moving up and down with the waves, and it felt like at any moment it could break and sink. Everyone in the dinghy was throwing up … I have asthma and was using my inhaler in the beginning, but after some time, I lost it. Early in the morning, we were lost at sea and we could not see any close land. Around 7 am, the wooden floor of our dinghy started to break, and water came in. The dinghy was full of water, and the rubber tubes of the dinghy were losing air. The wood of the floor started to splinter. I was sure we would die. Everyone started saying their last prayers.

These experiences are not isolated but shaped by the broader efforts to police migration routes. Research on sub-Saharan African migrants in Athens and Istanbul shows that trajectories are fragmented and frequently redirected by events such as police raids, detentions, or failed sea crossings. With these turbulent conditions, smuggling networks become vital, offering information, false identification, or shelter. Yet reliance on them meant that when enforcement intensified, smugglers adapted by shifting new risks onto migrants. Refugees were sent alone to cross treacherous routes and told to keep walking until they reached a transit city. The responsibility of navigating these situations often fell to migrants themselves, leaving them vulnerable to arrest or misidentification as smugglers. Thus, while state policies sought to dismantle smuggling operations, they often just deepened the precarity of those in transit. 

Migrating in this way can expose migrants to a range of vulnerabilities, particularly the risk of human trafficking. In fact, policymakers often conflate migrant smuggling with human trafficking, which further complicates the journey for migrants who may become victims of trafficking by making it even more difficult to track. There are a multitude of ways that trafficking can overlap with smuggling, but they are fundamentally different practices. Smuggling is often paid for by the migrant, and there is an expectation that the migrant will end up in their desired country. Trafficking can occur when migrants are unable to pay their debts to smugglers or run out of money in the middle of their journey. Trafficking can also arise when smugglers exploit migrants’ lack of information, manipulating them into situations of forced labor. In other cases, trafficking can occur simply by brute force directed at migrants in vulnerable places such as transit points or refugee camps. 

Data from Frontex demonstrated that border crossings in the Western Balkans have decreased by 64% in the first few months of 2025 compared to last year. Many of these countries have worked to further secure their borders with updated border technology. However, this data has been criticized. Some argue that this decline does not correspond with data from Greece or with the broader reality of migration in the region. Instead, it signals that border securitization and externalization are pushing smuggling networks further underground, making them even more dangerous for migrants. Migration has been a constant feature of human history, taking many different forms over the centuries, but never ceasing to exist. The idea that closing borders and increasing deportations will somehow force migration to stop happening is simply not feasible, and all it does is put migrants in more danger while smuggling networks continue to expand. 

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Glossary

• Asthma: A chronic inflammatory lung disease that causes recurrent episodes of wheezing, shortness of breath, chest tightness, and coughing.

• Asylum seeker: A person who has fled their home country due to a well-founded fear of persecution and has crossed an international border to request protection in another country, but has not yet had their claim officially granted.

• Bolster: To support, strengthen, or reinforce something, either physically or abstractly.

• Border externalization: Policies by which countries try to shift border control and migration enforcement outside of their own territory.

• Border securitization: The process of treating migration as a security threat, leading to stricter border controls, surveillance, and deterrence measures.

• Capsized: A boat or other watercraft has overturned, turned bottom-up, or is swamped with water.

• Conflate: To combine or fuse them together, often incorrectly, creating confusion between things that are actually separate.

• Deterrence: The act of discouraging or preventing something, like a crime or an attack, by instilling fear of a negative consequence, such as punishment or retaliation.

• Dinghy: Any small boat designed as a tender or lifeboat

• Dismantle: Take (a machine or structure) to pieces.

• Fragmented: To be broken into separate parts, which can apply to a physical object, a group of people, or an abstract concept like a personality or a system.

• Forced migration: Movement of people caused by conflict, persecution, environmental disasters, or other situations that leave them with no safe choice but to leave.

• Frontex: The European Border and Coast Guard Agency, responsible for monitoring and managing the external borders of the European Union.

• Gatekeepers:  a person who controls access to something, for example via a city gate or bouncer, or more abstractly, controls who is granted access to a category or status.

• Human trafficking: The exploitation of people through force, fraud, or coercion, often for forced labor, sexual exploitation, or other abuse. 

• Illicit: Unlawful or not permitted or forbidden by law in a specific jurisdiction.

• Indispensable: Absolutely necessary, essential, or vital.

• Influx: The arrival or entry of many people or things. 

• Irregular migration: Movement across borders without legal authorization, such as entering without valid documents or overstaying a visa.

• Kaçakçi: A Kurdish term commonly used to describe smugglers or smuggling groups.

• Manipulating: Changing or influencing the intended meaning of something to suit one's purpose, often unfairly or dishonestly.

• Migrant smuggling: The paid facilitation of crossing borders illegally, usually with the consent of the migrant. Unlike trafficking, it typically ends once the border is crossed.

• Multitude: A very large number or a huge crowd. 

• Paradox: A statement that appears self-contradictory but may contain a deeper truth. 

• Perilous: Full of danger or risk.

• Politicization: The action of causing an activity or event to become political in character.

• Precarity: A state of existence lacking in stability, predictability, and security, especially regarding employment, income, and psychological welfare. 

• Public discourse: The communication and debate of ideas, opinions, and information among citizens on matters of public concern. 

• Refugee: A person recognized under international law as needing protection because they face persecution in their home country due to race, religion, nationality, social group, or political opinion.

• Temporary protection: A short-term legal status granted to people fleeing conflict or crisis, giving them safety without going through the full asylum process.

• Trajectories: the path followed by an object moving under the action of given forces.

• Transit country: A country or city where migrants temporarily stop or pass through on their way to a final destination.

• Treacherous: Not able to be trusted or dangerously unpredictable.

• Turbulent: characterized by disorder, confusion, or a lack of stability, but it can also describe something that is chaotic, violent, or physically agitated.

• Western Balkan Route: A migration pathway into Europe through Turkey, Greece, and the Western Balkans, widely used in the 1990s (during the Yugoslav wars) and again during the 2015-2016 refugee crisis.

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Sources

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